Germany Guide
Northern Bavaria: Franconia
The Reichsparteitagsgelände
Opening time: Mon– Fri 9am–6pm, Sat & Sun 10am–6pm
Price: €5, free audio guide
If you're even vaguely curious about the role Nuremberg played in the iconography of the Nazi movement, you shouldn't miss a journey out to the Luitpoldhain park in the south of the city to see the Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände (tram #9 from Hauptbahnhof). Housed in an ultramodern museum that pierces the side of the Kongresshalle – a typically gargantuan piece of Nazi architectural bombast, planned to seat 50,000 but never completed – the exhibition Fazination und Gewalt (Fascination and Force) charts the rise of the Nazis with a focus on Nuremberg's role. A particular strong-point of the exhibition is the filmed interviews with Nurembergers who were witnesses to the events of the 1930s and 1940s; the section on anti-Semitism in everyday life is chilling, and includes anti-Semitic board games and newspaper advertisements from department stores proclaiming their new-found "Aryanized" status.
After the Machtergreifung (Nazi seizure of power) in 1933, the Reichsparteitage or party rallies became an annual ritual, attracting massive numbers of participants and hangers-on. A vast, self-glorifying Parteitagsgelände (party rally ground) was therefore planned, and though much of it – including the colossal Deutsches Stadion, which would have accommodated 400,000 spectators – was never built, what survives gives a powerful impression of the design. Leni Riefenstahl used a crew of 170 and some ground-breaking camera techniques to record the 1934 rally for her film The Triumph of the Will; the crowning event of the 1935 rally was the special session of the Reichstag convened in Nuremberg to pass the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws.
A circular walk takes you from the Kongresshalle along the 2km Grosse Strasse, the main axis of the complex, deliberately oriented towards the distant Kaiserburg. Still recognizable from old film footage, the Zeppelintribüne on the opposite side of the Dutzendteich lake from the Kongresshalle is where Hitler would address the rally – you can climb to the podium where he stood, though the terraced structure is a bit crumbly nowadays – and where Hitler's chief architect, Albert Speer, created his famous Lichtdom, or light cathedral, using hundreds of searchlights; the glow was so powerful it could be seen in Prague.