Today we travelled to Nuremberg. Our first stop was the Nazi party rally grounds. Not the ones that have been finished and used (though we saw that at the end of the tour) but the new ones in progress and then abandoned at the beginning of the war.
On the bus ride in, I noticed the building that reminded me of the Colosseum and this was that building. That was the intention behind the building as Hitler was inspired by the Roman empire.
The building itself was to be massive with a skylight over Hitler. A so-called “divine light,” our tour guide told us, to make him seen as the savior of the German people. An almost religious figure, although Hitler himself didn’t subscribe to religion.
Walking into the stadium, it was massive. We could walk on just a small viewing area where we couldn’t even see the whole stadium due to the construction happening around us. The construction was distracting and loud. It felt as though it echoed through this entire stadium. A stadium that does not have even a roof to ring off of, as intended from its original plan. Even in an unfinished construction zone, it felt powerful in its stature.
In it I felt small and insignificant. This was the way one was meant to feel when they walked into this stadium. This was the way the Nazi party wanted people to feel.
We left the main portion of the Colosseum and went to an entrance. The entrance is 5 meters tall, or about 16 ft 5in. Our tour guide stood in the center of this archway and felt miniscule. She explained the ideology behind these design choices. To make one feel so small and so insignificant as they approached and walked into this arena, and then they enter it and become part of the collective of the Nazi party. They’re surrounded by up to 50,000 other people who share with them desires and beliefs of the Nazi Party.
This stadium was intended for use for one week a year, every year to showcase, parade, march, and listen to speakers of the Nazi party. An absurdly large building for one week a year. A place for the propaganda of erasing the individual and bringing them into the collective.
There’s no decoration around this unfinished stadium even though the outside was complete as it was covered in granite. No statues, no nothing. Truly no elevation of the individual or anything out of line with the standards that they were trying to convey of uniformity and perfection. The only thing you were seemingly supposed to be was part of the collective.
The monotony and uniformity of their endeavor was clear in the architecture alone. The essence of this history was shown throughout every meticulously planned piece of their propaganda.