Nuremberg

Heading out of Nuremberg, in what I believe was Fulda, we passed something you would not see in the U.S. -- a train with new automobiles sitting unprotected. It even looks to be Mercedes. I saw such open carriage of autos multiple times from trains, though this was the only time when both my train and the auto train were not moving.

On my way back from Nuremburg, I had a couple of hours layover in Göttingen, so walked into the town center. Göttingen is a college town, which might explain the massive number of bicycles parked at the train station.

The Great Hall (built in 1835-37) of the University of Göttingen (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen). The university was founded in 1734 and highly respected around the globe. It was also the site of a large purge of faculty by the Nazi's in 1933 for "Jewish physics". See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Göttingen

Statue of Wilhelm IV, king of Great Britain, Ireland, and Hanover. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_IV_of_the_United_Kingdom

Ducks (toy) in a row (on the windowsill).

On the side of the Congress Hall is a portal that allows you to walk into the center of the Congress Hall. One of the things that first struck me as walking through this portal was simply the differences in emotional response to the architecture that happens when you are outside looking at the elegance and monumentalism of the limestone facing, and then inside seeing the ordinary brick that supports that facing.

The plans for the Congress Hall were for this vast space to be covered with a glass dome and for this circular space to be an auditorium for 50,000 (!) who would all face the "Fuhrer" who would be in the center.

Next to the entrance that I had used to the inside of the Congress Hall. The angles here would suggest that this was going to be an opening with a lower threshold than the rest of the building, but I saw no diagram indicating how this was planned to look or work.

The walkway out over the area is part of the museum that is in a portion of the Congress Hall.

While a portion of the Große Straße exists (see adjacent picture), the photo in this exhibit much more clearly shows how monumental it was supposed to be.

The Große Straße (Great Road), now used for various recreational, sports, and entertainment activities.

Nature's way of pushing back at man's tyranny.

Congress Hall from across the lake, giving even more of a sense of its massiveness. The lower portion of the sandstone-clad portion is the location of the entrance. The angular structure on the right side of the building is the museum.

A good juxtaposition of humor and fun against the seriousness of the structure.

The Congress Hall of the National Socialist German Workers Party, designed to be used for party congresses during Nazi Rallies. The building was actually never finished due to construction stopping with the advent of WW II. In one section of the building is the Nazi Documentation Center, a museum dedicated to focusing on how the Nazi party grew and how it came to dominate the German population. The name of the exhibit, “Fascination and Terror” quite well summarizes the populace's sympathies and fears that fostered Hitler's rise. Of the Nazi sites that I visited in my effort to try to understand how that could all happen (and how it might happen again) this, along with the “Topography of Terror” in Berlin, were the best organized, viewable, and informative. My decision to visit Nuremberg was heavily influenced by Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of Will, that I had seen a number of years ago. One thing that dominated my perception of that film was the power of architecture in mass influence, thus a main focus of my visit to the site was architecture. I thus do not provide any photos specific to the exhibit in the Documentation Center. Other than this establishing picture, which is out of order, the pictures for this section of my trip follow a walking tour of the rally grounds (Reichsparteitagsgelände) that begins at the documentation center (the right side of the Congress Hall), circles around the Hall, this lake, the Zeppelin Field, and ends up back near the starting point.

I had gone to Nuremberg to visit a museum of the Nazi past and related sites, and had not really planned on spending much time touring the city. But, like many other such planned visits, it turned out that the city itself was quite interesting. The old town section was just across from my motel and so I walked over there the first evening. My initial impression, other than the historic tower, was not great since the first thing you encounter is a Burger King. BUT, it turned out to be a very pleasant, architecturally interesting, historic, city. Note, though, that vast sections of Nuremberg were bombed out during WWII, thus many of the buildings are either reconstructions or significant restorations. Regarding its Nazi past, Nuremberg has done a very good job of acknowledging that at the Congress Hall that is outside of town (later photos). However, there was little readily visible acknowledgment in the old town section of places used in the annual Nazi rallies, though many of the sites that I photographed in old town do appear in Triumph of the Will, the Nazi propaganda film made by Leni Riefenstahl. Additional discussion of Triumph of the Will, and a link to the movie, will appear with later pictures of the Zeppelin field.

Any place with a very public promotion of marijuana can't be all bad :)

When I took this picture my focus was entirely on the tree and historic setting. Unfortunately I didn't know at the time that I was also seeing a famous statue. What, in this picture, appears to be a large glob to the lower left of the tree, is a statue of Albrecht Durer's Hare (rabbit). Just above the rabbit is an interesting figure (the town crier?) in gold.