For Adolf Hitler, the Berlin Olympiapark was a gallery to showcase his taste in art and architecture, the ultimate aesthetic expression of his totalitarian political ambition, and the setting for the propaganda coup of the 1936 Nazi Olympics.
But since the complex was handed back to the German capital’s senate in 1994, the city has struggled to find an acceptable use for the most ideologically overburdened of the remaining Third Reich relics.
Now, amid disputes abroad over statues of disgraced public figures and fresh controversy surrounding the park’s sculptures, that could finally change: a masterplan being presented to city politicians next week offers a vision of Olympic surfers riding artificial waves and skaters practising their ollies on the same grounds where the Nazis once fetishised their belief in the supremacy of the Aryan body.
Germany’s ongoing searchingly critical engagement with fascism is frequently held up as a shining example of how to deal with historical ills in artistic form – overlooking that the war ended with barely any statues of Nazi leaders left to be torn down.
Hitler actively discouraged statues of himself in favour of those worshipping the deutsche Volkskörper, the “body of the German people”. The 130-hectare Olympic Park, originally developed by Kaiser Wilhelm II for the cancelled 1916 Olympics, would become the supreme embodiment of his delusions of racial supremacy.
Hitler demolished the old facilities, covered the modern exterior of the stadium in monumental natural stone and dotted the site with sculptures by his favourite artists, while forbidding the employment of Jewish workers in the construction effort.
A large parade ground next to the stadium, the Maifeld, would later draw up to 700,000 Germans for mass rallies, while a hall of fame for a German regiment killed in Belgium became a place of worship for the cult of the first world war dead.
The drama of these architectural flourishes was further embellished through the lens of the film director Leni Riefenstahl. Her two propaganda films about the 1936 Olympics, Festival of the Nations and Festival of Beauty, were shot on location and curiously did not neglect to show the black US athlete Jesse Owens beating his German rival in the long-jump final.
After 1945, Hitler’s bunker was filled with concrete to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. Spandau prison, where Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess killed himself, has been torn down, and the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg have been largely demolished. But the Olympiapark has been left intact, protected as a listed structure since 1966.
The British military administration that controlled it from 1945 to 1994 merely reduced in height Hitler’s honorary stand, removed swastikas and repurposed some of the facilities as a country club with a family lido and a casino. The 120,000 sq m Maifeld grounds were used for polo tournaments and parades in honour of Queen Elizabeth’s birthday.
It was only this summer that Berlin engaged in a debate over how the Olympic grounds could be reopened to the public. Peter Strieder, a former senator for urban development in the city, called for the removal of the monumental sculptures of athletes from the grounds, the renaming of buildings and streets that commemorate nationalist ideologues, and the lifting of the protected status of the Maifeld.
“The entire complex, all buildings, all their names, all sculptures, were borne out of the ideology of the Nazis,” wrote Strieder, a Social Democrat, in the weekly broadsheet Die Zeit.
Art historians have criticised the intervention. “History is what happened in the past, and something we later-borns have to live with,” responded the architect Hans Kollhoff in an article in the same newspaper. “You don’t get rid of it by removing monuments.”
Sculptures such as The Victress were made before Hitler embraced its creator Arno Breker as his court artist, Kollhoff argued. And instead of attracting neo-Nazis, the stadium complex nowadays mainly draws tourists and football fans.
Some contend that the demolition plans could have a commercial as well as a moral motive: the Bundesliga club Hertha BSC, which plays its home games at the old Olympic stadium, has eyed up the Maifeld as a possible site for a new ground.
“Removing the sculptures and building a new stadium on the Maifeld would effectively amount to destroying listed monuments,” said the head of Berlin’s state monument office, Christoph Rauhut, when approached by the Guardian about the proposals.
“It would also send the wrong signal: more than ever, we need to understand how the Nazis enlisted art, architecture and sport in their propaganda effort. We have managed to engage with this historical site for over 75 years. It would be fatal to give up now.”
The Berlin state parliament will have a new proposal thrust into its hands that aims to rejuvenate the Olympiapark complex without ridding it completely of its historical connotations.
Commissioned by the senate department for the interior and sport, the Vision 2030 masterplan envisages the site being opened up as a “hotspot for Olympic and Paralympic games” by building training grounds for runners, horse riders, swimmers, and especially practitioners of new Olympic disciplines such as surfing and skateboarding – two of five sports that were due to premiere at the Tokyo 2020 Games.
The 66-page plan proposes leaving the Maifeld untouched and using it for some sport events or live screenings, and it skirts around the problematic Nazi-era sculptures, but it is likely to run into its own controversies.
One scenario proposes demolishing the stands of the old aquatics stadium and replacing them with a “virtual reconstruction” that would be visible only through a virtual reality headset. “Dealing with the swimming stadium will be difficult,” said Rauhut, the monuments officer. “It has a historical significance, and I don’t think it should be torn down.”
At an estimated €150m, the cost of regenerating the historic complex could be a deterrent for the notoriously cash-strapped Berlin senate. The plans will be voted on by city politicians after the summer break.
When it comes to restoring cultural institutions such as the Berlin state opera, in the past the federal government has stepped in to shoulder costs. It remains to be seen whether it will dare to intervene on the more ideologically delicate grounds of the Olympic Park.
source https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/20/surfing-on-hitlers-show-grounds-new-plan-for-berlins-olympic-park
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