GERMANIA-SPEER: architecture

Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts

Sunday, September 16, 2018

Berlin (MachineGames) 1960

Berlin (Germania) is the capital of the German Third Reich.

In Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny, B.J. infiltrates locations within Berlin.

In the alternate timeline of Wolfenstein: The New Order, it is a massive city dominated by the architecture of Albert Speer. Mostly constructed out of Über Concrete, it is also home to Eisenwald Prison, where members of the resistance are being held.

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Newly released drawings reveal Adolf's plans for Munich filled with gargantuan buildings

Although he will go down in history as one of the most evil and destructive dictators of all time, Hitler saw himself as a creative soul. He and his chief architect Albert Speer pored their plans for post-war Munich, complete with a giant obelisk topped by a swastika-clutching German eagle (pictured, on the left)

2,000 documents and sketches have been released by Munich archives
They show Hitler's plans for a post-war City Of The Movement
The centrepiece would have been a dome over underground train station
A swastika-holding German eagle would sit atop an obelisk 600-feet tall
The city would have rivalled Germania, Hitler's rebuilt capital in Berlin
The plans were shelved as the war turned against Germany in 1943

By Allan Hall In Berlin

Hitler imagined a giant new underground railway station, covered by a huge dome 900 feet across (pictured), which would be bigger than St Peter's Basilica in Rome. But the plan never made its way off the drawing board.

Among the archives released this week by the Munich authorities were detailed maps proposing the new station. Trains would bring commuters in from colonies to the south and east and would take settlers to the occupied territories in what is now Ukraine and Belarus.

Hitler's preferred style of architecture had similarities with what Mussolini was doing in Italy and was later copied by Stalin and Ceaucescu. This sketch shows the railway station dome dwarfing other buildings in the proposed City Of The Movement (Hauptstadt der Bewegung)

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Monday, March 28, 2016

German pavilion: A towering monolith built for the 1937 international expo in Paris.

Initially, Hitler wanted nothing to do with the 1937 world expo, but with Speer's reassurance that the German pavilion would leave spectators in awe, Hitler conceded.

The expo wasn't even meant to be a political standoff between the Germans and the Soviets, but on opening day those were the only two pavilions that were ready to go. The Soviet pavilion showed a statue called Comradeship, which featured two nude men joining hands.

Speer adorned his with Nazi symbols and perched an eagle on top, making the pavilion slightly taller than the Soviet one.

ALBERT SPEER

I was sometimes shocked but in the same way I was enthused about the possibilities he saw in the field of new buildings and it was a mania in any case and, as I see nowadays, it was an expression of the whole system of his schemes. But in the time when I was working for him I thought those buildings are just matching the political era which was coming with Hitler, with his successes in which were still to be due.

It shouldn't be forgotten that to be in the middle of a powerful group, a very powerful man admired by people, is so tempting that it's very difficult to get away. Thinking back to my time when I was at the height of planning those huge buildings, of course it was a chance to be one of the well known, even in the history of arts, and this was a chance no young man would willingly destroy. And afterwards when I was a minister, the sweetness of power also was tasting very good to me. Certainly all power corrupts and certainly in Hitler's circle the power was [of an] extraordinary scale, so the corruption was much larger than [it] is normally.

Finance Minister's Nightmare

"If the Finance Minister could realize what a source of income to the state my buildings will be in fifty years! Remember what happened with Ludwig II. Everyone said he was mad because of the cost of his palaces. But today? Most tourists go to upper Bavaria solely to see them. The entrance fees alone have long since paid for the building costs. Don't you agree? The whole world will come to Berlin to see our buildings. All we need to do is tell the Americans how much the Great Hall cost. Maybe we'll exaggerate a bit and say a billion and a half instead of a billion. Then they'll be wild to see the most expensive building in the world."

Adolf Hitler

(Quoted in Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich", Chapter 10.)