The Leader leaves the construction site of the House Of German Art.
It has often been the case in history that a Head Of Government would to a great extent support the arts and, in particular, architecture. Thus a rococo prince of the 18th century would have castles and gardens built on which to feast his eyes, and give free rein to the architects of his time.
The Leader also builds as a Head Of Government; but he will never be able to build in this same tradition, because his great buildings, which are beginning to appear today in many places, are to be an essential expression of the Movement for thousands of years to come, and therefore a part of the Movement itself. The Leader, however, created this Movement, came to power through its strength, and even today still determines to the smallest detail its final form. He can therefore not build as a Head Of State in previous centuries, nor as a benevolent client, even less as a patron, of the arts -- he must build as a National Socialist. As such he determines, just as he determines the will and expression of the Movement, the clarity and purity of the lines of the building, the severity of its appearance, the quality of its materials, and, most importantly, the new inner purpose and with it the inner content of his constructions.
Building is no mere pastime for The Leader. It is a serious concern, destined to give expression in stone to the will of the National Socialist Movement.
It will be unique in the history of the German Folk that, at the decisive turning point, its Leader began not only with the greatest philosophical and political reorganisation of our history, but at the same time also set about the task of creating buildings with the superior knowledge of the master builder. These buildings were to bear witness to the political will as well as to the cultural greatness of our time for thousands of years to come.
After long centuries of confusion, the will of one man has established a clarity and severity in building which, in its continued development, will have as its consequence a completely new style of architecture.
Just how closely The Leader since his youth has felt attached to architecture, he wrote in 1924 in My Struggle:
As soon as my interest in social issues had been awakened, I began to study them with great thoroughness. It was a new and up to now unknown world which disclosed itself to me. That I should zealously at the same time serve my love of architecture was a matter of course. Architecture seemed to me, next to music, the queen of the arts: my preoccupation with it could under such circumstances not be regarded as work but as the greatest joy. I would read and draw into the early hours of the morning without getting tired. Thus my belief that my beautiful dream would become reality, even if it took many long years, was strengthened. I was firmly convinced that I would one day make a name for myself as a master builder.
He himself tells how important these impressions from his years in Vienna were in the first chapter of My Struggle:
At this time I formed a philosophy of life and a conception of the world which became the rigid foundation for my actions. To that which I thought out for myself at that time, I have only had to learn a few more additional things, but there was nothing I had to change. To the contrary. Today I strongly believe that in general all my creative thoughts had already manifested themselves in my youth, in so far as such thoughts exist at all.
This love of architecture which The Leader developed in his youth has never since left him. However, through war and revolution, the foundations of State and national life in Germany were so shaken that Hitler, who even as a soldier began to become more and more preoccupied with political issues, decided to become a politician: He said: Was it not ridiculous to want to build houses on such a foundation? He was totally serious in his conviction that he should become a politician, and it was a difficult decision to say farewell to architecture, the art to which he always remained faithful, with which he always continued to occupy himself, and which up to now has been his great love.
In the first turbulent years of his political struggle and during the early formation of the Movement, he also gave the final artistically clear form to all its symbolic means of expression. He designed the Swastika Flag of the Movement -- and with it the National Flag of the German Folk; he determined the National Eagle of the Party -- and with it the National Emblem of the German Reich; he was responsible for the ensigns of the SA and the SS; he developed a new structuring of his many rallies, and thereby determined the basic idea according to which all the buildings on the Reich Party Day site are erected.
The Königsplatz in München after its redesigning by Adolf Hitler.
The columned hall of the House Of German Art in München.
Design for the Congress Hall on the Reich Party Day site in Nürnberg.
Rostrum in the Luitpold Arena of the Reich Party Day site in Nürnberg.
In the course of many thorough discussions, he designed and determined Nürnberg at the Party rallies; not only the guidelines and programmes, but, in the course of lengthy considerations, he also laid down exact arrangements for the setting up of the individual subdivisions of the Party, for the deployment of the flags, and for the decoration of the various rooms. In Nürnberg sketches and drawings by The Leader from this time are still carefully preserved.
At a time when all his energies are called on to achieve the great goal, his preoccupation with art is and remains not work but the greatest joy.
At the right time, fate led to his meeting with his architect, Paul Ludwig Troost, with whom he soon formed a friendship based on an affinity of minds. What Dietrich Eckart was to The Leader as far as the exchange of ideas of a philosophical nature was concerned, Professor Troost soon became for him as far as architecture was concerned.
The first building to arise through the unique combination of these two men, and also the first small construction of the Movement, was the Brown House in the Briennerstraße in München. It was only a renovation, but for that time, as The Leader sometimes related later, a massive undertaking.
Here one can already see everything that was to be expressed even more distinctly in the buildings which were to be constructed after he came to power: severe and austere, but never monotonous. Simple and clear, and without false decoration. Ornamentation used sparingly, but in the right place, so that it could never be considered as superfluous. Material, form and lines combine to create an impression of nobility.
A picture of the Index Room in the Brown House, München.
The Leader in München.
The Sacred Pier.
The Leader and Rudolf Heß inspect the construction of The Leader House in München.
The Brown House in München.
The Eternal Guard on the Königsplatz in München.
The plans for this renovation were made in the same simple studio owned by Master Builder Troost in the back room of a house in the Theresienstraße in München, where later the plans for the Königsplatz in München, for the House Of German Art, and for many of The Leader's other buildings were to be made. These plans were to form the basis of a new style of architecture.
The Leader has never received the plans for these important buildings in his official rooms. For years he has gone to Professor Troost's studio in his free time to engross himself totally on the spot and free from his political work in the plans of future constructions. The Leader does not occupy himself solely with the major overall plans; he surveys every individual detail and every new assembly of materials, and much is improved by his stimulating suggestions. These hours of mutual planning are, as The Leader has often confessed, hours of purest joy and great happiness. They are a form of relaxation of the most noble kind in the course of which, again and again, he finds renewed strength for other plans. Here he has the opportunity, in the few free hours which politics permit him, to dedicate himself to his love of architecture.
Many years before he came to power, Hitler had discussed with Troost plans for buildings which only now are being executed. Already in the winter of 1931/1932 he talked over with him the future formation of the Königsplatz in München, and many splendid drafts have been the result of these meetings. And even before he came to power, as a result of these many discussions, the Square already existed in its present shape in plans and models.
When the Glass Palace burned down in München in 1932, and an inconsequential design for its reconstruction was put forward by the Government of the time, The Leader had one additional concern besides his many others, and that was that this imperfect plan would be started before he came to power. If one compares the model of this earlier design with the model of the now completed House Of German Art built according to the design of Paul Ludwig Troost, then one can see more clearly than anywhere else from which other ideal world The Leader draws his buildings.
In the irreplaceable artist Paul Ludwig Troost, The Leader had found his architect. Troost seized The Leader's intentions, and always managed to give them the right architectural expression.
In his great speech at the cultural rally of the Reich Party Day in 1935, The Leader unveiled a memorial to Professor Troost with words that could not be more moving for an architect of our time. He said:
We should be happy and proud that, by some strange chance, the greatest architect Germany has ever known since Schinkel was able to erect in the new Reich and for the Movement his first and unfortunately only monumental works in stone, as memorials of the most noble and truly Germanic tectonics.
It is a pleasure for The Leader to see the plans of a new building arise; it is just as great a pleasure for him to be able to experience personally the actual progress of these buildings.
Whenever he wanders through his building sites, often accompanied by only a few employees, he is the complete expert. His numerous questions of a technical nature, either about the foundations, the strength of the walls, or about problematic details of construction, are clearly put and usually unintentionally touch on some existing unsolved difficulty. Often it is in this area of engineering construction, when, after long consultations, all the experts are doubtful of a solution, that he comes up with a suggestion which usually proves to be logical and easily executed.
The foyer of the German Opera House in Charlottenburg
Our beloved Leader.
The Leader in a pensive mood.
The Leader in Potsdam, 1932.
The Leader, Professor Gall, and Architect Speer inspect the building progress of the House Of German Art.
A meeting on the new Alpine Road.
Every new step in the construction and every new detail in the building receives his thorough attention and appreciation. However. All this pleasure in details never prevents him from seeing the imposing alignments which distinguish all buildings.
The buildings of The Leader are constructed according to technically proven principles from natural stone. Natural stone and Nordic clinker bricks are our most durable building materials. What may initially appear to be the most expensive proves to be the cheapest in the long run. In all technical considerations, unlimited long lastingness is always the prime and most decisive principle to follow. For the buildings of The Leader are designed to stand as a testimonial to our great time for thousands of years. Once the immortal buildings of the Movement and of our Government have arisen in all the towns in Germany, they will be buildings of which every individual will be able to be proud, and of which he will known that they belong to the public at large and therefore also to him. It is not the warehouses and administrative buildings of banks and big companies which give the towns their character, but the buildings of The Leader, created by him and designed by him.
About the appearance of our cities in the past and in the future The Leader has written:
In the 19th century our cities began to lose more and more their character of places of culture, and sink to mere housing settlements. When München numbered only 60000 inhabitants, it looked as if it were to become one of the first German centres of art; today almost every factoryladen suburb has reached this figure, if not multiplied it several times, without being able to lay the least claim to having anything of real value as its own. These suburbs and towns are mere collections of apartment blocks and tenement houses and nothing more. How any particular attachment to such a town is to be formed under such deplorable conditions is a puzzle. No one will feel particularly attached to a town which has nothing more to offer than any other town, which lacks any sign of individuality, and in which everything was done to avoid anything to do with art. But this is not all. Even the great cities are becoming relatively poorer and poorer in real works of art as the size of their population increases. What recent times have added to the cultural content of our cities is completely insufficient. All our cities live off the glory and the treasures of the past. Our cities today have no monuments which dominate the cityscape and which could in any way be described as a symbol of the era. This, however, was the case in the cities of antiquity, where almost each one had a particular monument of which it could be proud. The particular features of an antique town were not found in its private buildings, but in its public monuments, which were not destined for the moment but for eternity, because they were to reflect not the riches of a single owner, but the greatness and importance of all the citizens. Even the Middle Ages in Germany upheld the same leading principle, even though its conception of art was quite different. What in antiquity was expressed in the Acropolis or the Pantheon, could now be glanced in the forms of the Gothic cathedral. The comparison between public and private building today has indeed become lamentable. If Berlin's fate were to become that of Rome, then all our descendants would have to admire as the most imposing works of our time would be the warehouses of a certain number of Jews and the hotels of a number of companies, the buildings which express most characteristically the culture of today. Thus our cities today lack the outstanding emblem of the National Community, and one should therefore not be amazed if the National Community sees no emblem of itself in its cities.
The great buildings of The Leader on the Königsplatz, the House Of German Art in München, and the Party buildings in Nürnberg, must be understood in this sense. They are a start, but therefore nonetheless fundamental, and it is the same with the residential buildings of The Leader. We are standing at the beginning of a new development.
The fact that one always initially thinks of the great buildings when The Leader's buildings are being discussed is no doubt consistent with the meaning The Leader gives to the creations of architecture.
This, however, should not lead people to assume that The Leader's work in the domain of architecture is exhausted with these buildings.
To the contrary.
From his own speeches, we know the crucial worth he places on shaping the social conditions of all Germans in such a way that every individual can be proud of what the community as a whole has achieved. The great importance the questions of living conditions assumes in this matter has already been stressed by The Leader in My Struggle.
In his years in Vienna, he became acquainted at first hand with the poor living conditions of the working class families. He writes:
What I had suspected before, I then learned to understand quickly and thoroughly: the question of the nationalisation of a Folk is firstly the question of the creation of healthy social conditions as the basis for the education of the individual.
Official statistics on completed dwellings (new or converted buildings) in the Reich show:
1932 -- 159,121
1933 -- 202,113
1934 -- 319,439
These figures speak more loudly than words of the extent the creation of healthy housing has increased under the Government of The Leader. This increase will continue and will rise even more sharply once the great building projects which are necessary for our security have been completed. In The Leader's own words, they are urgent, and therefore cannot be postponed.
Then the monumental buildings of National Socialism will rise above the healthy houses and clean factories of our cities like the Gothic cathedrals above the gables of the houses of the town dwellers of the Middle Ages.
Here also the tasks at hand are immensely great, but The Leader gave us all the courage required when he said in his speech in the cultural rally of the Reich Party Day:
People grow in stature in the execution of such higher tasks, and we do not have the right to doubt that, when the Almighty gives us courage to demand immortal things, he will give our Nation the courage to achieve immortal things.