Preserving Nazi past

NUREMBERG (Germany) • When Nazi ruins begin to crumble, is it better for Germany to rip them down or restore them?

That is the question now facing Nuremberg, site of the infamous vast marching grounds and torch-lit parades immortalised by film-maker Leni Riefenstahl.

As it prepares to mark the 75th anniversary of the post-war trials of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's top henchmen, the city has opted to throw itself into a massive conservation effort tied to Germany's vaunted culture of remembrance and atonement for past crimes.

"This is where it all began: the destruction, the exclusion and, in the end, the Holocaust" in which the Nazis slaughtered six million European Jews, Ms Julia Lehner, the southern city's chief culture official, said.

Touring the sweeping Nazi party rally grounds, Ms Lehner pointed out the massive Zeppelin grandstand where Hitler from 1933 to 1938 delivered racist tirades to half a million party faithful who gathered there every September.

Tens of thousands more Germans from across the country joined in to witness the giant dance spectacles and colour guards.

Nearby, another ruin looms.

The classical Congress Hall, never completed, is the second largest Nazi-era building still standing, after the Prora recreation complex on the Baltic Sea.

Its "monumentality" was intended, like so many architectural relics from the era, to "intimidate and fascinate" while "demonstrating the superiority of Nazi ideology", historian Wolfgang Benz said.

The site, largely designed by Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer and occupying 11 sq km, provides useful insights into "the persecutors", said Ms Lehner.

She recalled that Hitler handpicked Nuremberg as the staging ground for his sophisticated propaganda machine.

That was one of the prime reasons the Allies chose the city for the ground-breaking hearings to prosecute top Nazis from November 1945.

The dark heritage weighed on the city for decades.

"Immediately after the war, it was preferred to cover it all with a veil of forgetting," Ms Lehner said.

Zeppelin Field with its stone bleachers opposite the grandstand were long used as sporting grounds for American soldiers and, later, rock concerts by the likes of singer Bob Dylan.

Today, what remains - officially listed as a historical monument - is in a state of dangerous disrepair.

Many of the familiar landmarks are inaccessible due to the risk of crumbling edifices injuring visitors.

The Congress Hall is closed to the public too. Its ground floor acts as a warehouse for the small huts that make up Nuremberg's world-famous Christmas market, while an annexe is used for storage by the Philharmonic Orchestra.

Since 2001, a documentation centre on the sidelines of the grounds has served to provide historical context.

After two decades of often bitter debate, Nuremberg decided to restore the site by 2025, with the €85 million (S$135.5 million) cost shared by the city, the state of Bavaria and the federal government.

The sum will first and foremost serve to prevent further structural erosion of the buildings.

The field will be converted into a park and signs will explain the history and significance of each building.

The documentation centre, which welcomes 300,000 visitors a year, will be expanded.

It is about "making the stones speak", Ms Lehner said, "by telling their history and always insisting that cannot be allowed to happen again".

The Congress Hall is slated to eventually become a home to artists' studios.

Nuremberg's Jewish community has embraced the plans.

"It's a good basis for showing people from around the world and young people... about the totalitarian ideology these buildings incarnate," its president, Mr Jo-Achim Hamburger, said.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE