All apartments call themselves “luxury apartments”. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to cost more or be more desirable.
They probably aren’t going to be all that awesome to live in either, except that the walls will probably be think enough that you won’t hear your neighbors.
While I agree that consumerism has no place there (and turning this into a hotel is disgusting), I think that razing such facilities to the ground only helps people who deny nazi war crimes. Sometimes these structures stay abandoned for a very long time before being turned into museums. As an example there was a nazi underground factory in Lower Silesia that stayed abandoned for nearly 70 years and only recently got turned into museum and memorial to people who died while being forced to do slave labor during WWII. If it was destroyed earlier, it would obviously not be possible.
As noted above, I’m fine with museums. But letting these places remain unused as relics for military fetishists and potential pilgrimage sites for fascists for 70 years isn’t a great way to get there.
If it’s worth turning into a museum now, it was worth turning into a museum in the 1990s (allowing for both Communist and post-Communist Poland’s ambivalent attitude toward the Holocaust and its main victims).
Gentrification of Terror is my new band name.
It’s not. If it were, there would be more lava and maybe some sheep.
My wife is an architect and always has a good laugh at renderings where buildings have full-sized trees on top of them… It’s just not practical for so many reasons, but it’s on every damn proposal these days (and the concept is usually massively scaled back by the time things go into production). There are examples of it working, but it’s usually on a small scale.
I won’t be surprised when BoingBoing posts an expose of Notch having built a bunch of models of nazi landmarks in Minecraft.
I agree with you about the first three institutions you mention, but I’m less sure about “distinct symbols of a totalitarian regime’s militarism” - an air raid shelter with anti-aircraft emplacements on the roof aren’t specifically nazi, or celebrate nazism beyond “didn’t those slaves build well?”. I wouldn’t say sensitive reuse of large ‘brutalist’ structures is absolutely off limits.
If the prisons, Gestapo HQs and concentration camps have already been turned into museums, as they should, it doesn’t really seem sensible to turn the shelters into superfluous museums too. And remember, it’s not just one bunker per city - Vienna has three Flakturmer, as mentioned, and it seems this is merely the largest of several in Hamburg.
So raze them to the ground? Totally impractical, I’m afraid. They were designed to withstand military bombs, so standard demolition techniques aren’t going to scratch them. It seems that solution was dismissed decades ago.
If the alternatives are to leave them empty, and at risk of being used as shrines by neo-nazis, or to reuse them and incorporate them into the modern city, I think I’d prefer the latter. I repeat: sensitively. I’ve no inherent objection to a soulless corporate hotel, internally identical to any other across the world, using the structures, but obviously nothing celebrating the history!
I know ‘consumption and consumerism’ aren’t particularly fashionable at BoingBoing, but if that’s a way to rehabilitate otherwise unusable, irremovable and highly visible aspects of the cityscape, I’m open to that.
If it helps, think of it as being similar to the Confederate flag issue here in America. It represents different things to different people; but there have been enough racists rallying around it that we’ve decided as a society to remove it from public display in non-historical contexts. You can fly one at your house, or paint one on your truck, and you can certainly display one in a museum; but we won’t post one in the town square or at city hall, as it’s still an icon of the slavery that brought so much misery to so many people. We need to forget that the symbol was ever honored or glorified.
The same situation applies here. Nazi era anything is a rallying point for a non-insignificant number of people. By removing reminders of horror, the Germans can continue to make the historic nazis fade into irrelevance.
As far as flak towers in particular are concerned, I’m fine with their being used as industrial sites off-limits to the public (e.g. a power storage facility) or sites that directly repudiate Nazi values (e.g. a diversity-focused creative and cultural space). The aquarium is an edge case, but I’d allow it given that an argument can be made on the basis of structural engineering requirements for such a facility. Museums and memorials still remain the best use – there were many aspects to the Nazi regime, and the catastrophic militarism that resulted in the flak towers is one of them (the Nuremberg Zeppelin Field being converted to an outdoor sports facility is a similar edge case, although the German government has gone to great lengths to highlight its history and discourage pilgrims).
In that respect, these massive structures are clear symbols of Germany’s regime that, left and abandoned and without context, can attract Nazi pilgrims. And while there are ways of re-using them as described above, consumption and consumerism is a disrespectful and creepy and inappropriate means of doing so.
Finally, given the political will to spend the funds, it’s not impossible to demolish even these buildings. If they’re going to be left abandoned, that’s what should happen to them.
I’d argue that it’ll make it easier for nazi war crime deniers to do their thing.
I just don’t think that applies across the board in the way you’re positing. If there is evidence that the former flak tower/air raid shelter is serving as some kind of rallying point or symbol for neo-Nazis, I’d agree that it should be either destroyed or solely used as a museum. However, if it’s just a giant concrete building at this point for the locals, I’m not sure what you argued applies. I’m not sure either of us has enough info on how it’s actually viewed to know for sure.
For example, the Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus was a show piece built by the Nazis and served as the Luftwaffe headquarters, and now houses the German finance ministry. It’s a gigantic, brutalist office building where the Nazi war machine made its plans, and now it probably serves kebabs in the cafeteria. I don’t think it serves as a rallying point or an inspiring symbol of Nazi power, but I could be wrong, I suppose.
Don’t misunderstand, though: if the locals think that razing the structure or leaving it alone is the best thing, I’m not arguing against anything like that. I am just saying that I’m not sure this concrete structure necessarily belongs in quite the same category as some of the other Nazi structures.
Considering that “surviving a direct hit from a 500 lb bomb” would have been in the design specification for a flak tower, I would guess this might be a case where you could put full-size trees on the roof.
Full disclosure: I’m not keen on turning the place into a hotel.
Better to just turn them into prisons for right wing Nazi assholes.
Fitting for their “lifestyle”.
A place like what’s being discussed i can’t imagine it would be anything but something aimed at people with wealth. If it was turned into affordable housing that’d be more agreeable, though as many have said i would prefer if the location was used for educational/museum purposes instead.
Unfortunately not feasible.
It’s just not that easy or cheap to raze a bunker - it’s meters thick concrete and rebar, designed to withstand bombing. They’re usually repurposed because it costs way too much to remove.
Thank you very much for this suggestion, but we have deliberately decided to accept our history instead of swiping it under the rug. We rather take on the Neo-Nazis than pretend nothing happened in the middle of the last century.
How exactly does making a former bunker into a luxury hotel do that, though?
These bunkers have little relevance as reminders of Nazi-ism, they are reminders of WW2 (and the suffering of the local population). There are lots of places in Germany to keep the memory of the Third Reich and the atrocities we committed alive (like this or this, or these) - and it’s a good thing these places exist. But as others mentioned: You cannot demolish these bunkers, and to do nothing with them is probably not a good idea either.
