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The architect of the Reich: On the architectural horror of Albert Speer
- rurban 11y agoExcellent characterization and summary. In German those types are called "Angeber" but you really have to read his books to get that. Essentially he said he is soo clever, he memorized most of the books in his prison library
- returnbuyer 11y agoWhy post this here? Sure people will upvote it automatically as it's been bred into our minds for generations as the most horrific event to ever happen (it wasn't). But this has absolutely nothing to do with the tech industry or even stuff hackers would find interesting. Are you all just going to knee jerk about how evil Nazis were? Same type of evil is happening right now in Israel [1] so why not make a real difference? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Iyj6UPCChA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Iyj6UPCChA
- Jgrubb 11y agoI'm a hacker and I find this interesting.
- Pitarou 11y agoLots of stuff that isn't related to the tech industry gets upvoted. I read it and thought it was a good read, so I upvoted it. That's all. No knee-jerking involved.
- elcapitan 11y agoBut really, where is the connection between a megalomaniac architect of future dreams and the tech industry?
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- seren 11y agoWhat I found interesting and maybe relatable was the angle of a "technician" putting his skills at the service of particular ideology, and then being judged for it. Nothing very original, but it made me reflect that is the next few centuries, another Nuremberg trial will happen with SW architect(s) this time.
- Pitarou 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
- sanoli 11y agoHa, I was going to reply to you as if you were seriously criticizing this being on HN, then it kicked in :-)
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- notahacker 11y agoSurprised the article doesn't mention the theory that Speer is most famously associated with: the idea that future generations judge civilisations primarily by the aesthetic quality of the ruins they left behind. Largely true (and not an original idea, despite Speer's claims), but a surprisingly chilling observation in context.
- pjc50 11y agoSee, for example, the Victorian fashion for building Gothic or neoclassical "follies", sometimes as ruins to achieve that aesthetic. A lot of Fascism was based on emulating the Romans, whose ruins are famous. It's right there in the name, taken from fasces.
- patrickburke 11y agoRuinenwerttheorie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruin_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruin_value
- cm2187 11y agoThe other thing is that the massive constructions of nazi Germany aren't dissimilar to the architecture of many public buildings in Washington or elsewhere. Reich chancellery building: http://terrainandtoysoldiers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/54mm-reich-chancellery-backdrop.html http://terrainandtoysoldiers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/54mm-rei... National Postal Museum (DC) https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=980&bih=643&q=national+postal+museum+washington&oq=national+postal+museum+washington&gs_l=img.3..0i24.3694.3694.0.4669.1.1.0.0.0.0.60.60.1.1.0....0...1ac.2.64.img..0.1.59.fo_zD_ohfMw https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=9... At the end of day the codes to impress people with a building are always similar.
- elcapitan 11y agoActually the Nazi architecture is close to fascist architecture in Italy, not so much to classicist architecture elsewhere. You can see that in the details, for example that DC building you linked has classical doorways and round columns with greek capitals, while Speer-style Nazi buildings have a brutalistic tone with square columns and avoidance of details that point to a humanistic heritage (see also the stylized eagle). In some way, this is the fascist form of architectural modernism. edit: yes, both are made to impress, but that's just as true for big glass&steel-buildings that share not much with those two examples other than the massive, larger than human size of everything.
- eternalban 11y agoNo comparison. Italian Fascist architecture was graceful [1][2][3]. [1]:https://static-secure.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/2/15/1424025276648/97877c1e-3f90-4a13-8bee-2e88885fdbdf-2060x1236.jpeg https://static-secure.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pic... [2]: http://41.media.tumblr.com/9b6cfa0be5785abbfb2c8e107cbb1565/tumblr_mki3wfNRfp1rfybgvo1_1280.jpg http://41.media.tumblr.com/9b6cfa0be5785abbfb2c8e107cbb1565/... [3]: http://s4.thingpic.com/images/ho/S4VCpGhFJtXuBJVU5aY7ZKhR.jpeg http://s4.thingpic.com/images/ho/S4VCpGhFJtXuBJVU5aY7ZKhR.jp...
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
- markdog12 11y agoRead his "Inside the Third Reich" many years ago. Had no idea until I read this article that he has been discredited. For anyone who hasn't read it, it can pretty much be summed up as "All I ever wanted to do was architecture, and I just got caught up in a series of events. I was surrounded by brutes and buffoons, and I just did my best with the situation I found myself in." Also some very valuable insights into Hitler's persona, but can you believe anything in that book now?
- samdoidge 11y agoIt's a remark by the author and is simply an opinion - I wouldn't say this book has been 'discredited'.
- markdog12 11y agoYeah, I was wondering myself how biased the article was.
- Naritai 11y ago'Discredited' is a strong term, but the problem is that many people, even senior Nazis, made similar arguments. Read, for example, Eichmann in Jerusalem to see an account from a senior member of the SS making a similar explanation when justifying why he managed transportation of Jews to concentration camps. The world's reaction has been to universally reject such arguments, which may be unfair in any particular case but is necessary for a proper accounting of war crimes.
- rurban 11y agoWhen I read that book I had to take some of his statements with a grain of salt. Even then, when the Posen proof was not yet known. As explained in this article he lied a lot. He had to, esp. the Posen incident where he got away with it even if it was totally unbelievable. We only got the proof recently. And his involvement in Todt's slave labour "Organization". He was his boss after all and got all the credit for its success. Even rising up to be the designated follower of Hitler. Todt got the death sentence for it and he successfully talked his way out of it. But then his made up prison stories to impress his fellow germans just broke it. He was a lousy architect after all, as Poelzig correctly found out. What was interesting for the americans then, how he managed to be so incredibly successful as manager of war-time economy. It was unbelievable and unexpected. McNamara would have been very proud of Speer's accomplishments. He was a kind of genius figure for the americans.
- DenisM 11y agoI have a distinct impression that half the modern architects are in on the conspiracy to demean and hinder the people who use their creation. Looking at most modern buildings they are either imposing or convoluted.
- jahnu 11y agoAre they really or do we only notice the ones that stick out?
- guard-of-terra 11y agoWe note ones thas are awful, while most of modern buildings are "just" bad. Of course this is subjective, but when you walk a street built in early XX century, every building blends in while being nice in detail. When you meet a building built in later age, it either sticks out, too geometrical, too glossy, strangely shaped for no reason, looks cheap, lacks details... It is never good enough.
- Gibbon1 11y agoI have some thoughts on this, one that notes that the tax laws highly discourage ordinary businesses from owning buildings. To the need to build a ton of cheap stuff during the twentieth century population explosion. The introduction of new materials. The belief that progress was so fast that these new buildings would soon be surpassed and torn down. And finally general post WWI and especially WWII nihilism. Plus the extremely milign offects of B.F. Skinner[1]. Behaviorism teaches us that humans will successful 'adapt' to whatever horrible yet convenient for those running things environment we subject them to.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago"introduction of new materials" This is where fun starts. "New" materials look like crap and become worn down in a few decades. Meanwhile "old" materials look expensive and pass century test. One can argue "new" materials are cheaper, but buildings still cost awful amounts of money so it likely didn't help.
- mavhc 11y agoAn article about architecture with no pictures, seems a waste. Apart from that it was very interesting.
- eternalban 11y agoArchitecture and authoritarianism go together like milk and cookies. There is an inherent desire to order and control in the architectural mindset.
- bigchewy 11y agoif you like this area, I highly recommend reading Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction - The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. It takes an economics lens on Nazi Germany both pre and during the war. A lot of the book centers on Speer and other 2nd/3rd tier people in the Nazi regime.
- marcusgarvey 11y agoThe Venice Architecture Biennale will also have a focus on Nazi Architecture. >The Evidence Room was the combined effort of a team of students and faculty of the University of Waterloo School of Architecture headed by Anne Bordeleau, Sascha Hastings, Donald McKay, and van Pelt. >It features life-sized replicas and casts of key pieces described in his testimony about Auschwitz, including a gas column, gas door, a section of wall with a gas-tight hatch and other items that definitively proved the site was a factory of death. There's a fascinating radio interview at this link: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/schedule-for-wednesday-march-2-2015-1.3472195/chilling-exhibit-the-evidence-room-recreates-a-nazi-gas-chamber-1.3472244 http://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/schedule-for-wednesday-march-2-201...
- Animats 11y agoSpeer's monumental plans aren't that horrific as such things go. Other big, intimidating monumental complexes have been built. - Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza in Albany, NY. This is the state capitol.[1] A big plaza surrounded by 1960s concrete brutalism at its finest. - The Raj Path at Delhi.[2] Built by the British to impress the heathens. - Place du la Defense, Paris.[3] Contains a building built to look like a wind tunnel intake. Built partly as a rebellion against the city of Paris building height limit. It's just outside the city limits. There are other big monumental complexes - Washington, DC, Red Square, Tienanmen Square, and Brasilia, for example. But the three above stand out for their deliberately intimidating architecture. As for the square-column thing, that was a 1930s-1950s fad. The US State Department Building has an imposing square-column facade. It's not as imposing as it used to be, because there are guard houses and terrorism barriers blocking the view. The Pentagon also has square columns, on all five faces. The author of the parent article is a Jew, so he has to be negative on the work of a Nazi. [1] https://goo.gl/maps/DF8n1Ew3ua52 https://goo.gl/maps/DF8n1Ew3ua52 [2] https://goo.gl/maps/AY43jg4WmN92 https://goo.gl/maps/AY43jg4WmN92 [3] https://goo.gl/maps/WCSdUqnaEek https://goo.gl/maps/WCSdUqnaEek [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S_Truman_Building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S_Truman_Building