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March 15, 2008

Hitler's Berlin, Mussolini's Rome

Hitler made much less progress toward his version of Berlin than Mussolini made toward recasting Rome. There's a show up in Berlin now which includes a giant model of Hitler's plan, including the vast dome - story and photo here.

Because we're explicitly teaching about Mussolini's remaking of Rome in the BiDisciplinary course I'm doing some more reading - and once again being surprised that things I thought were eternal about the Eternal City are really 1920s and 30s. Borden Painter's Mussolini's Rome is almost usable as a guide book - and has helpful lists in the back of street and piazza names changed from their fascist to anti-fascist forms. I find it interesting that the Republic didn't change the names of any of the bridges or streets (so far as I know) that were named after members of the deposed royal family, even when those had been built under Mussolini. There are also a surprising number of inscriptions that have never gone away - the visual de-fascisization of Rome was piecemeal.

Here's an interesting bit about a surviving fragment of Hitler's Berlin:

Isolated remnants of Nazi architecture include Hermann Goering's Luftfahrtministerium, now the German Finance Ministry; Tempelhof airport, whose runways are set to close and whose future is hotly debated; the Olympic Stadium; and one of the city's more obscure architectural oddities: the Schwerbelastungskoerper, or heavy-load tester.

Speer built this mammoth concrete cylinder in the south of the city to test how much weight Berlin's swampy land could bear before work started on the triumphal arch. Until recently, the Schwerbelastungskoerper was hidden behind dense foliage and scaffolding, surrounded by fences and signs forbidding entry.

About the size of a four-story block and 15 tons in weight, it is made of solid steel-reinforced concrete. It was placed under heritage protection in 1995. The local authority is renovating it at a cost of 722,000 euros ($1.13 million), aiming to complete it by the end of the year and open it to the public after that.

Inside, measuring equipment shows that Speer's engineers found the Schwerbelastungskoerper to have sunk 19 centimeters -- not quite deep enough to have made the arch unfeasible.

On Tuesday we're back to the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus - but to look at them in their setting in Mussolini's setting. Should be fun!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at March 15, 2008 9:16 AM