Munich's Nazi Past Gets a Future Home
Munich is where Hitler and the Nazis got their start. But the city has long neglected its past as the "Capital of the Movement." Now, Hitler's former home has decided on a design for a new documentation center to be built on the site of former Nazi party headquarters.
As anyone who has visited Berlin will tell you, it's hard to walk more than a few blocks through the city center without happening across yet another monument to the terrible events of World War II and the Holocaust. The Jewish memorial, the Topography of Terror, the sidewalk stones marking homes where Jewish citizens of Berlin once lived: The list goes on and on.
Head south to Munich, though, and the lack of monuments, memorials and museums focused on the Third Reich is difficult to ignore. Adolf Hitler and his Nazis may have gotten their start in the Bavarian capital, but memory has never been post-war Munich's strong suit.
That, however, seems to be changing these days. On Sunday, Munich Mayor Christian Ude announced that a team of architects from Berlin had won a competition to design a new Third Reich documentation center just northwest of the city center. The cube-like structure will be built on the site of the infamous "Brown House," the building which housed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) leadership in the 1930s and which was destroyed during the war.
Read entire article at Spiegel Online
As anyone who has visited Berlin will tell you, it's hard to walk more than a few blocks through the city center without happening across yet another monument to the terrible events of World War II and the Holocaust. The Jewish memorial, the Topography of Terror, the sidewalk stones marking homes where Jewish citizens of Berlin once lived: The list goes on and on.
Head south to Munich, though, and the lack of monuments, memorials and museums focused on the Third Reich is difficult to ignore. Adolf Hitler and his Nazis may have gotten their start in the Bavarian capital, but memory has never been post-war Munich's strong suit.
That, however, seems to be changing these days. On Sunday, Munich Mayor Christian Ude announced that a team of architects from Berlin had won a competition to design a new Third Reich documentation center just northwest of the city center. The cube-like structure will be built on the site of the infamous "Brown House," the building which housed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) leadership in the 1930s and which was destroyed during the war.