Anti-Semitic policy in Albert Speer's plans for the rebuilding of Berlin

1. Both Speer and his office were known, from an abbreviation of his title, as the GBI.

2. For the development of the Berlin plan, see H. Reichhardt and W. Schache, Von Berlin nach Germania: Uber die Zerstorungen der Reichshauptstadt durch Albert Speers Neugestaltungsplanungen, Berlin, 1986; and Scobie, 97-108. See also the excellent case studies of, respectively, the city building administration and the construction of the New Reich Chancellery in W. Schache, Architektur und Stadtebau in Berlin zwichen 1933 und 1945: Planen und Bauen unter der Agide der Stadtverwaltung, Berlin, 1991; and A. Schonberger, Die Neue Reichskanzlei von Albert Speer: Zum Zusammenhang von nationalsozialistischer Architektur und Ideologie, Berlin, 1981.

3. "Das Wort aus Stein" was a phrase used by Hitler to describe the intended effect of Nazi architecture in a speech given at the 1938 German Architecture and Crafts Exhibition in Munich; R. Taylor, The Word in Stone, Berkeley, 1974, 14.

4. Scobie, 37-68, 97-118.

5. Speer, 42. For the most recent assessment of how Speer dealt with and described his Nazi past, see G. Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, New York, 1995.

6. Serious scholarly interest in National Socialist art and architecture developed only after the critical reevaluation of the Nazi period began in the 1960s. Hildegard Brenner's work, as well as that of Barbara Miller Lane, was crucial in establishing the parameters of the debate and the scholarly interest in the ideological function of Nazi art and architecture. On anti-Semitic policy and the developing oppression of the Jews, see esp. H. Brenner, Die Kunstpolitik des Nationalsozialismus, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1963, 7-63; B. Miller Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918-1945, Cambridge, Mass., 1968, 185-216; and Scobie, 37-41. It is important to note that this discussion is by no means limited to architecture but extends to all the visual arts. See, e.g., K. Hoffmann-Curtius, "Die Frau in ihrem Element: Adolf Zieglers Triptychon der 'Naturgesetzlichkeit,'" in NS-Kunst: 50 Jahre danach, ed. B. Hinz, Marburg, 1989, 9-10, 18-19.

7. In relation to Speer and anti-Semitic housing policy, see also the recently published essay by K. Kurvers and J. F. Geist, "Tatort Berlin, Pariser Platz," in 1945: Krieg, Zerstorung, Aufbau: Architektur und Stadtplanung, 1940-1960, exh. cat., Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, 1995, a work that appeared after the present text was substantially written. While the interests of Kurvers and Geist and mine lead to some overlap in documentary evidence, their argument rests on expanding Matthias Schmidt's thesis, i.e., that Speer and the GBI were accessories (Beihilfe) to state anti-Semitic policy. With a biographical and institutional focus, they seek to establish the guilt and complicity of Speer and his architects. In the present essay, however, Speer's guilt is not the central issue. Rather, I wish to analyze how the consistency of GBI actions reflects an anti-Semitic policy which was simultaneously independent from and contingent on other state political interests, as well as to indicate how that anti-Semitic policy developed out of architectural and urban planning concerns. Such an analysis takes the focus away from biographical or institutional complicity and moves it instead toward a materialist case study of the political effects of architectural production.