Nuremberg Congress Hall and Documentation Center (#2740)

The Congress Hall of the National Socialist German Workers Party, designed to be used for party congresses during Nazi Rallies. The building was actually never finished due to construction stopping with the advent of WW II.

In one section of the building is the Nazi Documentation Center, a museum dedicated to focusing on how the Nazi party grew and how it came to dominate the German population. The name of the exhibit, “Fascination and Terror” quite well summarizes the populace's sympathies and fears that fostered Hitler's rise. Of the Nazi sites that I visited in my effort to try to understand how that could all happen (and how it might happen again) this, along with the “Topography of Terror” in Berlin, were the best organized, viewable, and informative.

My decision to visit Nuremberg was heavily influenced by Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of Will, that I had seen a number of years ago. One thing that dominated my perception of that film was the power of architecture in mass influence, thus a main focus of my visit to the site was architecture. I thus do not provide any photos specific to the exhibit in the Documentation Center.

Other than this establishing picture, which is out of order, the pictures for this section of my trip follow a walking tour of the rally grounds (Reichsparteitagsgelände) that begins at the documentation center (the right side of the Congress Hall), circles around the Hall, this lake, the Zeppelin Field, and ends up back near the starting point.