Posted on 03/16/2006 5:00:19 PM PST by Atlantic Bridge
A Protestant parish in Berlin has grabbed an ethical dilemma by the horns with an appeal for funds to save Germany's last Nazi era church. The building's interior is full of Third Reich symbols. The aim is to turn it into a place of remembrance.
The Third Reich collapsed 61 years ago but you wouldn't know it if you walk into the Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin. The stark entrance hall is lit by a black chandelier in the shape of an iron cross. The pulpit has a wooden carving of a muscular Jesus leading a helmeted Wehrmacht soldier and surrounded by an Aryan family. The baptismal font is guarded by a wooden statue of a stormtrooper from Adolf Hitler's paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA) unit clutching his cap.
(Excerpt) Read more at service.spiegel.de ...
I got some trouble at that time since I supported the gathering of those buildings into a register of anicent monuments that are protected from change and destruction by law (it was not our decision but we could give a statement). Like in every univercity we had a strong leftist movement that claimed that such buildings have to be destroyed because they were buildt by the "right-wing" nazis. Furthermore they told me that I would be a nazi because I want to preserve such fascistic monuments. It was quite insulting for me since I am for sure no nazi. My interest was soley in the historic coherence. Since I am no sissy I fought back and most of my proposals were accepted silently after some time.
The handling with such legacy is still very problematic in Germany. Most of the former buildings around the Obersalzberg (exept the Kehlsteinhaus), that were used by the US forces until the mid 90ties were demolished from the state of Bavaria because the politicians wanted to prevent a new "temple" for old and young nazis. I think that is wrong since such relicts should be explained in a appropriate way but not be destroyed. Instead of this monumental artificial monuments (some of them quite simular to the BS buildt by nazis) are erected in Berlin while i.e. the decay of former concentration camps due to a lack of founding seems to proceed fast. To me this development is really sick.
BTW - this church -the article is about- is a mixture between a Bauhaus-style exterior (this has absolutely nothing to do with nazism - Bauhaus is rather the opposite of it) and a "BluBo" interior, since building of the church was started before 1933 and completed in 1935. A mixture between good and bad. Something that reflects Germany perfectly. It shows also the prostration of the protestant church in conjunction with nazism. Espechially the protestant church (with a few heroic exclusions like Dietrich Bonhoeffer) was a quagmire of weird nazism. A somehow (at the same time) sick and funny example: They wanted to prove that Jesus was a aryan. Therefore it would be worth to preserve this church. Just to show how close good and bad things are sometimes.
I'm kind of surprised they wouldn't have torn it down or at least gutted it a long time ago since supporting Nazi ideals is very illegal in Germany.
more about the church in a related article here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1594353/posts
Fascinating.
I agree that it should be preserved. It should be preserved as a museum, though; it would be hard to imagine worshipping in such a place, unless the nazi symbols were removed.
Since you are a German architect, I'm curious to know if they will go through with rebuilding the exterior of the Stadtschloss of the former Prussian kings in Berlin. Last I heard they were approved to do it but didn't have the funds. Is that still the case?
Since the nazis erected many buildings there are quite a lot obtained. Sometimes some insignia was taken out. Espechially many barracks that were used later by the US-forces are a leftover from the nazis. Most of them had a "Pleitegeier" ("Hitler's vulture" - the eagle-emblem of the nazis) on their façades. Since your compatriots seem to have a obsession to eagles they often simply chiseled the swastikas away. ;-)
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Thanks for the post. Our Public Broadcasting System recently aired a
documentary on Bonhoeffer. There was one a film clip of a Christmas
celebration in Nazi times: the Christmas tree was topped with a lighted
swastika, instead of a cross or angel figure.
It was simply surreal, at least to American sensibilities.
As for maintaining the building of the Nazi era, I'm for it simply
so that history (good and bad) won't be "erased".
E.g., the uncovering of a old "blacks only" sign in a government building
in Dallas, Texas led to a public outcry to destroy the sign. I think it
should stay so folks don't forget the days when we had legalized apartheid.
What gets me is our liberal groups want us to have amnesia instead.
I was in Tampico, Mexico and they had a very very old church there where the entire floor pattern was all swastikas. Of course, I was a bit startled (but then remembered the swastica predated Naziism by quite some time).
I should have taken pictures.
Stadtschloss??! Berlin??! BuHuHaHa!
This will never be done. Berlin is completely bankrupt and nobody else in Germany would spent a single cent on it. We already wasted too much money in our capital. Besides - in my opinion it doesn't make any sense to rebuild someting nobody really knows how it looked like. If they are really going to build this they also could build Cinderellas castle on this place. I predict that this area will be a parking place for the next twenty years until somebody is going to buy it for building a nice Wal-Mart on it.
univercity
Rather a discotheque. :-)
A Walmart would be not too different from the Communist palace there previously, but there should be something noble on the site to match the neoclassicism of the Museums, in my humble opinion. I love the rebuild of the Frauenkirche in Dresden and look forward to the restoration of the Neumarkt area around it, although I think all of that is more thanks to donations and private funding than public funding. Couldn't they just have a private developer build something on the Stadtschloss site and require a halfway decent facade with a gesture or two to the Stadtschloss tradition?
Many parallels to the political situation of today, with the Protestants leading the charge into pan-hedonism and incredible speculation if Christ was married, or gay....
Of course nobody is going build a Walmart there (just my form of sarcasm), but I also doubt that rebuilding the Stadtschloss of the Hohenzollern, the family of Wilhelm II, is a good idea. In difference to the Frauenkirche in Dresden, which reflects the will of the German people to rebuild a shattered temple for our Lord, the Stadtschloss does not bear this deep symbolism. We all know that the last emperor was a idiot and in parts responsible of the first world war with his childish war games. The former "Palast der Republik" of the Commis had at least the advantage that it represented real history. Anyway it was ugly.
Therefore I could imagine a modern building in high quality there. To "quote" (I do not know how to express this in English) just old architecture is eclecticism and thus boring. Sometimes we have to invent ourselves new.
Bonehoeffer was a outstanding man in every regard. Anyway his church (and also large parts of the catholic church) failed completely during the 3rd Reich. It is pathetic but true, that some of the worst racists could be found under the robes of protestant priests. This should teach us that evil people can be found even there where we would never imagine it.
ping to read later
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