Welthauptstadt Germania
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Welthauptstadt ("World Capital") Germania was the name Adolf Hitler gave to the projected renewal of the German capital Berlin, part of his vision for the future of Germany after the proposed victory in World War II. Albert Speer, "the first architect of the Third Reich", produced many of the plans for the rebuilt city, only a few of which were realized. The location of Germania was never officially decided upon, despite several options being considered.
Some projects, such as the creation of a great city axis, which included broadening Unter den Linden and placing the Siegessäule in the center, far away from the Reichstag, where it originally stood, succeeded. Others, however, such as the creation of the Große Halle (Great Dome), had to be shelved due to the beginning of war.
The first step in these plans was the Olympic Stadium for the 1936 Summer Olympics. Speer also designed a new Chancellery, which included a vast hall designed to be twice as long as the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. Hitler wanted him to build a third, even larger Chancellery, although it was never begun. The second Chancellery was destroyed by the Soviet army in 1945.
Almost none of the other buildings planned for Berlin were ever built. Berlin was to be reorganized along a central three-mile long avenue. At the north end, Speer planned to build an enormous domed building, the Volkshalle (people's hall), based on St. Peter's Basilica and the Pantheon in Rome. The dome of the building would have been impractically large; it would be over two hundred meters (700 feet) high and two hundred and fifty meters (800 feet) in diameter, sixteen times larger than the dome of St. Peter's. At the southern end of the avenue would be an arch based on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, but again, much larger; it would be almost a hundred meters (400 feet) high, and the Arc de Triomphe would have been able to fit inside its opening. The outbreak of World War II in 1939 caused the decision to postpone construction until after the war to save strategic materials.[1]
Doubts persisted at the time as to whether the marshy Berlin ground could have taken the load of the proposed projects, leading to the construction of an exploration building (Schwerbelastungskörper, literal translation: Heavy load-bearing body), which still exists. It is basically an extremely heavy block of concrete used by the architects to test how much weight the ground was able to carry. Instruments monitored how far the block sank into the ground.
Since there are no other references to the term "Welthauptstadt Germania" other than Albert Speer's autobiography, it is nowadays disputed whether the term was actually used by Hitler or if it was made up by Speer himself.
Robert Harris, author of the 1992 alternate history novel Fatherland, posits that Hitler's and Speer's vision of a rebuilt and monumental Berlin would have been realized by 1964.
[edit] References
- ^ Speer, Albert (1970). Inside the Third Reich. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-82949-5.
