Nazi Architecture - Hitler The Architect

Hitler The Architect

Hitler was quite fond of the numerous theatres built by Hermann and Ferdinand Fellner, who built in the late baroque style. In addition, he appreciated the stricter architects of the 19th century such as Gottfried Semper, who built the Dresden Opera House, the Picture Gallery in Dresden, the court museums in Vienna and Theophil Freiherr von Hansen, who designed several buildings in Athens in 1840. He raved about the Palais Garnier, home of the Paris Opera, and the Law Courts of Brussels by the architect Poelaert.

Ultimately, he was always drawn back to inflated neo-baroque such as Kaiser Wilhelm II had fostered, through his court architect Ernst von Ihne. Fundamentally, it was decadent baroque comparable to the style that accompanied the decline of the Roman Empire. Thus, in the realm of architecture, as in painting and sculpture, Hitler really remained arrested in the world of his youth: the world of 1880 to 1910, which stamped its imprint on his artistic taste as on his political and ideological conceptions.

The Führer did not have one particular style; there was no official architecture of the Reich, only the neoclassical baseline that was enlarged, multiplied, altered and exaggerated. Hitler appreciated the permanent qualities of the classical style as it had a relationship between the Dorians and his own Germanic world.