Die Ästhetik des Dritten Reiches

The specter of fascism haunts democracies the world over, leading to valuable new research into the criminal fascistic regimes of the past, most notably Germany’s experience with Nazism. However, scholarship regarding the Third Reich often tends towards institutional and biographical portraits, leaving underexamined the deep connection between Nazism and the arts. Architecture was at the heart of the Third Reich’s cultural Weltanschauung and serves not only to inform us of the social mores affecting and informing leaders of the time, but also as a masterful depiction of how space can be manipulated towards ideological ends. By working through the built spaces of the Third Reich, while including the personal touches of Adolf Hitler along with influential Nazis like Albert Speer, it is possible to understand the intensely ideological project of architecture—how and why physical space became a tool of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Key buildings, like the Nazi Party rally grounds in Nuremberg, can be recontextualized in a broader theoretical framework to deconstruct the confluence of art and politics. This rich junction provides insights into the nucleus of Nazism, and touches in no small part on the profound suffering caused by the regime. A close examination of the proposed capital for the resurgent Reich, dubbed ‘Germania,’ we can grasp the vital importance of architecture in the Third Reich, and how the forms and functions of built spaces became agents of fascism