Deutsches Stadion
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The ''Deutsches Stadion'' ("German Stadium") was a monumental
stadium A stadium ( : stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand o ...
designed by
Albert Speer Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he ...
for the
Nazi party rally grounds The Nazi party rally grounds (german: Reichsparteitagsgelände, literally: ''Reich Party Congress Grounds'') covered about 11 square kilometres in the southeast of Nuremberg, Germany. Six Nuremberg Rally, Nazi party rallies were held there betwe ...
in
Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
, southern
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. Its construction began in September 1937, and was scheduled for completion in 1943. Like most other Nazi monumental structures, however, its construction was interrupted by the outbreak of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and was never finished.


Design

According to Speer himself, it was inspired not by the
Circus Maximus The Circus Maximus (Latin for "largest circus"; Italian: ''Circo Massimo'') is an ancient Roman chariot-racing stadium and mass entertainment venue in Rome, Italy. In the valley between the Aventine and Palatine hills, it was the first and lar ...
in
Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...
but by the
Panathenaic Stadium The Panathenaic Stadium ( el, Παναθηναϊκό Στάδιο, Panathinaïkó Stádio, ), as spelled by Philostratus. or ''Kallimarmaro'' (Καλλιμάρμαρο, , Literal translation, lit. "beautiful marble") is a multi-purpose stadium ...
of
Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
, which had impressed him greatly when he had visited it in 1935. Speer's stadium was a gigantic inflation of its Greco-Roman model, from which he borrowed the horseshoe configuration and the propylaeum, now transformed into a raised, pillared, temple-like structure (''Säulenvorhof'') attached to the open end of the stadium by an internally pillared courtyard. Since the stadium was not set like the Panathenaic Stadium structure at the bottom of a gully, but on a flat area of land (24 hectares), its five tiers of seats for 405,000 spectators had to be supported in the usual Roman manner by massive
barrel vault A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...
s. The external façade of pink granite blocks, which would have risen to a height of about 90 metres, consisted of a series of arches 65 metres high resting on a podium of dark red granite. The arcade and podium again suggests a Roman, not a Greek, circus or stadium, which did not traditionally rest on a substructure. In order to deliver such a vast number of spectators to their seats quickly, express lifts were to be installed to take spectators 100 at a time to seats on the top three tiers. The short transverse axis of the stadium culminated at each of its ends in a raised ''Ehrentribüne'' (
Tribune Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on the ...
of Honour) for the
Führer ( ; , spelled or ''Fuhrer'' when the Umlaut (diacritic), umlaut is not available) is a German word meaning "leader" or "guide". As a political title, it is strongly associated with the Nazi Germany, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Nazi Germany ...
, special guests and the press. Once more, Roman practice provided the architectural precedent. Speer apparently adopted a horseshoe shape for his building only after rejecting the oval shape of an
amphitheatre An amphitheatre (British English) or amphitheater (American English; both ) is an open-air venue used for entertainment, performances, and sports. The term derives from the ancient Greek ('), from ('), meaning "on both sides" or "around" and ...
. The latter plan, he claimed, would have intensified the heat and produced psychological discomfort, a comment he does not elucidate. When Speer remarked on the staggering cost of the building, Hitler, who laid its cornerstone on September 9, 1937, merely retorted that it would cost less than two battleships of the .


Projected use

Wolfgang Lotz Wolfgang Lotz (6 January 1921 – 13 May 1993), who later adopted the Hebrew name Ze'ev Gur-Arie, was an Israeli spy in Egypt during the 1960s providing intelligence and conducting operations against Egyptian military scientists. He was arrest ...
, writing about the stadium in 1937, commented that it would contain twice the number of spectators originally accommodated by the Circus Maximus. Inevitably for the period, he also emphasized the community feeling that such a building would engender between competitors and spectators:
As in ancient Greece, the elite and most experienced men chosen from the mass of the nation will compete against each other here. An entire nation in sympathetic wonder is seated on the tiers. Spectators and competitors merge in one unity.
The idea of staging Pan-Germanic athletic games here was perhaps suggested by the
Panathenaic Games The Panathenaic Games ( grc, Παναθήναια) were held every four years in Athens in Ancient Greece from 566 BC to the 3rd century AD. These Games incorporated religious festival, ceremony (including prize-giving), athletic competitions, a ...
, but Speer's stadium was, despite his own statement, stylistically more Roman than Greek in inspiration and with its huge barrel-vaulted substructures and
arcade Arcade most often refers to: * Arcade game, a coin-operated game machine ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade game's hardware ** Arcade system board, a standardized printed circuit board * Amusement arcade, a place with arcade games * ...
d exterior facade, more like the ''Circus Maximus'' than the Panathenaic Stadium.
Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
building exhibits a mixture of Greek and Roman elements, with Roman predominating. But Hitler did not want such a stadium to serve merely as a centre for German athletic sport. The restored Panathenaic Stadium had been used for the
1896 Summer Olympics The 1896 Summer Olympics ( el, Θερινοί Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες 1896, Therinoí Olympiakoí Agónes 1896), officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad ( el, Αγώνες της 1ης Ολυμπιάδας, Agónes tis 1is Ol ...
and the
1906 Intercalated Games The 1906 Intercalated Games or 1906 Olympic Games was an international multi-sport event that was celebrated in Athens, Greece. They were at the time considered to be Olympic Games and were referred to as the "Second International Olympic Games i ...
, held out of series. In 1936 these games were held in the ''
Reichssportfeld The Olympiastadion (; en, Olympic Stadium) is a sports stadium at Olympiapark Berlin in Berlin, Germany. It was originally built by Werner March for the 1936 Summer Olympics. During the Olympics, the record attendance was thought to be over 100 ...
'' in
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
, but Hitler insisted that after 1940, when the games were to have been held in
Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
, all future games were to be held in the ''Deutsches Stadion''. This stadium was in all its dimensions far larger than the 1936 Olympic Stadium in Berlin, which held only 115,000 spectators. Hitler anticipated that after winning the war, the world would have no choice but to send its athletes to Germany every time the Olympic Games were held at which, no doubt, victors would have received their prizes from the Führer, surrounded by the party faithful on the pulvinar on the short axis of the cavernous stadium .


The site after the war

After the war, the horseshoe shaped foundation of the building quickly filled with groundwater and was named "Silbersee" (Silver lake) by locals. The site became a dump for debris of Nuremberg's destroyed buildings and any kind of other waste, including what today is considered
hazardous waste Hazardous waste is waste that has substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment. Hazardous waste is a type of dangerous goods. They usually have one or more of the following hazardous traits: ignitability, reactivity, co ...
. The southern part of the horseshoe was filled up to ground level with waste in 1951. After that a mountain of waste continued to grow until the dump was closed in 1962. The landfill, which contains 5,53 million m³ waste, was covered with a layer of earth and trees were planted on it. The new mountain was named "Silberbuck". Since the dump has no containment and is permeated by ground water, dangerous material is constantly leaking into the Silbersee. The lower layers of water in the lake contain extremely high amounts of
hydrogen sulfide Hydrogen sulfide is a chemical compound with the formula . It is a colorless chalcogen-hydride gas, and is poisonous, corrosive, and flammable, with trace amounts in ambient atmosphere having a characteristic foul odor of rotten eggs. The unde ...
, which makes humans unconscious when breathed in. Approximately 50 people have already died in the lake.


Prototype construction work

The small village of Achtel in Hirschbach, Bavaria is th
site
of a sports grandstand constructed as a prototype for part of the ''Deutsches Stadion''. It was constructed mostly of wood, which was removed after the war and was used to reconstruct local buildings. Today only the concrete supports remain.


See also

*
Fascist architecture Fascist architecture encompasses various stylistic trends in architecture developed by architects of fascist states, primarily in the early 20th century. Fascist architectural styles gained popularity in the late 1920s with the rise of modernism a ...
*
List of Nazi construction The following is a list of construction completed or planned by the Nazi Party from the party's formation in 1920 until the end of World War II in 1945. Buildings and architecture {, class="wikitable sortable" , - ! Construction ! Image ! Locat ...
*
Nazi architecture Nazi architecture is the architecture promoted by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime from 1933 until its fall in 1945, connected with urban planning in Nazi Germany. It is characterized by three forms: a stripped neoclassicism, typified by the ...
*
Welthauptstadt Germania Welthauptstadt Germania () or World Capital Germania was the projected renewal of the German capital Berlin during the Nazi period, part of Adolf Hitler's vision for the future of Nazi Germany after the planned victory in World War II. It wa ...


References


Further reading

* Krier, Leon. ''Albert Speer Architecture''. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1989. . * Lotz, Wolfgang. ''Das Deutsche Stadion für Nürnberg "Moderne Bauformen"''. Berlin: 1937. * Scobie, Alexander. ''Hitler's State Architecture: The Impact of Classical Antiquity''. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990. . * Speer, Albert. ''Architektur: Arbeiten 1933-1942''. Berlin: Propyläen, 1995. . * Speer, Albert. ''Erinnerungen.'' Berlin: Ullstein-Verlag, 1996. . * Thies, Jochen. ''Architekt der Weltherrschaft: Die "Endziele" Hitlers''. Berlin: Droste, 1976. . * Verspohl, Franz-Joachim. ''Stadionbauten von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart: Regie und Selbsterfahrung der Massen''. 1st edition. Berlin: Anabas-Verlag, 1976. . {{Coord, 49, 25, 19.91, N, 11, 6, 50.91, E, display=title, region:DE_source:dewiki Nazi architecture Buildings and structures in Nuremberg Unbuilt buildings and structures in Germany
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
Unbuilt stadiums Albert Speer