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.

Inherent in the gesture of this project is a pun on the name and a refutation of the chief Nazi architect Albert Speer who had directed a masterplan for this site including a Zeppelin Field, a stadium to hold 400,000, a March Field for military exercises, a Congress Hall for 50,000, and a 180-foot wide Great Road. This is where Speer had created the “cathedral of light” and where the Nazis drew nearly a million people in rallies in 1933-1938. These were captured on film by Leni Riefenstahl in Triumph of the Will.

With his idea, architect Gunther Domenig made a clear architectural mark. The concept of Documentation Center is an adoption of a counterstatement to the National Socialist construction pattern. The building is pierced diagonally by a 130-meter steel and glass structure walkway permanently disabling this solid-stone National Socialist demonstration of power. Otherwise, the architect left the building much in its original state, leaving the building in its unfinished state. A large number of the exhibition rooms still have bare, brick walls, the brick and concrete finish being reminiscent of the insides of large ovens.

In the new intervention, the flat granite of the existing building’s north facade has been pierced with a glass and steel arrow. This forms the entrance canopy to the center and in its sharpness seems to foreshadow the nature of the arterial inside. In the main atrium on the first floor, the project’s conceptual arrangement becomes apparent. The new work is kept scrupulously apart from the existing fabric, never coming into contact with it. The exhibition rooms are carved out of the existing spaces which retain their original gloom, and the spiky arrow runs tormentedly right through the work.

A Study Forum offers in-depth discussions and seminars, as well as study and project days, and guided tours of the Rally Grounds. A cinema and two large halls are available for temporary exhibitions and events. The rectangular geometry of the northern wing is cut through, exposing the invitation to hidden interior and giving an archaeological cross-section. A freely suspended platform at the end of the walkway offers dramatic views into the Congress Hall’s courtyard. The interior reveals the rough, unrendered brick masonry of the unfinished rooms. Additional innovations include a film and lecture auditorium suspended under the ceiling of the entrance hall and an Education Forum situated on the roof, available for guided in-depth educational work.

The focal point of the Documentation Center is the permanent exhibition “Fascination and Terror” which is concerned with the causes, coherence, and consequences of the National Socialist era (1933–1945). “So with this Documentation Center, I at last got the opportunity to free myself from this burdensome situation, a gesture of liberation not only from the past but from all the restrictions imposed by clients (schools, banks, churches, ‘social’ housing),” says Gunther Domenig. The Documentation Center Party Rally Grounds was opened on 4 November, 2001.

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