From Berlin to Germania
Adolf Hitler and his most important architect Albert Speer wanted to pompously convert the capital of the Reich to the world capital of Germania. Berlin, within a few years, was supposed to become a city with eight million residents. The “recovery of the German cities” should be reached through “ measures of defacement”, “gutting” and “area cleaning”, whereby existing structures, not correlating with the National Socialists Ideal, were in no way taken into consideration.
Even if the plans of the Reich capital mostly stayed in the cupboards, numerous buildings from the time of National Socialism stand in Berlin to this day; so for example, the Federal Ministry of Finance, as Reich’s Air Ministry, the first government building of National Socialists. The eight-courtyard facility by Ernst Sagebiel was, with its 2,000 rooms, Berlin’s largest office building during its time.
The largest interconnected building in the world was once the Tempelhof Airport. The airport, the monumentally built north/south axis project of Albert Speer, as eastern branch, was however only put into operation by the Allies in 1945. Architecturally seen, the airport belongs to the world’s most significant traffic structures.
The Olympic Stadium, which in 1936 replaced the German Stadium in the Westend, is used up to this day as the home ground of the League Team Hertha BSC. The arena for at that time 100,000 people (today: 75,000) goes with its exemplarily functionality back to the architect Werner March. For the 2006 Soccer WC, the stadium was extensively modernised and refurbished.