Catalogue

Planning and building under the National Socialists pervaded all areas of life between 1933 and 1945, both in the German Reich and in the European territories it occupied. Inseparably linked to the regime’s totalitarian practices, architectural projects were ideologically significant and played an important role in Nazi propaganda, serving as a means not only to co-opt and school the “national comrades” (Volksgenossen), but also to ostracise those who fell foul of its ethno-racist, völkisch criteria and to eradicate “alien elements of the community” (Gemeinschaftsfremde).

The members of the Independent Commission of Historians – Wolfgang Benz, Tilman Harlander, Elke Pahl-Weber, Wolfram Pyta, Adelheid von Saldern, Wolfgang Schäche and Regina Stephan – were tasked by what is now the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building with the research project “Planning and Building under the National Socialists: Prerequisities, Institutions, Impacts”. The research findings are presented in their essays, each of which draws on contemporary photographs and plans with accompanying commentary to amplify seven areas of focus: Housing and Settlements; Party and State Architecture; Camps in the National Socialist Era; Infrastructure and Spatial Planning; Internationality; Continuities in Urban Planning and Architecture in the East and West after 1945; The Architectural Legacies of National Socialism. Included in the book are biographies of fifty architects, landscape designers, construction specialists and civil servants. The authors point out the challenges still involved in dealing consciously and responsibly with National Socialism’s built legacy.

Furthermore: 
Planen und Bauen im Nationalsozialismus. Voraussetzungen, Institutionen, Wirkungen (Planning and Building under the National Socialists: Prerequisities, Institutions, Impacts)

The scholarly findings of the 15 research commissions will be published in four volumes by Hirmer Verlag, Munich.

ISBN: 978-3-7774-4114-6