Reflections on a Polished Floor

This article appeared in Harvard Design Magazine, Fall 1998, Number 6. To order this issue or a subscription, visit the HDM homepage at <http://mitpress.mit.edu/HDM>. © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and The MIT Press. Not to be reproduced without the permission of the publisher Reflections on a Polished Floor Ben Willikens and the Reichskanzlei of Albert Speer, by Iain Boyd Whyte IN CHOOSING IMAGES of National So- family in 1796 and then to the newly cialist buildings as the subject for a re- formed German state in 1875, at cent group of paintings, the German which time it became the official resi- artist Ben Willikens asks questions dence of the first chancellor of the new about the nature of Nazi architecture German Reich, Otto von Bismarck. and about the role of the artist in ex- Among its obvious attractions were its plicating the trauma of the Nazi tyran- location, adjacent to the Foreign Min- ny. One of these paintings, Berlin, istry, and its ample garden, which Reichskanzlei (Ehrensaal), depicts the stretched westward to the edge of the so-called Mosaic Hall of the new Re- Tiergarten. Remodeled and modern- ichskanzlei (Chancellery of the Reich); ized in 1878, the Reichskanzlei en- and it provides the inspiration for this joyed a life of shabby gentility well essay. Designed by Albert Speer and into the Weimar Republic, before the built for Adolf Hitler in record time demands of government made an ex- between January 1938 and January tension desirable. 1939, the Reichskanzlei was the repre- A competition was announced in sentational epicenter of Hitler’s power, March 1927 and the winner was the and, as one of the very few Speer de- Berlin architect Ernst Jobst Siedler. signs actually completed, it enjoyed a Laying the foundation stone for the particular preeminence among the ar- building, Chancellor Wilhelm Marx chitectural initiatives of the Nazi Par- stressed that while the extension ty. Lavish, full-color photographs of its should be worthy of its purpose, exces- marbled halls were widely published in sive grandeur or luxury would be inap- the architectural and popular press of propriate to the spirit of the times. “It the day, and Willikens’s work derives should,” he said, “announce that with from these propagandistic images. unpretentious simplicity, but in fear- The core of the Reichskanzlei was a less confidence, we are engaged in the Baroque Stadtpalais, built by Graf von reconstruction of our great German der Schulenberg in the late 1730s. It house, the German state.”1 Unpreten- was subsequently sold to the Radiziwill tious simplicity in public building, HARVARD DESIGN MAGAZINE 1 Representations/Misrepresentations Reflections on a Polished Floor however, was not a quality esteemed stances could either the purely admin- with an appropriately enlarged Reich- by Adolf Hitler, who had cut his criti- istrative tasks or the representative skanzlei as the focus of the new impe- cal teeth on the vast public buildings functions that were necessarily con- rial power. The plans to enlarge the of the Ringstraße in Vienna. On com- nected with this be satisfied any longer building, however, could not be made ing to power in 1933, he lost no time by the old Reichskanzlei. I therefore public before Hitler’s ambitions to- in damning the new extension to the commissioned Generalbauinspektor wards Austria had been secured. And Reichskanzlei: “Siedler has spoiled the Professor Speer with the rebuilding of this could only occur when all the con- whole of Wilhelmsplatz. Why, that the Reichskanzlei in Voßstraße on 11 ditions were right and all opposition to building looks like the headquarters of January 1938, setting as the comple- the plan suppressed. This situation a soap company, not the center of the tion date 10 January 1939.”4 was reached in January 1938, with the Reich.”2 No less damning was Hitler’s This account of the commission, dismissal on 26 January of General critique of the interiors; he described which finds support in Speer’s mem- Werner von Fritsch from his position his office in the Siedler extension as oirs, is entirely fictitious.5 For detailed as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, “something like the tasteless room of a planning had begun in 1935, the year followed by the dismissal a day later of general agent in a medium-sized ciga- in which Hitler himself made a sketch Field Marshall Werner von Blomberg, rette and tobacco company.” 3 In setting out the axial ordering of the in- the Minister of War.7 They were soon search of grander coulisses before terior and the broadening of the street joined in retirement by sixteen other which to enact the role of chancellor, to form a court of honor on the Voßs- high-ranking generals and by Baron Hitler turned to the architect Albert traße. Indeed, the state began to buy von Neurath, the Foreign Minister. Speer. houses on Voßstraße in 1935, and With command of the armed forces Speer was brought in at first to their demolition was under way by and the administration of foreign af- work with Paul Ludwig Troost, who 1936. The submission by Speer in fairs firmly in his grasp, Hitler initiat- blisher had been summoned by Hitler in the June 1936 of a cost estimate for the ed the annexation of Austria, which autumn of 1933 to redesign the interi- design of the new extension along was accomplished on 12 March 1938. ors of the existing Reichskanzlei. Later Voßstraße shows how advanced the Less than a year later and exactly on that year, however, Hitler gave Speer project was by that time. Why, then, schedule, Albert Speer’s extension to his first independent commissions for the great disparity between the official the Reichskanzlei was complete. As the Reichskanzlei: the conversion of a history and the actual, documentable the plan reveals, the largest part of the hall overlooking the garden into a new history of the Reichskanzlei’s gestation newly enclosed volume was empty office for Hitler, who wanted to escape and planning? space: reception areas, strangely empty the mob that thronged the street in The answer is simple: in Hitler’s halls with no function whatsoever, and the early days of National Socialism, scheme of things, the grand new ex- long, long corridors. Offices were hoping to view the Führer. In com- tension to the Reichskanzlei symbol- squeezed in along the Voßstraße front, pensation, however, Speer was also ized the Greater German Reich, and again with excessive corridor space asked to insert the “historic bal- could only be revealed as such after and poor vertical circulation. Even cony”—as it is called in his memoirs— Austria had been absorbed into the along the central axis, the planning is working from Hitler’s own sketch. Greater Germany. Back in the 1860s, entirely one-directional. Having This was a brilliant device; the small- Bismarck had employed an anti-Aus- walked the ceremonial route from est of interventions transformed the trian policy to identify the Prussian Wilhelmsplatz to Hitler’s inner sanc- Wilhelmsplatz into a theater, in which cause with that of German unity. This tum, the visitor has no obvious way to the masses could pay homage to the unity, however, was never intended to return, and simply retracing one’s leader. embrace Austria.6 After the Prussian steps is a slightly risible option. In this The “historic balcony” was used to defeats of Austria in 1866 and France design, as in Speer’s unbuilt set pieces promote Hitler’s self-presentation to in 1870, a unified German Reich un- for the National Socialists, the haptic an adoring German public. The major der the leadership of Prussia was es- and tectonic qualities of architecture redevelopment of the Reichskanzlei tablished in 1871, comprising eighteen were made entirely subservient to the was intended to promote the selling of German states but not including Aus- visual and thus the reproducible. The the new Nazi Reich to the wider tria. This was named at the time the process of transmission is more impor- world. Indeed, in his account of the “Kleindeutsches Reich”—the Small tant than the building itself. Through rebuilding published in Die Kunst im German Reich. As a pan-Germanist the media of photography and film, dritten Reich, Hitler linked the two is- born in Austria, Hitler’s first expan- the political event is bound neither to sues: “In December 1937 and January sionist ambitions involved the annexa- its space nor time: it can be relayed 1938 I decided to resolve the Austrian tion of Austria and the belated anywhere through the visual media question, thus establishing a Greater creation of a “Großdeutsches Re- and reviewed repeatedly. This, of German Reich. Under no circum- ich”—the Greater German Reich— course, is the theme of Walter Ben- of Harvard the President and Fellows © 2001 by College and The MIT Press. Not to be reproduced without the permission of the pu 2 HARVARD DESIGN MAGAZINE FALL 1998 Representations/Misrepresentations Reflections on a Polished Floor jamin’s celebrated essay on the work of achievement as the product of wealth and sustain the whole destiny of Germany, art in the age of mechanical reproduc- tranquillity. As a consequence of the to that extent can the German nation tion, written in 1936.8 first power struggle that took place with- face the future with calm confi- Speer’s Reichskanzlei received in its walls, which served the completion dence.”12 A year later the Berliner Il- much publicity. Besides the pre- of the Großdeutsches Reich, this building lustrierte Zeitung adopted Breker’s dictably lavish coverage in the popular has already entered into the annals of the giant figures to illustrate the point, in press, dedicated books and journal ar- Reich.10 a drawing entitled “Party and Army ticles appeared, aimed at every level of Defend the Peace of the Reich.” Peace consumption.

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