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Albert Speer
The Edifices Of The Führer
History has often seen a head of state support the arts and especially the
art of building. For example, a count of the Rococo period of the 18th century
ordered his architect to create castles and gardens and he gave other
architects the possibility for free creation. The Führer also builds as a
head of state, but he will never build in the old traditional sense because
his great edifices are intended to be an impression of our movement for
millenniums and need to be part of the movement itself. The Führer created
this movement and through its strength he came to power, and so he decides
about the smallest details that an ultimate form will be given. He could not
have built as a head of state in former times, or as a benevolent building
owner, much less as a benefactor. He must build as a National Socialist. As
such, he makes decisions in the same way as he decided the will and the image
of the movement. The cleanliness and purity of architectural design, the
forcefulness of expression, the clarity of construction, the purity of
material and most importantly, the National Socialist reflection and
therewith the everlasting symbolism of his edifices.
Building is not a hobby for the Führer but rather a serious matter designed
to reflect the will and expression of the National Socialist movement in
stone. It will be unique in the history of the German people that its Führer
not only started with the great world-doctrine of a new political
organization, but simultaneously commenced with superior trade knowledge as
an architect to create stone edifies which will bear witness to his cultural
know how, even after millenniums.
After long centuries of confusion, the adoption of his construction
guide-line has provided clarity and strength, which has become the new
building code for the future.
The closeness the Führer has felt since his youth towards the art of building
(next to all the social questions) is best described in Mein Kampf which he
wrote in 1924.
"As soon as my interest in social questions was resolved I started to
study architecture thoroughly. It was a new, unknown world which opened up to
me. It was natural that I dedicated all my love to the art of building. It
appeared to me, next to music, as the queen of the arts and my involvement
with it was, under such circumstances, not work but joy. I could read or draw
till late at night. I never tired and my best dream for the future, after
long years, turned into reality. I was firmly convinced that I could make a
name for myself in the future as an architect."
The importance of these impressions from his years in Vienna confirmed in the
first chapter of Mein Kampf: "In those days a world picture and a new
world concept formed within me which became the foundation of my actions. I
had to add very little from education to what I had created by then. I had nothing
to change."
I believe firmly that all fundamental creative thoughts are likely to appear
during one's youth, if they will ever exist at all. This love that he had
during his youth towards the art to building has never left the Führer.
During the war and revolution the foundations of the State and economic life
in Germany were so strongly shaken that Hitler (who even as a soldier was
more concerned with political than military questions) decided to become a
politician. He says: "Was it not ridiculous to build houses on such a
foundation?" He was deadly serious about becoming a politician and it
was a difficult decision to say good-bye to his building art, an art with
which he always stayed busy and which until today, was his great love.
During the first tumultuous years of his political battle he gave the
formation of the movement all its symbolic means of expression, in final
artistic form. He designed the swastika flag of the movement and with it the
national flag of the German people. He created the eagle emblem of the party
and therewith the emblem of the German nation; the standards of the SA and SS
units found their shape through him.
He designs original arrangements for his many rallies and conceived the
fundamental idea after which all the buildings at the Reich Party Meeting
Complex at Nuremberg have been erected. In thorough conferences in Nuremberg
during the Party Meeting days he not only sets the guidelines and program,
but he gives hour-long consultations, new instructions for the positioning of
the different units of the Party and the marching arrangements of the flags
as well as the designs for the various meeting halls. Hand sketches and
drawings of the Führer from the early days are still in Nuremberg for
safekeeping.
In a time of the greatest utilization of all his strength for the biggest
goal he remains involved with art which is "not labor" but
"pure joy."
At the correct time fate let him meet building designer Paul Ludwig Troost,
with whom a light friendship soon connected him. What Dietrich Eckart was to
the Führer for the exchange of ideas of world polities, Professor Troost soon
became for architecture.
The first building which arose through the unique alliance of these two men
was the original small edifice of the movement, the Brown House in Brienner
Street in Munich. Though it was only a re-construction it was a tremendous
effort as the Führer sometimes has said.
Here everything was already visible. What came more clearly into focus in the
buildings which arose after the takeover of power was austere and forceful,
but never monotonous design. Simple and clear without superfluous
decorations. Frugal in decoration as a matter of fact, but each decoration
had its place so that it would be impossible to think of it as being unneeded.
Everything is pure in material, form and outline.
The drawings for this re-construction came to life in the simple studio of
Architect Troost, in the small rear house at Theresien Street in Munich. In
this same studio plans were made for a new building code, the plans for the
Königsplatz in Munich, the House of German Art and many other buildings of
the Führer. The plans for these important buildings were never viewed by the
Führer in his official offices. For years he drove to the studio of Troost in
his spare time in order to view the plans of new buildings. But the Führer
did not occupy himself only with the overall plans; each single detail, each
new material received his seal of approval and much was improved through his
fruitful suggestions. Those hours of joint planning, as the Führer often
confesses, became hours of purest joy and the deepest feelings of happiness
for him. They were relaxation of the purest kind, out of which he found new
strength for other plannings. Here he had the opportunity, during the few
free hours which polities allow him, to dedicate himself towards the building
art.
Hitler discussed with Troost (many years before his assumption of power) the
plans for buildings which just now are coming into being. During the winters
of 1931 and 1932 he consulted with Troost about the future form of the
Königsplatz in Munich, and many beautiful designs were the result of these
get-togethers. Before his coming to power the place was, as a result of those
many deliberations over plans and models, already finished in its present
form.
In 1932 the Glass Palace in Munich was burned down, and the former Government
brought forward an insignificant design for its re-construction. The Führer
worried in addition to his other worries, that this incomplete plan should be
started before his assumption of power.
If you will compare the model of the former design with the recently
completed House of German Art which was designed by Paul Ludwig Troost, you
can then see clearer than anywhere else the ideal world the Führer has
created in his construction work.
The Führer found in the irreplaceable artist Paul Ludwig Troost, his
architect. Troost understood how to utilize Hitler's intentions and how to
provide the correct architectural form. The Führer during his great speech at
the cultural meeting of the Reich Party in 1935, delivered a memorial to
Professor Troost which could not have been a more beautiful tribute to an
architect of our times. He said:
"We should be filled with happy pride that through a strange fate
Germany possessed the greatest architect since Schinkel, in the new Reich and
for the movement, He erected his first and unfortunately his only tremendous
works in stone as monuments of true Germanic and Teutonic purity."
The Führer is happy to see the design of an edifice come into being and it is
also a great joy for him to watch the growth of the buildings himself. When
he strolls through the buildings under construction (often only accompanied
by some co-workers) he is completely and entirely a specialist. His numerous
questions of a technical nature (for example about foundations, about
thickness of walls, about difficult construction details) clearly point out
some unsolved difficulty. In architectural areas where all specialists after
long consultations doubt the possibility of a solution, the Führer often
provides a solution which proves to be clear and easy to carry through. Each
new building phase and each new detail of a building receives his intensive
analyses and admiration. But the Führer, despite his joy in detail, never
forgets the importance of the generous measures and outlines which mark all
his buildings
All buildings of the Führer are built from natural stone with
craftsmen-tested rules. Natural stone and Nordic hardburned bricks are our
most durable building materials. The rule is that the most expensive material
in the long run proves to be the cheapest. The unconditional durability of
construction material is the first technical consideration and always the
supreme and decisive principle.
The buildings of the Führer are intended to speak of our great time for a
thousand years. The permanent buildings of the movement and our state which
have been erected throughout Germany are buildings of which every single
person can be proud and since they belong to all they therefore belong to
each of us. The large stores and administrative buildings of banks and
companies shall not form the face of the City, but rather the buildings of
the Führer, created by him shall be the face of our cities. The Führer writes
about the form of the cities of the past and the future as follows:
"In the l9th century our cities lost more and more of the character of
cultural centers and started to decline into purely people's settlements.
"When Munich had only 60,000 inhabitants, it started to become one of
the first German cultural centers; today nearly every industrial city has
reached this number and most have, without being able to show even the least
of real values, acquired only accumulations of apartment barracks, nothing
else. How one can remain in such a meaningless location seems a miracle.
Nobody will feel attached to a city which has nothing to offer beyond any
other city. Not only is individual character missing but the really large cities
have become poorer and poorer in real works of art.
"What the new times have added to the cultural content of our larger
cities is completely inadequate. All of our cities feast on the glory and the
treasures of the past.
"Our present capital cities possess none of the monuments to dominate
the total character of a City, unlike the cities of antiquity where each one
had a special monument to its pride. Nor do our private buildings reflect the
characteristics of our cities of antiquity. Monuments of the entire community
were not erected for the moment but should be destined towards eternity.
Monuments should not be the result of the wealth of a single person but the
size and significance should reflect the generosity of the general public.
"The Germanic middle ages maintained some rules of principle, under a
completely different conception of art. That which in antiquity found its
expression in the Acropolis or the Pantheon was later reflected in the form
of the Gothic domes.
"How truly pitiful the relationship between State and private building
construction has become. If the fate of Rome should apply to Berlin, our
descendants could admire as the greatest constructions of our times, the
department stores of a couple of Jews and the hotels of a couple of
companies, as the characteristic expression of the culture of our days."
The cities of the present lack the towering symbols of the entire people and
one should not be surprised if he cannot find in his city a monument
reflecting the image of the nation.
One must understand the great new buildings of the Führer like the
Königsplatz, the House of German Art in Munich, and the Party complexes in
Nürnberg. They are only a beginning but they lay the foundation of the
development of the apartment complexes which the Führer creates.
It is usual when considering the direction which the Führer has given to the
creation of the building art, that one always thinks of the Party complexes
when the buildings of the Führer are discussed. This, however, should not mislead
one to assume that the activities of the Führer in architecture are
concentrated only on those types of buildings. Quite the contrary.
We know from his speeches what decisive values Hitler used to treat the
social conditions of all Germany in such a manner that every single one could
be proud of what the community creates. The great significance which the
Führer attached to the questions of living conditions was already expressed
in Mein Kampf.
He learned first-hand during his years in Vienna, of the misery of the living
conditions of the workers' families. He writes: "What I could not
foresee then, I learned in those days quickly and thoroughly: The question of
the nationalization of people is first a question of the creation of sound
social conditions as a fundament of the education of the individual."
The official statistics give the following figures of newly completed and
reconstructed apartments for the entire Reich.
1932 159,121
1933 202,113
1934 319,439
These figures express better than words how the creation of apartment blocks
was increased under the Führer's government. This increase shall carry on and
will be increased in the future when "the greatest construction
projects, the completion of which is urgent for us and cannot therefore be
postponed, shall be finished."
Then shall monumental edifices of National Socialism rise like the domes of
the middle ages, towering over the gables of the houses of private citizens,
above healthy worker apartments and above the clean factories of our large
cities.
The given tasks are unperceivably large, but the Führer gave us all the
courage required when be said the following during a cultural meeting at the
Reich Party day:
"The people will grow to accommodate higher tasks, and we have no right
to doubt that when the Almighty gives us the courage to demand the immortal,
he shall give our people the strength to fulfill the immortal."
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