The Architects' Debate:Architectural Discourse and the Memory of Nazism in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1977-1997

Abstract

The ten-year anniversary of the Historians' Debate provides an opportu nity not only for revisiting the most famous controversy over the Nazi past in recent years but for examining another important, if less well known, struggle over memory from the same period. Nearly a decade before German historians became embroiled in the Historikerstreit, German architects and architectural critics were engaged in a less publicized but equally heated controversy which can justifiably be termed the Debate. Like the Historians' Debate, the Architects' Debate erupted over the sensitive question of whether the Nazi past should maintain its exceptional status or acquire a normalized place in German consciousness and identity. In the same way that German historians argued about the proper place of the Third Reich in the overall sweep of German history, German architects argued about the Nazi era's lessons for the present and future architectural development of the Federal Republic. Unlike the quarrel among the historians, which ended a decade ago, however, recent architectural controversies in Berlin reveal that the Architects' Debate has persisted into the present. And yet, in light of the similarities between the two controversies, the continuation of the Architects' Debate suggests that the Historians' Debate, at least in some of its core aspects, may not be completely over either. Although it began over a decade ago, the Historikerstreit and its significance for German memory of the Third Reich can be better appreciated by