Nuremberg announced this month that the opera’s temporary residence from 2021 would get a £70 million permanent building in the Congress Hall courtyard as part of a major project, The Telegraph reported.
Nuremberg’s city authorities have been criticised for the decision, but the head of the city, Julia Lehner, argues that the reconstruction does not negate the historical function of the landmark.
It is a place of historical memory and cultural life.
Meanwhile, Tobias Reichard, director of the Ben-Haim Research Centre (BHRC) at the University of Music and Theatre Munich, stated:
“Some would say that this is not something that should be done there, and that high culture should not be at a place where the Nazis proclaimed their most barbaric speeches.”
Working at the BHRC, which is located in Führerbau (or the “Führer’s building”, used extensively by Hitler), Reichard knows first-hand what it is like to spend every day in walls that are “highly contaminated” by their history. He believes the split over the new plans prompts the question:
What shall we do with this Nazi past and how relevant is it still today?
The Nuremberg Rally Grounds was designed by Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect. Inspired by the Roman Colosseum, the structure was originally planned to rise to 230 feet, but was only built to half that height due to the outbreak of war. Since the mid-1940s, it has been virtually unused.
That raises another issue. While for decades Germany has reckoned with its old buildings – including turning Tacheles, a former prison, into a commercial art gallery; Prora, the Nazis’ would-be holiday camp into luxury apartments; and the Saalecker Workshops, home of Paul Schultze-Naumburg, one of the party’s leading architects, into a design school – opera also bears the scars of the country’s past.
