Posted on 08/14/2007 2:33:31 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
THE son of Hitler’s favourite architect, who was ordered by the Führer to turn Berlin into the greatest city in the world, has designed a key route to the Beijing Olympic site.
Albert Speer Jr, who was born a year after Hitler came to power, was recruited by the Chinese authorities as lead designer on the huge architectural project to redesign the sprawling city ahead of the 2008 Games.
Their choice has stirred ghosts from the past. More than 70 years ago Speer’s father, dubbed the “Devil’s Architect”, was charged with a similar task of rebuilding the Reich capital and turning it into an unrivalled global metropolis.
It was to be called Welthaupt-stadt (World Capital) Germania and designed to be bigger, grander and bolder than any other city to fit Hitler’s obsession with the idea of creating a modern-day Rome as the capital of his empire.
Beijing’s radical reconstruction has been described as totalitarian architecture, similar to Speer the elder’s grandiose but unfulfilled plans.
The most distinctive feature of Speer Jr’s blueprint has been a central five-mile strip, running from a new railway station in the south of the capital past Tianan-men Square and the Forbidden City to the new Olympic Green.
The strip is known as the “central north-south axis” and is still under construction by armies of migrant workers working around the clock.
Critics have suggested an uncanny parallel between Speer’s Beijing axis and the three-mile north-south axis, also flanked by train stations, that was planned by his father for Hitler’s new Berlin.
The Berlin boulevard was never completed because of the outbreak of the second world war, although many of Berlin’s tenements were bulldozed to make way for it.
Speer has been blamed for the forced evictions of thousands of Jewish tenants, although some architectural historians claim he was simply a bureaucrat following orders. Others allege he personally signed the eviction and demolition orders.
A recent study by the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions estimated that about 1.5m Beijing residents will be evicted or displaced by the project to rebuild the city.
The total cost of preparing the Olympics is expected to top £10 billion. The rapid construction of shopping arcades, a new central financial centre, expressways and an improved public transport system have evoked the remaking of Paris by Baron Haussmann between 1865 and 1887.
Speer Jr’s plans have not been without controversy. When he first submitted his proposal in 2003 it was greeted by hostility in the German press.
“His Beijing axis is reawakening old memories,” declared Die Welt. “Wasn’t there a legendary . . . north-south axis, planned by the elder Speer for Hitler’s new Berlin? Is his son to copy him or rather outdo him?”
Father and son also share an Olympic connection: Speer the elder designed the Zeppelintribune - the Nuremberg parade grounds - that Hitler planned to use for the site of the “Aryan Games” that were to replace the Olympics when he won the war.
Speer Jr, the eldest of six children, barely knew his father, who was in prison throughout his childhood.
By choosing a career in architecture he continued a family tradition that goes back at least three generations. Now 73, he is resigned to living in the shadow of his father, who died in 1981. In a recent interview, he recalled how he won an architectural prize at the start of his career.
“When they opened the envelope, everybody was baffled. ‘What?’ said one of the members of the jury. ‘Albert Speer? I thought he’s in jail!’ That’s how I began.”
Although he boasts that his plans are “bigger, much bigger” than his father’s design for Berlin, he rejects any parallels with his work but nonetheless admits, “Comparisons with my father are unfortunately unavoidable.” He added: “What I am trying to do in Beijing is to transport a 2,000-year-old city into the future. Berlin in the 1930s - that was just megalomania.”
His plans have created a stir of excitement within architectural circles in Beijing.
“I think it is fascinating that the son of a Nazi is rebuilding Beijing. Chinese people probably don’t know it, but Hitler was actually a great artist and his architectural vision for Berlin immense,” said Mi You, a 24-year-old architecture student.
The authorities have tried to play down the links with the Speer family’s dark past.
“We know about Mr Speer’s Nazi family but we don’t see its relevance to what is happening in Beijing,” said Shao Zi Qian, an Olympics committee spokesman.
“The axis is actually closely based on the ancient transport routes of the city and has been designed to incorporate the latest in modern design while providing space to preserve traditional parts of the city.”
Olympics Berlin 1936 all over again.
While I don’t think the son should pay for the sins of the father, this is somehow chilling. In my view there is little difference between communist totalitarians and fascist totalitarians. What’s that they say about history repeating itself?
Hillary Clinton’s wondering if he doesn’t interiors—say, oval offices.
That is too odd to be by accident.
What a strange world we live in...
The world really seems to be calling up the demons of the past. Preparing for another major blood letting...
Albert Speer Jr. to Build "Detroit of the East" in China
With its plans to build a city neighborhood dedicated to the car industry Changchun, China is taking another ambitious step toward becoming a key player in the global automotive industry. And the son of Hitler's architect is lending his services. It's no secret that China is diving headfirst into the automobile industry. This week though, Chinese officials decided on an architectural firm to build their very own Motor City. And they have selected the son of Hitler's architect -- and his firm called Albert Speer & Partners -- to do it. Albert Speer Jr. confirmed this week that his firm....
yitbos
It’s hardly a coincidence.
70 years ago...
Albert Speer Sr. creates bombastic architecture for an totalitarian’s Olypmics.
70 years later...
Albert Speer Jr. creates bombastic architecture for totalitarian’s Olympics.
His grandfather, Albert Speer’s father, was a very successful architect. Speer, who came of age during the depression, not so much. Speer was an early Nazi and caught Hitler’s eye, as a fulfillment of his fustrated fantasies. The Nazi party gave Speer work and he gave them an air of respectability with his academic and professional credentials.
Grandpa Speer’s comment on seeing his son and Hitler’s plans for Berlin was, “You people must be crazy.” On being introduced to Hitler after a performance of the opera, the elder Speer became visibily ill, trembling and unable to speak.
A problem for China is that there are no grandfather Speers, who remember a civilized earlier history of their country.
To soften the image, the building that looks like the Reichstag is actually a 1,000-stall public bathroom.
In Germany, traditionally children follow the line of work of their parents.
Asia pinglist ping.
There are many stories about how although this fellow is Hitler’s architect’s son, and although he is also obliterating huge swaths of a country’s capital in order to build a facist vision for the ascendancy of a new superpower, he is in fact very different from his father and the relationship is a mere coincidence, and the relationship to Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Olympics is meaningless.
Isn’t the far more obvious explaination that he is very much like his father, and the Chinese want exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason, and that is why they hired him?
That may well be hereditary ~ Nancy Sinatra (for a while), Liza Minnelli (for a while), Denise Crosby (for a while), Lisa Marie Presley (for a while), and who can ever forget Hank Williams Jr. (for a long while).
We must add this one to our portfolio of astute aphorisms.
Great, this is pre-Godwinned.
Fascists always make for dramatic architecture. Not always pretty, but imposing.
Ping.
Thanks to Cindy for sending me a ping on this article.
If it survives the wars they start, that is. For me, the issue is a non-starter. There is no such thing as "evil" architecture. You could build an exact replica of Speer's Reichstag building and then run the most benevolent democracy in the world from it (assuming you could find enough workspace inside-that building was not efficient in any sense). Bricks and mortar do not have the power to warp souls.
Personally I like grand architecture, no matter the peccadilloes of the builder. Is anything more stimulating that Rome, or the Acropolis at Athens?
My Lord, the son of Hitler’s milkman is probably out there distributing beverages!!! We’re all gonna die!!!!
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