The Documentation Center Nazi Party Rallying Grounds (Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände, Germany) is a museum in Nuremberg. It is placed in the north wing of the unfinished remains of the Congress Hall of the former Nazi party rallies. Nuremberg has been trying to deal with the Congress Hall since 1945, when its fate became the object of endless debate between those keen to remove all traces of National Socialism, and those advocating the preservation of the records of that period as a reminder and a warning.
In 1994 the city council of Nuremberg decided to establish the Documentation Center in the Congress Hall. The idea dates back when the very first plans were conceived by the Museen der Stadt Nürnberg. On this basis in summer 1998, Nuremberg city issued an architectural competition for the design. No easy task for the architects. Not only did the design brief have to fit the proposed Documentation Center in the North Wing of the former Nazi Congress Hall, but also had to find a way of dealing with the intimidating Nazi architecture on the site and the sinister ideas behind the Rally Grounds. The Austrian architect Gunther Domenig won the competition with his proposal to spear through the northern head of the building with a diagonal glass and steel passageway. Domenig, the son of a Nazi judge, confronted his own personal history in addition to the history and Nazi architecture of the project’s site.
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