Architecture and the Nazi Cultural Landscape

<p>This book traces cultural landscape as the manifestation of the state and national community under the Nazi regime and how the Nazi era produced what could be referred to as a totalitarian cultural landscape.</p><p>For the Nazi regime cultural landscape was indeed a heritage resource but it was much more than that: cultural landscape <i>was</i> the nation. The project of Nazi racial purification and cultural renewal demanded the physical reshaping and reconceptualization of the existing environment to create the so-called new Nazi cultural landscape. One of the most important components of this was a set of monumental sites thought to embody blood and soil beliefs through the harmonious synthesis of architecture and landscape. This special group of landscape-bound architectural complexes was interconnected by the new autobahn highway system itself thought to be a monumental work embedded in nature. Behind this intentionally aestheticized view of the nation as cultural landscape lay the all-pervasive system of deception and violence that characterized the emerging totalitarian state.</p><p>This is the first historical study to consider the importance of these monumental sites together with the autobahn as evidence of key Nazi cultural and geographic strategies during the pre-war years. This book concludes by examining racial and nationalistic themes underlying cultural landscape concepts today against this historic background.</p>