‘Touristic Intents’ Ponders the ‘Guilt’ of Buildings with Difficult Histories
Image of an abandoned building at Prora, Binz, Germany, from Touristic Intents. Film still courtesy First Run Features
Arguing about how and whether to conserve historic buildings can often get complicated. But wrangling over preservation versus redevelopment gets thorny when one side must qualify its position about the future of a space by stating, with zero hyperbole, “We’re not renovating a concentration camp.”
Courtesy First Run Features
That’s how one developer defends his plans for two sections of Prora, an infamous seaside resort complex on northeast Germany’s Isle of Rügen, in Mat Rappaport’s documentary Touristic Intents. The 75-minute film, which first premiered at the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam and is now available on streaming services and physical media, asks the provocative—though not exactly novel—question, “Can a building be guilty?” It’s not something we often confront in the United States, but it’s a fact of life in Germany, where countless structures were conceived, initiated, and completed by the Nazi Party. But unlike Albert Speer’s Nuremberg Rally Grounds or the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, where the story and history about these explicitly Nazi spaces is clear, the narrative around what was begun on the Baltic Sea with Prora isn’t so straightforward.
Period illustration of Prora. Courtesy First Run Features
Like most Nazi architecture, Prora is monumental. A ribbon of five identical blocks of resort lodgings, each a kilometer-long and five stories high line a stretch of prime beachfront property. A project of the Nazi organization Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy), it was intended as a leisure palace and place of respite for the Reich’s working class and poor, meant to accommodate 20,000 vacationers.
It was designed by Clemens Klotz, a Bauhaus-trained architect whose “semi-modern” and “watered-down Modernism," as described by historians in the film, allowed him to work in a regime violently antagonistic toward the “degenerate art” of true Modernists. His original concept for the site included a never-realized Neoclassical central plaza, in line with Adolf Hitler’s preferred architectural style. (Klotz won a Grand Prix at the 1937 Paris World Exhibition for his Prora model.)
The first stone was laid on May 2, 1936; construction finally began in April 1938—with work done by enslaved labor; Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939; and the war was on. The Nazis never completed the project, and no tourists ever visited despite staged photos placed in Reich newspapers. What was erected, however, became a military site used to house police battalions—including those that guarded trains bound for Auschwitz. After the war, the German Democratic Republic—East Germany—took control, completed more of the project, and, again, used it primarily as barracks. After the Cold War, Prora was abandoned and fell into disrepair.
Film still Courtesy First Run Features
Touristic Intents is a fantastic history of a project that likely few outside Germany know. A significant part of the film’s focus is providing context and debunking myths about Prora. No, it was never a secret Communist submarine base; yes, some people vacationed there when it was under GDR control; no, the Nazis never intended to build a leisure-for-leisure’s sake resort—it was always meant to prepare Germans in mind, body, and spirit for the coming war. (It gets bogged down, though, in a discussion about Henry Ford, his ideas about working class leisure, and the Nazis’ fetishization of Ford’s philosophies.) But the film’s primary concern is what’s happening to Prora now, and how that history impacts, or doesn’t, what’s getting built. And in this, viewers will find familiar conflicts.
Film still courtesy First Run Features
On one side are historians and cultural institutions committed to preserving Prora as a site of memory and truth; on the other are developers who see an enormous investment opportunity. A 500-bed hostel occupies a section of one building; a visitors center and archive are located in parts of others. Some sections of the complex are little more than ruins. But the buildings in the best shape at Prora have been bought and transformed into condos. Ulrich Busch, the developer who insists they’re not dealing with a concentration camp, says he purchased two blocks in 2006 for $360,000. Today, some units sell for that much. His pitch to potential buyers: “You can make money. You can make history. And you can be part of history.” But how is that last part possible, the preservationists argue, if Prora is altered beyond recognition by the addition of not-in-plan balconies and out-of-context paint and roofing? “You cannot have the building without the ideology” and violence of the Nazis, one historian argues.
Looking for quick answers on architecture and design topics?
Try Ask RECORD, our new smart AI search tool.
Ask RECORD →
Film still courtesy First Run Features
Prora has a legacy of forced labor and militarism, and it was part of a larger Nazi architectural program where everything—from homes to government buildings—was propaganda. But, indeed, it’s not a concentration camp. It’s not even a site of bureaucracy. What do we do with a building like that? How do we square the object, its legacy of oppression, and the system that birthed it with current needs, preservation, and memory?
We hear “Nazi building” and we think we know how we’d respond to those questions. But, like the one about guilt at the center of the film, Touristic Intents proves there are no easy answers.
Looking for a reprint of this article?
From high-res PDFs to custom plaques, order your copy today!
