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Völkisch Occult Cosmology





There is a Nordic and National Socialist Science which is opposed to Judaeo-Liberal
Science.'
Adolf Hitler


In creating - or re-creating - civilisation anew the völkisch occultists were not content with re-defining art, culture, politics and philosophy - their ambition also reached out to cosmology - and the creator of this new cosmology was Hanns Hörbiger.
Hanns Hörbiger (29 November 1860, Atzgersdorf – 11 October 1931, Mauer) was an Austrian engineer from Vienna with roots in Tyrol.
He took part in the construction of the Budapest subway and in 1894 invented a new type of valve essential for compressors still in widespread use today.
Hörbiger's cosmology is known as the Welteislehre (World Ice Theory), - also known as Glazial-Kosmogonie (Glacial Cosmogony).
Hörbiger did not arrive at his theory through research, but said that he had received it in a "vision" in 1894.
According to his theory, ice was the basic substance of all cosmic processes, and ice moons, ice planets, and the "global ether" (also made of ice) had determined the entire development of the universe.


By his own account, Hörbiger was observing the Moon when he was struck by the notion that the brightness and roughness of its surface was due to ice.
Shortly after, he experienced a dream in which he was floating in space watching the swinging of a pendulum which grew longer and longer until it broke."I knew that Newton had been wrong and that the sun's gravitational pull ceases to exist at three times the distance of Neptune," he concluded.
The earth, Hörbiger stated, is a meeting-point between ice and fire: Horbiger taught that it had already attracted three moons, and that the one we see at present is the fourth, which, of course, is made of ice.
Like its predecessors, this moon will eventually collide with our planet, and then it will be the turn of Mars.
All of earth's history is the result of the forces exerted by its successive moons, and can be divided into four distinct geological epochs:. at the end of each epoch, the cosmic forces are at their strongest, due to the closeness of the moon, and the result has been beings of gigantic size.

The first epoch culminated in the age of giant vegetation and insects: the second in the dinosaurs, the giant mammals, and the first human beings, a race of giants, as mentioned in Genesis 6.4, who ruled the earth some 15,000,000 years ago: the third was the mythical Golden Age, that of Lemuria, Atlantis and Thule, destroyed by the cataclysm of the third moon falling on the Earth 150,000 years ago; the fourth age is our own.
According to Horbiger, the beginning of this age was marked by battles between the giants who had survived the third, and the men of the fourth, as recorded in mythologies.
Other giants taught men to found the ancient civilisations of South America, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China.
Eventually the giants died out, and man declined into the drabness of Judaeo-Christian civilisation, where he forgot his glorious heritage.
But this is only temporary.
Affected by the cosmic rays of a moon which is spiralling imperceptibly closer, man will awaken to a realisation of his place in a living universe, mutations will transform his existence, and demi-gods and giants will again arise in our midst.
Horbiger averred that an 'uprush of fire' was imminent, that great initiates would co-operate once more with the cosmos and its struggle between ice and fire, that Supermen would once more walk the earth's surface, and that before them the slave-men would tremble and obey.

These doctrines conformed with the legends of primitive peoples and the mythologies of the
ancients, with the visions of Nietzsche and of Wagner.
They had many similarities too with the teachings of Gurdjieff (see right) and Madame Blavatsky (see left).
A cameo of Hitler's remarks, drawn from his 'Table Talk', displays his agreement with the teachings of Horbiger:



‘I'm quite inclined to accept the cosmic theories of Horbiger.
It's not impossible, in fact, that 10,000 years before our era there was a clash between the earth and the moon that gave the moon its present orbit.
It's also possible that the earth attracted to itself the atmosphere of the moon and that this radically altered the conditions of life on our planet ... It seems to me that these questions will be capable of solution on the day when a man will intuitively establish the connection between these facts, thus teaching exact science the path to follow.....
... It was a great step forward in the days of Ptolemy to say that the earth was a sphere and
that the stars circulated around it.
Since then there has been continual progress ... Copernicus first.
Copernicus, in his turn, has been largely left behind and things will always be so. In our time, Horbiger has made another step forward ...
The real question is whether the earth came from the sun or whether it has a tendency to approach it.
For me there is no doubt that planetary satellites are attracted by the planets, just as the latter are attracted by a fixed point, the sun.
Since there is no such thing as a vacuum it is possible that the planets' speed of rotation and movement may grow slower.
Thus it is not impossible, for example, that Mars may become one day- a satellite of earth ... I shall construct ... an observatory in which will be represented the three great cosmological conceptions of history'  – those of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Horbiger.'

Horbiger's theories taken with those of a commentator, Edgar Daque, confirmed Hitler's own
belief in the imminence of the transformation of man.


Hörbiger worked out his theory in collaboration with the astronomer and schoolteacher Philipp Fauth (see right), who he met in 1898, and published it as Glazial-Kosmogonie in 1912.
Fauth had previously produced a large lunar map and had a considerable following, which lent Hörbiger's theory some respectability.
It did not receive a great deal of attention at the time, but following World War I Hörbiger decided to change his strategy by promoting the new "cosmic truth" not only to people at universities and academies, but also to the general public.
Hörbiger thought that if "the masses" accepted his ideas then they might put enough pressure on the academic establishment to force his theory into the mainstream.

No effort was spared in popularising the theory: "cosmotechnical" societies were founded, which offered public lectures that attracted large audiences, there were cosmic ice movies and radio programs, and even cosmic ice journals and novels.
The followers of the theory exerted a great deal of public pressure on behalf of the theory.
The movement published posters, pamphlets, and books, and even a newspaper, 'The Key to World Events'.
A company owned by an adherent would only hire people who declared themselves convinced of the theory's truth.
Some followers even attended astronomical meetings to heckle, shouting, "Out with astronomical orthodoxy! Give us Hörbiger!"
During this period, the name was changed from the Graeco-Latin Glazial-Kosmogonie to the more Germanic Welteislehre ("World ice doctrine").

One of the early supporters of Hörbiger's theories was Houston Stewart Chamberlain (see right), the leading theorist behind the early development of the National Socialist Party in Germany in 1923.


However, Chamberlain was also a gifted amateur astronomer, with a full size observatory built on the top floor of his house in Bayreuth (see left), and as such he lent his weight to the growing support for Hörbiger's theory.
Two organizations were set up in Vienna concerned with the theory, the Kosmotechnische Gesellschaft and the Hörbiger Institute.
The first was formed in 1921 by a group of enthusiastic adherents of the Theory, which included engineers, physicians, civil servants, and businessmen.
Most had been personally acquainted with Hörbiger, and had attended his many lectures.

Among Hörbiger's followers was Viennese author Egon Friedell, who explained the World Ice Theory in his 1930 'Cultural History of the Modern Age'.
After Hörbiger’s death in 1931, the followers of the Welteislehre came to the conclusion that given the changing political situation in Germany, aligning the theory with National Socialism would eventually lead to its acceptance; the Welteislehre had already been heavily and successfully promoted as the "German antithesis" of the "Jewish" theory of relativity in the late 1920s.
And so the movement became more and more pro-Nazi, with the Welteislehre supporters saying things like: "Our Nordic ancestors grew strong in ice and snow; belief in the Cosmic Ice is consequently the natural heritage of Nordic Man.", - "Just as it needed a child of Austrian culture - Hitler! - to put the Jewish politicians in their place, so it needed an Austrian to cleanse the world of Jewish science.".

Heinrich Himmler, one of the most powerful Nazi leaders, became a strong proponent of the theory and he stated that if it were corrected and adjusted with new scientific findings it could very well be accepted as scientific work.


Adolf Hitler, an enthusiastic follower of the the 'Welteislehre' theory, adopted it as the Nazi party's official cosmology.
He claimed that Hörbiger was not accepted by the scientific establishment because "the fact is, men do not wish to know."



'The World Ice Theory' was intended to form part of a planetarium Hitler planned to build on Linz's Mount Pöstling.
According to the structure's plans, the ground floor was to centre around Ptolemey's universe, the middle floor Copernicus' theory, and the top floor, Hörbiger's theory.
It has been said that the real reason both Hitler and Himmler favored the theory was to counterbalance the perceived Jewish influence on the sciences, similar to the 'Deutsche Physik' movement.

Hörbiger's theory was for instance opposed to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
Dozens of scientific journals, books, and even novels were published on this topic.
Hörbiger's theories became generally accepted among the population of Nazi Germany and a German Hörbiger Organization had thousands of members.
The Nazis also considered the 'World Ice Theory' valuable because of its supposed value in weather forecasting.
The 1938 'Zur Welteismeteorologie' ("On World Ice Meteorology") by Dr. E. Dinies, published by the Reichs Office for Weather Service quotes from Hörbiger's Glazial-Kosmogonie and provided tables of data comparing ice and air temperatures for relative humidity values.
A growing group of 'believing scientists' expanded the theory during the last years of World War II.
Following the Anschluss of March 1938, the Kosmotechnische Gesellschaft was liquidated by the Nazis and its funds seized.
The Hörbiger Institute, which was a small association which collected funds for research, was left in possession of all Hörbiger's scientific material, including a library and a large collection of valuable drawings covering astronomy, meteorology, and geology as they related to the Hörbiger Theory.

The National Socialists wanted to close the Institute down as well, but Hörbiger's son Alfred and the Chairman avoided this by having a Nationalist Socialist Commission appointed.
They also managed to prevent the archives being taken to Berlin and absorbed in Himmler’s Ahnenerbe organization, and established that the Institute was the private property of Hörbiger's sons.
Despite the outbreak of World War II, Alfred Hörbiger managed to continue publishing the Institute's Proceedings, in spite of being cut off from all foreign publications and correspondents.
In February 1945 the Hörbiger engineering works were destroyed, and in March the Institute's premises were hit and were boarded up just before Soviet troops arrived.
Alfred Hörbiger died in August 1945 but the Institute hoped to restart publication of its Proceedings by 1949.



THE  WELTEISLEHRE


According to the theory, the solar system had its origin in a gigantic star into which a smaller, dead, waterlogged star fell.
This impact caused a huge explosion which flung fragments of the smaller star out into interstellar space where the water condensed and froze into giant blocks of ice.
A ring of such blocks formed, which we now call the Milky Way, as well as a number of solar systems among which was our own, but with many more planets than currently exist.
Interplanetary space is filled with traces of hydrogen gas, which cause the planets to slowly spiral inwards, along with ice blocks.
The outer planets are large mainly because they have swallowed a large number of ice blocks, but the inner planets have not swallowed nearly as many.

One can see ice blocks on the move in the form of meteors, and when one collides with the Earth, it produces hailstorms over an area of many square kilometers, while when one falls into the Sun, it produces a sunspot and gets vaporized, making "fine ice," which covers the innermost planets.
It was also claimed that the Earth had had several satellites before it acquired the Moon; they began as planets in orbits of their own, but over long spans of time were captured one by one and slowly spiralled in towards the Earth until it disintegrated and its debris became part of the Earth's structure.
One can supposedly identify the rock strata of several geological eras with the impacts of these satellites.
The last such impact, of the "Tertiary" or "Cenozoic Moon" and the capture of our present Moon, is supposedly remembered through myths and legends.
This was worked out in detail by Hörbiger's English follower Hans Schindler Bellamy; Bellamy recounted how as a child he would often dream about a large moon that would spiral closer and closer in until it burst, making the ground beneath roll and pitch, awakening him and giving him a very sick feeling.

When he looked at the Moon's surface through a telescope, he found its surface looking troublingly familiar.
When he learned of Hörbiger's theory in 1921, he found it a description of his dream.
He explained the mythological support he found in such books as 'Moons, Myths, and Man', 'In the Beginning God', and 'The Book of Revelation is History'.


It was believed that our current Moon was the sixth since the Earth began and that a new collision was inevitable.
Believers argued that the great flood described in the Bible and the destruction of Atlantis were caused by the fall of previous moons.

Although Hörbiger's theories have much in common with those of Immanuel Velikovsky (parallels between the two were drawn by Martin Gardner in Chapter Three of his Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science), the scientific community had a much calmer reaction to Hörbiger's theories than to Velikovsky's, and his publisher was never boycotted.


THE HOHLWELTLEHRE

The Hohlweltlehre is a cosmological theory that claims that we live on the inside of the earth, and that stellar and planetary objects are illusory.
The Thule Society reported much about Tibetan myths of openings into the Earth.
There is even some evidence that Hitler ordered a research journey for such an opening in Antarctica based on a speech of Admiral Dönitz in front of a German submarine in 1944, when he claimed "The German submarine fleet is proud of having built an invisible fortification for the Führer, anywhere in the world."
During the Nuremberg Trials, Dönitz spoke of "an invisible fortification, in midst of the eternal ice."A German pilot named Peter Bender came across several copies of the Koreshan’s Flaming Sword in a stack of American magazines in a French prisoner-of-war camp during World War I. Bender was won over by Teed’s geocosmos.

William Reed Teed
In 1906, William Reed Teed published "The Phantom of the Poles," which explains why the poles were not located: just because they do not exist. In his opinion, the generic name of "poly" refers, in fact, the entries inside the Earth.
Marshall B. Gardner 
Another author, Marshall B. Gardner published a book entitled "A journey inside the Earth," during which push this belief to the extreme:
The Hollow Earth
"I have found that previous theories are somehow right direction but as an addition, I think Earth's interior is illuminated by a sun that is about 600 miles in diameter, and holes at the poles are certainly more than 1,000 miles in diameter." 
The subject was not new.
Before him Teed in 1897 claimed: "We actually live inside Earth's interior beneath the surface crust. Inside the hole are the sun, moon, stars, planets and comets. There is absolutely nothing outside. The interior is everything." The idea may seem aberrant at least for modern astronomers who discover new and new galaxies millions of light years away. However, in the 1940s in Germany were many followers of the theory.

After the war, Bender returned to Germany where he developed and promoted the idea, which he dubbed the hohlweltlehre (“hollow Earth doctrine,” sometimes also referred to as hohlwelttheorie).
He abandoned the religious aspects of Koreshenity and simplified Teed’s byzantine labyrinth of concepts and ideas to a simpler, though still bizarre, mechanism to reconcile observed nature with the concave conception of Earth.
Rocket Launch
Bender’s Hohlweltlehre like other hollow-Earth theories before and since, attracted its share of supporters, though none from within the ranks of mainstream astronomers or Earth scientists. He was, however, able to muster enough political support to manage two tests of his theory. The first of these was an attempt, in 1933, to build a rocket and launch it straight up into the sky.
If Bender’s hollow-earth idea was correct, the rocket should have crashed into the opposite side of the planet.
Instead, it failed to launch, and crashed a few hundred meters from its launch pad.
German Advanced Radar
The second test came about through Bender’s connection (dating to his World War I pilot days) with Hermann Göring and the interests of a group of German Naval Research Institute officers who sought methods for locating enemy ships based on fringe ideas such as pendulum swinging and the hohlweltlehre.
These officers gained approval to send an expedition to Rügen Island (in the Baltic Sea) to try and detect British ships using powerful telescopic cameras pointed upwards across Earth’s concavity.
Bender claimed that the apparent convexity of Earth’s surface is due to the refraction of visible light passing through the atmosphere.
If Earth’s surface were concave, the officers reasoned, photographs taken using infra-red filters (infra-red radiation is not refracted by the atmosphere) should show parts of the North Atlantic and Baltic, and the positions of British ships in those waters could be known.
The failure of the Rügen Island experiment proved embarrassing to the Nazi High Command, and Bender, his wife, and some of his followers were imprisoned as a result.



HORST WESSEL

One of the most prominent supporters of the Welteislehre (World Ice Theory) or Glazial-Kosmogonie (Glacial Cosmogony) was Horst Wessel.
Horst Ludwig Wessel (October 9, 1907 – February 23, 1930) was a German Nazi activist who was made a posthumous hero of the Nazi movement following his violent death in 1930.
He was the author of the lyrics to the song "Die Fahne hoch" ("The Flag On High"), usually known as Horst-Wessel-Lied ("the Horst Wessel Song"), which became the Nazi Party anthem and, de facto, Germany's co-national anthem from 1933 to 1945.



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Troost & Speer - Architects to the Führer

TROOST AND SPEER - ARCHITECTS TO THE  FÜHRER


 
 
At the 1933 Nürnberg Reichsparteitag, the new Chancellor, Adolf Hitler proclaimed the dawn of an era of 'New Art' - and instituted the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture) to oversee the cultural life of Das Dritte Reich, (the Third Reich).
The Reichskulturkammer was headed by Dr. Paul Joseph Göbbels.
The Reichskulturkammer was to control all aspects of culture, and this included the fine arts, applied arts,  industrial design, sculpture, architecture and film.

'Germany wants again a “German Art,” and this art shall and will be of eternal value, as are all truly creative values of a people.
Should this art, however, again lack this eternal value for our people, then indeed it will mean that it also has no higher value today
When, therefore, the cornerstone of this building was laid, it was with the intention of constructing a temple, not for a so-called modern art, but for a true and everlasting German art, that is, better still, a House for the art of the German people.
It is therefore imperative for the artist to erect monuments, not so much to a period, but to his people.
For time is changeable, years come and go.
Anything born of and thriving on a certain epoch alone would perish with it.
And not only all which had been created before us would fall victim to this mortality, but also what is being created today or will be created in the future.
But the National-Socialists know of only one mortality, and that is the mortality of the people itself:
As long as a people exists, however, it is the fixed pole in the flight of fleeting appearances.
It is the quality of being and lasting permanence.
And, indeed, for this reason, art as an expression of the essence of this being, is an eternal monument.'
Adolf Hitler



'DIE NEUE KUNST'
The Day of German Art


T R O O S T  A N D  S P E E R - A R C H I T E C T S   T O  T H E  F Ü H R E R



Hitler appreciated the neo-classical  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 also admired the neo-baroque the Palais Garnier, home of the Paris Opera, and the neo-classical 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.
Thus, in the realm of architecture, as in painting and sculpture, Hitler saw his ideal 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.


P A U L   L U D W I G   T R O O S T

Paul Ludwig Troost (August 17, 1878 – March 21, 1934), born in Elberfeld, was a German architect.
An extremely tall, spare-looking, reserved Westphalian with a close-shaven head, Troost belonged to a school of architects, Peter Behrens and Walter Gropius who, even before 1914, reacted sharply against the highly ornamental Jugendstil and advocated a restrained, lean architectural approach, almost devoid of ornament.
Troost graduated from designing steamship décor before World War I, and the fittings for showy transatlantic liners like the Europa, to a style that combined Spartan traditionalism with elements of modernity.
Although, before 1933 he did not belong to the leading group of German architects, he became Hitler's foremost architect whose neo-classical style became for a time the official architecture of the Third Reich.

In the autumn of 1933, he was commissioned to rebuild and refurnish the Chancellery residence in Berlin.
Along with other architects, Troost planned and built State and municipal edifices throughout the country, including new administrative offices, social buildings for workers and bridges across the main highways.
One of the many structures he planned before his death was the House of German Art in Munich, intended to be a great temple for a "true, eternal art of the German people".
It was a good example of the classical forms in monumental public buildings during the Third Reich, though subsequently Hitler moved away from the more restrained style of Troost, reverting to the imperial grandeur that he had admired in the Vienna Ringstraße of his youth.
Hitler's relationship to Troost was that of a pupil to an admired teacher.


According to Albert Speer, who later became Hitler's favorite architect, the Führer would impatiently greet Troost with the words: "I can't wait, Herr Professor. Is there anything new? Let's see it!" Troost would then lay out his latest plans and sketches.

Hitler frequently declared, according to Speer, that "he first learned what architecture was from Troost"'.
The architect's death on March 21, 1934, after a severe illness, was a painful blow, but Hitler remained close to his widow Gerdy Troost, whose architectural taste frequently coincided with his own, which made her (in Speer's words) "a kind of arbiter of art in Munich."
Troost was buried in the "Nordfriedhof" Cemetery (North Cemetery) in Munich.
The gravestone (see above left) still survives although the family name has been removed.
Hitler posthumously awarded Troost the German National Prize for Art and Science in 1936.








FÜHRERBAU - KÖNIGSPLATZ  MÜNCHEN
Paul Ludwig Troost

The Fuehrerbau, on the Königsplatz in Munich, was built from 1933 to 1937 by the architect Paul Ludwig Troost.
The first plans for the buildings date from the year 1931.
It was completed only three years after the death of Professor Troost by Leonhard Gall.
The building was used as the national administrative centre for the NSDAP.





GRAND STAIRCASE
FÜHRERBAU - KÖNIGSPLATZ  MÜNCHEN
Paul Ludwig Troost







ADOLF HITLER'S STUDY
FÜHRERBAU - KÖNIGSPLATZ  MÜNCHEN
Paul Ludwig Troost






MAIN CORRIDOR
FÜHRERBAU - KÖNIGSPLATZ  MÜNCHEN
Paul Ludwig Troost






EHRENTEMPEL - KÖNIGSPLATZ  NCHEN
Paul Ludwig Troost

The Ehrentempel ("honor temples") were two structures in Munich, designed by Professor Paul Ludwig Troost, and erected by the German Government in 1935, housing the sacrophagi of the sixteen members of the party who had been killed in the failed Beer hall putsch.
The Ehrentempel was made of limestone except for its roof which was made of steel and concrete with etched glass mosaics.
The pedestals of the temples were seventy feet wide.
The columns of the structures each extended twenty-three feet. The combined weight of the sacrophagi was over 2,900 pounds.
The following martyrs of the National Socialis German Workers Party were interred in the Ehrentempel:

Felix Alfarth, Andreas Bauriedl, Theodor Casella, William Ehrlich, Martin Faust,
Anton Hechenberger, Oskar Körner, Karl Kuhn, Karl Laforce, Kurt Neubauer,
Klaus von Pape,Theodor von der Pfordten, Johann Rickmers,Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, Lorenz Ritter von Stransky, Wilhelm Wolf
Adolf Wagner (buried in the grass mound between steps in 1944)







EHRENTEMPEL - KÖNIGSPLATZ  NCHEN
Paul Ludwig Troost







EHRENTEMPEL - KÖNIGSPLATZ  NCHEN
Paul Ludwig Troost




EHRENTEMPEL - KÖNIGSPLATZ  NCHEN
Paul Ludwig Troost






EHRENTEMPEL - KÖNIGSPLATZ  NCHEN
Paul Ludwig Troost







EHRENTEMPEL - KÖNIGSPLATZ  NCHEN
(Tag Der Deutschen Kunst - Day of German Art)
Paul Ludwig Troost







EHRENTEMPEL AT DUSK - KÖNIGSPLATZ  NCHEN
Paul Ludwig Troost





DAS HAUS DER DEUTSCHEN KUNST
(The House of German Art)
Paul Ludwig Troost










DAS HAUS DER DEUTSCHEN KUNST
(The House of German Art)
Paul Ludwig Troost











DAS HAUS DER DEUTSCHEN KUNST
(The House of German Art)
Paul Ludwig Troost





DAS HAUS DER DEUTSCHEN KUNST
Paul Ludwig Troost




DAS HAUS DER DEUTSCHEN KUNST
Paul Ludwig Troost







DAS HAUS DER DEUTSCHEN KUNST
Paul Ludwig Troost









A L B E R T   S P E E R






Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, (March 19, 1905 – September 1, 1981) was a German architect.
Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office. 
Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931, launching him on a political and governmental career which lasted fourteen years. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle.
Hitler commissioned him to design and construct a number of structures, including the Reich Chancellery and the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg where Party rallies were held. Speer also made plans to reconstruct Berlin on a grand scale, with huge buildings, wide boulevards, and a reorganized transportation system.
Speer was born in Mannheim, into a wealthy middle class family.
Speer was active in sports, taking up skiing and mountaineering.
Speer followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and studied architecture.
Speer began his architectural studies at the University of Karlsruhe.
In 1924 he transferred to the Technical University of Munich.
In 1925 he transferred again, this time to the Technical University of Berlin where he studied under Heinrich Tessenow, whom Speer greatly admired.
After passing his exams in 1927, Speer became Tessenow's assistant, a high honor for a man of 22.
As such, Speer taught some of Tessenow's classes while continuing his own postgraduate studies.
In Munich, and continuing in Berlin, Speer began a close friendship, ultimately spanning over 50 years, with Rudolf Wolters, who also studied under Tessenow.
In mid-1922, Speer began courting Margarete (Margret) Weber (1905–1987).
The two married in Berlin on August 28, 1928.
In 1931, Speer surrendered his position as Tessenow's assistant, hoping to use his father's connections to get commissions.
In July 1932, the Speers visited Berlin to help out the Party prior to the Reichstag elections. While they were there, Hanke recommended the young architect to Goebbels to help renovate the Party's Berlin headquarters.


Speer, who had been about to leave with his wife for a vacation in East Prussia, agreed to do the work.
When the commission was completed, Speer returned to Mannheim and remained there as Hitler took office in January 1933.
After the Nazis took control, Hanke recalled Speer to Berlin. Goebbels, the new Propaganda Minister, commissioned Speer to renovate his Ministry's building on Wilhelmplatz.
Speer also designed the 1933 May Day commemoration in Berlin.
Speer's next major assignment was as liaison to the Berlin building trades for Paul Troost's renovation of the Chancellery.
As Chancellor, Hitler had a residence in the building and came by every day to be briefed by Speer and the building supervisor on the progress of the renovations.
After one of these briefings, Hitler invited Speer to lunch.


Hitler evinced considerable interest in Speer during the luncheon, and later told Speer that he had been looking for a young architect capable of carrying out his architectural dreams for the new Germany.
Speer quickly became part of Hitler's inner circle..
The two men found much in common: Hitler spoke of Speer as a "kindred spirit" for whom he had always maintained "the warmest human feelings".
The young, ambitious architect was dazzled by his rapid rise and close proximity to Hitler, which guaranteed him a flood of commissions from the government and from the highest ranks of the Party.

When Troost died on January 21, 1934, Speer effectively replaced him as the Party's chief architect. Hitler appointed Speer as head of the Chief Office for Construction, which placed him nominally on Hess's staff.[34]
One of Speer's first commissions after Troost's death was the Zeppelinfeld stadium—the Nürnberg parade grounds seen in Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda masterpiece Triumph of the Will. This huge work was capable of holding 340,000 people.
The tribune was influenced by the Pergamon Altar in Anatolia, but was magnified to an enormous scale.
Speer surrounded the site with 130 anti-aircraft searchlights. This created the effect of a "cathedral of light" or, as it was called by British Ambassador Sir Neville Henderson, a "cathedral of ice".
Nürnberg was to be the site of many more official Nazi buildings, most of which were never built; for example, the German Stadium would have accommodated 400,000 spectators, while an even larger rally ground would have held half a million Nazis.
While planning these structures, Speer invented the concept of "ruin value": that major buildings should be constructed in such a way that they would leave aesthetically pleasing ruins for thousands of years into the future.
Such ruins would be a testament to the greatness of the Third Reich, just as ancient Greek or Roman ruins were symbols of the greatness of those civilizations.
Hitler enthusiastically embraced this concept, and ordered that all the Reich's important buildings be constructed in accord with it.
In 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital with the rank of undersecretary of state in the Reich government.
The position carried with it extraordinary powers over the Berlin city government and made Speer answerable to Hitler alone.


Hitler ordered Speer to make plans to rebuild Berlin.
The plans centered on a three-mile long grand boulevard running from north to south, which Speer called the Prachtstrasse, or Street of Magnificence; he also referred to it as the "North-South Axis".
At the north end of the boulevard, Speer planned to build the Volkshalle, a huge assembly hall with a dome which would have been over 700 feet (210 m) high, with floor space for 180,000 people.
At the southern end of the avenue would be a huge triumphal arch; it would be almost 400 feet (120 m) high, and able to fit the Arc de Triomphe inside its opening.
The outbreak of World War II in 1939 led to the postponement, and eventual abandonment, of these plans.
In January 1938, Hitler asked Speer to build a new Reich Chancellery on the same site as the existing structure, and said he needed it for urgent foreign policy reasons no later than his next New Year's reception for diplomats on January 10, 1939.




This was a huge undertaking, especially since the existing Chancellery was in full operation. Although the site could not be cleared until April, Speer was successful in building the large, impressive structure in nine months.
The structure included the "Marble Gallery": at 146 metres long, almost twice as long as the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles.
Speer employed thousands of workers in two shifts. Hitler, who had remained away from the project, was overwhelmed when Speer turned it over, fully furnished, two days early.
In appreciation for the architect's work on the Chancellery, Hitler awarded Speer the Nazi Golden Party Badge.


Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler & Arno Breker - Paris - June 1940












REICH ADLER
Albert Speer






NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
Albert Speer










NEUE REICHSKANZEI - MARMORGALERIE - BERLIN
Albert Speer



In late January 1938, Adolf Hitler officially assigned his favourite architect Albert Speer to build the New Reich Chancellery around the corner on Voßstraße, a branch-off of Wilhelmstraße, requesting that the building be completed within a year.
Hitler commented that Bismarck's Old Chancellery was "fit for a soap company" but not suitable as headquarters of a Greater German Reich. It nevertheless remained his official residence with its recently refurbished representation rooms on the groundfloor and private rooms on the upper floor where Hitler lived in the so called Führerwohnung ("Führer apartment").
Hitler placed the entire northern side of the Voßstraße at Speer's disposal assigning him the work of creating grand halls and salons which "will make an impression on people".
Speer was given a blank cheque — Hitler stated that the cost of the project was immaterial — and was instructed that the building be of solid construction and that it be finished by the following January in time for the next New Year diplomatic reception to be held in the new building.
Over 4,000 workers toiled in shifts, so the work could be accomplished round-the-clock.
In the end it cost over 90 Million Reichsmark, well over one billion dollars today.
In his memoirs, Speer described the impression of the Reichskanzlei on a visitor:
The series of rooms comprising the approach to Hitler's reception gallery were decorated with a rich variety of materials and colours and totalled 220 m (725 ft) in length.
The gallery itself was 145 m (480 ft) long. Hitler's own office was 400 square meters in size.
From the exterior, the chancellery had a stern, authoritarian appearance.
From the Wilhelmplatz, visitors would enter the Chancellery through the Court of Honour (Ehrenhof). The building's main entrance was flanked by two bronze statues by sculptor Arno Breker: "Wehrmacht" and "Partei" ("Armed Forces" and "Party").
Hitler is said to have been greatly impressed by the building and was uncharacteristically effusive with his praise for Speer, lauding the architect as a "genius".
The chancellor's immense study was a particular favourite of the dictator.
The large marble-topped table served as an important part of the Nazi leader's military headquarters, the study being used for military conferences from 1944 on. On the other hand, the Cabinet room was never used for its intended purpose.











NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Reception Hall)
Albert Speer











NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Hitler's Study)
Albert Speer










NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Hitler's Study)
Albert Speer











NEUE REICHSKANZEI - DOORWAY - BERLIN
Albert Speer













NEUE REICHSKANZEI - MOSAIC HALL - BERLIN
Albert Speer










NEUE REICHSKANZEI - MOSAIC HALL - BERLIN
Albert Speer







NEUE REICHSKANZEI - MOSAIC HALL - BERLIN
Albert Speer












NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
Marquetry Panel 
Albert Speer








NEUE REICHSKANZEI - ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING - DOORWAY - BERLIN
Albert Speer














NEUE REICHSKANZEI - MOSAIC HALL - BERLIN
Albert Speer








NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Entrance to Ante Room)
Albert Speer










NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Entrance to Mosaic Hall)
Albert Speer








NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
Albert Speer








NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
Albert Speer








NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Entrance to Hitler's Study)
Albert Speer







NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Hitler's Study)
Albert Speer





NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Hitler's Study)
Albert Speer







NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Hitler's Study)
Albert Speer






NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Hitler's Study)
Albert Speer






NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Cabinet Room)
Albert Speer









NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Dining Room)
Albert Speer









NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Dining Room)
Albert Speer







NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Dining Room)
Albert Speer







NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Reception Room)
Albert Speer






NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Adolf Hitler's Private Apartment)
Albert Speer








NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Main Entrance)
Albert Speer






NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Main Entrance)
Albert Speer








NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
(Main Entrance)
Albert Speer








MAIN FAÇADE - NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
Albert Speer






MAIN FAÇADE - NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
Albert Speer







MAIN FAÇADE - NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
Albert Speer








The Reception Hall in the Reich's Chancellery Garden
Albert Speer









GARDEN FAÇADE - NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
Albert Speer






GARDEN FAÇADE - NEUE REICHSKANZEI - BERLIN
Albert Speer






SS-'Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler' Barracks
Albert Speer






G E R M A N I A







GERMANIA
Albert Speer


Welthauptstadt Germania ("World Capital Germania") refers to the projected renewal of the German capital Berlin during the Nazi period, part of Adolf Hitler's vision for the future of Germany after the planned victory in World War II.
Albert Speer, the "first architect of the Third Reich", produced many of the plans for the rebuilt city in his capacity as overseer of the project, only a small portion of which was realized between the years 1937-1943 when construction took place.
Some projects, such as the creation of a great East-West city axis, which included broadening Charlottenburger Chaussee (today Straße des 17. Juni) and placing the Berlin victory column in the center, far away from the Reichstag, where it originally stood, succeeded.
Others, however, such as the creation of the Große Halle (Great Hall), had to be shelved owing to the beginning of war.
A great number of the old buildings in many of the planned construction areas were however demolished before the war and eventually defeat stopped the plans.
The combined name "Welthauptstadt Germania" for the project was coined by Albert Speer in his 1969 memoirs Inside the Third Reich. 









MODELL DER NEUGESTALTUNG - GERMANIA
Albert Speer


According to the records of Hitler's Table Talk of 8 June 1942 Hitler toyed with the idea of renaming the renewed Berlin into 'Germania', in order to give a Greater Germanic world empire a clear central point:
The term Welthauptstadt (World Capital) was already used by Hitler three months prior on the night between the 11th and 12th of March 1942 in the Wolf's Lair:
"Berlin as the World Capital will only be comparable with Ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Rome! What are London and Paris compared to that!"
—Werner Jochmann: Adolf Hitler. Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944, p. 318. Munich, 1980.
The title 'Welthauptstadt' was chosen because it was felt that Berlin's architecture was at that time too provincial and that there was need to put Berlin on a par with and exceed the quality of other world capitals such as London, Paris and especially Rome.







MODELL DER NEUGESTALTUNG - GERMANIA
Albert Speer







 GROßE HALLE - GERMANIA
Albert Speer



The sketch of the Volkshalle given by Hitler to Speer shows a traditional gabled pronaos supported by ten columns, a shallow rectangular intermediate block and behind it the domed main building.
However, there was little about Speer's elaboration of the sketch that might be termed Doric, except perhaps for the triglyphs in the entablature, supported by the geminated red granite columns with their Egyptian palm-leaf capitals, previously employed by Speer in the portico outside Hitler's study on the garden side of the new Chancellery (see above).








 GROßE HALLE - GERMANIA
Albert Speer

Speer's Große Halle was to be the capital's most important and impressive building in terms of its size and symbolism. Visually it was to have been the architectural centrepiece of Berlin as the world capital (Welthauptstadt).
Its dimensions were so large that it would have dwarfed every other structure in Berlin, including those on the north-south axis itself.
The oculus of the building's dome, 46 metres (151 ft) in diameter, would have accommodated the entire rotunda of Hadrian's Pantheon and the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.
The dome of the Volkshalle was to rise from a massive granite podium 315 by 315 metres (1,033 × 1,033 ft) and 74 metres (243 ft) high, to a total inclusive height of 290 metres (950 ft). 
The resemblance of the Volkshalle to the Pantheon is far more obvious when their interiors are compared.
The large niche (50 metres high by 28 metres wide) at the north end of the Volkshalle was to be surfaced with gold mosaic and to enclose an eagle 24 metres (79 ft) high, beneath which was situated Hitler's tribunal.
From here he would address 180,000 listeners, some standing in the central round arena, others seated in three concentric tiers of seats crowned by one hundred marble pillars, 24 metres (79 ft) high, which rose to meet the base of the coffered ceiling suspended from steel girders sheathed on the exterior with copper.
The three concentric tiers of seats enclosing a circular arena 140 metres (460 ft) in diameter owe nothing to the Pantheon but resemble the seating arrangements in Ludwig Ruff's Congress Hall at Nuremberg, which was modeled on the Colosseum.
Other features of the Volkshalle's interior are clearly indebted to Hadrian's Pantheon: the coffered dome, the pillared zone, which here is continuous, except where it flanks the huge niche on the north side.
The second zone in the Pantheon, consisting of blind windows with intervening pilasters, is represented in Speer's building by a zone above the pillars consisting of uniform, oblong shallow recesses.
The coffered dome rests on this zone. 
Hitler's aspirations to world domination and the establishment of his New Order, already evident from architectural and decorative features of the new Chancellery, are even more clearly expressed here.
External symbols suggest that the domed hall was where Hitler as cosmocrator (Herr der Welt) would appear before his Herrenvolk: On top of the dome's lantern was an eagle grasping in its claws not the usual swastika but the globe of the Earth (Erdball).
This combination of eagle and ball was well known in imperial Roman iconography, for example, the restored statue of Claudius holding a ball and eagle in his right hand.
The vast dome, on which it rested, as with Hadrian's Pantheon, symbolically represented the vault of the sky spanning Hitler's world empire.
The globe on the dome's lantern was enhanced and emphasized by two monumental sculptures by Breker, each 15 metres high, which flanked the north façade of the building: at its west end Atlas supporting the heavens, at its east end Tellus supporting the Earth.
Both mythological figures were according to Speer, chosen by Hitler himself.









GROßE HALLE - GERMANIA
Albert Speer









ZEPPLINFELD
Albert Speer







ZEPPLINFELD
Albert Speer













ZEPPLINFELD
Albert Speer
















ZEPPLINFELD
Albert Speer














ZEPPLINFELD STADIUM
Albert Speer













ZEPPLINFELD STADIUM
Albert Speer














GERMAN PAVILLION - 1937 - PARIS
Albert Speer









GERMAN PAVILLION - 1937 - PARIS
Albert Speer



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