EXBERLINER Issue 163, September 2017

REGULARS
Save Berlin
By Dan Borden
Magic Nazism
Dan Borden on the occult
fantasies that inspired Third
Reich architecture.
That trio of office towers on Potsdamer
Platz symbolises post-Wall Berlin’s
rebirth. Most people assume the wasteland
from which they sprang resulted from
Allied bombing. In truth, that conveniently
clean slate was a gift from the Nazis. They’d
levelled the area in 1938 to construct architect
Albert Speer’s grandiose scheme for World
Capital Germania. The city’s busiest commercial
hub was demolished because Berlin really
needed to be turned into a giant-scaled Hollywood
vision of Imperial Rome. Why? Because
full-blooded Germans were the descendants
of the ancient Greeks and Romans – literally.
Those founders of Western civilisation, the
Nazis insisted, were blond-haired, blue-eyed
Aryans. As was Jesus Christ.
Looking back, it’s stunning how much of
Hitler’s power was founded on pseudo-religious
myths and fantasy. Whether the Nazi
party’s leaders were committed believers or
cynical propagandists, those alternate truths
formed the basis for their very real policies
of mass murder and war. Those myths also
shaped the Berlin that surrounds us today.
Reichstag clairvoyance
Reunited Berlin’s other key landmark is the
Reichstag, home to Germany’s parliament.
The Hochbunker on Pallasstraße.
Its 21st-century dome capped decades of
misery for the 1894 monument, beginning
with the arson attack on February 27, 1933
that newly-elected Chancellor Adolf Hitler
famously used as an excuse to crush political
opposition and seize absolute power. An
eerie footnote to the event shines a light on
Hitler’s relationship with the occult. Days
before the Reichstag fire, famed psychic
Erik Jan Hanussen predicted a “great blaze”
in the area. An Austrian Jew who found
success as an entertainer in Weimar Berlin,
Hanussen was revered for his supernatural
talents. He published a scientific journal on
the occult and hosted séances for VIPs at
his Charlottenburg villa. When Hitler, an
ardent fan, asked for Hanussen’s guidance
before the 1932 election, the performer
trained the politician to punctuate his
speeches with arm gestures and dramatic
pauses. Was Hanussen’s Reichstag prediction
a result of clairvoyance or insider
knowledge? We’ll never know – he was
mysteriously gunned down days later.
More importantly: was Hitler, like so many
Berliners, convinced of Hanussen’s powers?
Or did the psychic’s success strategically
spotlight the German public’s hunger to
embrace the supernatural?
Gabled incubators
The Nazi gospel preached that pure-blooded
Germans were descendants of the Aryans, a
race of semi-divine, prehistoric giants. Architecturally,
this translated into Germania’s
monumental Classicism in cities and a purified
version of medieval Germany exemplified
by the völkisch (“folksy”) country villages. A
German Palomeque
Himmler claimed
that babies conceived on
the graves of Aryan martyrs
would absorb and
resurrect their souls.
subdivision for SS officers in Berlin’s Krumme
Lanke district features gabled roofs and decorative
window shutters, a rebuke to “decadent”
Bauhaus-style modernists. As these elite
Nazis returned from work, the main street,
(still) named Im Kinderland – “In Children’s
Land” – drove home their sacred duty to produce
genetically pure offspring.
Chilly breeding grounds
To convince young Germans to make the
ultimate sacrifice, SS boss Heinrich Himmler
invented a neo-pagan sun god cult promising
cycles of death and rebirth. He claimed
that babies conceived on the graves of Aryan
martyrs would absorb and resurrect their
souls. He even printed a list of appropriate
graveyards. Berlin’s Invalidenfriedhof was
fertile ground, the resting place for military
heroes from the Red Baron to the “Blond
Beast”, assassinated SS chief Reinhard Heydrich.
Today that graveyard lies sandwiched
between the massive new headquarters for
the Bundesnachrichtendienst, a sprawling
spy-agency monstrosity only Albert Speer
could love, and Europa City, a development
which effectively completes a piece of Speer’s
Germania scheme, running north from Hauptbahnhof,
the location of his domed Great Hall.
Foetal Brutalism
Albert Speer pitched his plans for Germania
to Hitler saying that great empires leave
great ruins, and Germania’s classical monuments
would look great half-destroyed.
Ironically, the Nazis’ most influential
buildings may be their most utilitarian and
indestructible: concrete bunkers and bomb
shelters. Crudely detailed and roughly
sculptural, they inspired the designers who
invented Brutalism, that 1970s architectural
style with a legion of devoted fans. The
designers of Pallasstraße’s Hochbunker or
Humboldthain’s flak tower unintentionally
created something truly eternal and worthy
of cult worship: pure architecture. n
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EXBERLINER 163