12th September 1938
'Der Deutsche Hof'

'Der Deutsche Hof'

Frauentorgraben, Nuremberg

The Deutscher Hof, built between 1912 and 1913 on Nuremberg’s Frauentorgraben.

Adolf Hitler officially chose the Deutscher Hof as his personal 'headquarters' from 1933. His frequent presence – he resided at the Hotel Deutscher Hof on every visit to Nuremberg starting in 1920 – is indirectly owed to the Lehrerheim Association. The association demonstrated a keen sense of business when, after several unsuccessful appointments, it signed a lease with the enterprising war veteran Johannes Klein. Politically, however, the native Alsatian was positioned far to the right even by the standards of the time and was involved in völkisch-nationalist circles, which gained momentum after World War I.

Given these connections, it is not surprising that the NSDAP coveted the Deutscher Hof. Hitler’s compliant henchman, the Nuremberg Mayor Willy Liebel, described the situation in 1935 to the director of Siemens-Schuckert-Werke, Oskar Ritter von Petri, in these words:

'Tradition plays such a decisive role for the Führer and the party that the Hotel Deutscher Hof will not only remain the Führer’s Nuremberg residence for all time, but that the party itself also attaches great importance to becoming the owner and landlord of this hotel in the planned expanded form.'

With the support of the Middle Franconian Gauleiter Julius Streicher, the NSDAP indeed managed to take ownership of the Deutscher Hof in 1935. Whether the Lehrerheim Association agreed to the sale voluntarily or under duress is unknown. At least the teachers were allowed to continue using their club house as tenants. Ironically, things turned out badly for the staunchly right-wing tenant: a specially founded operating company took over the management of the hotel and its gastronomy and sidelined Johannes Klein.

With the 'planned expanded form', Liebel referred to the acquisition of the neighbouring property to the west, the Nuremberg administrative headquarters of Siemens-Schuckert-Werke. The Nazis also seized this magnificent building, completed in 1923 according to plans by Hans Hertlein. In exchange, Siemens-Schuckert received three plots of land at what is now Richard-Wagner-Platz, where the Sigmund Schuckert House was built by 1940. Between 1936 and 1937, Hitler had the extension of the Deutscher Hof rebuilt in the style of austere neoclassicism according to plans by Franz Ruff and equipped with a balcony. From this 'Führer’s balcony' the dictator henceforth reviewed parades on the Frauentorgraben during the Reich Party Days. This was only beneficial for the media staging of the Führer, as in previous years Hitler had to lean out of his room window in the old building to be seen by the cheering crowds (and cameras).

Thus, the Deutscher Hof, along with the neighbouring opera house, became an integral part of the choreography of the Reich Party Days.

During the renovation, the decorative elements of the 'old' Deutscher Hof also had to be sacrificed: the two porticos with their crowning concrete sculptures and the naked putto sitting on the corner terrace at the junction of Lessingstraße had to be removed without replacement. The domed roof turret of the Lessing Halls – which served as the outlet of the ventilation system – became a victim of material deliveries to the armaments industry during World War II due to its sheet metal cladding.

When the British bombing rained down on Nuremberg’s Old Town and Tafelhof on 2nd January 1945, high-explosive bombs hit the junction of Lessingstraße and Frauentorgraben. They destroyed the north wing of the opera house. At the old building of the Deutscher Hof, they tore away the entire corner of the building down to the basement, and the new building burned out. The writer and teacher Fritz Nadler witnessed the downfall:

'It was a clear autumn day. The sirens wailed in the early afternoon. Then the bombers came. For only twenty minutes, the explosions roared during this first day of major attack. […] Bombs had also fallen on the ‘Ring’, trams were lifted off the tracks, piled up and shattered into each other. Flames licked out of a hundred windows of the ‘Führer’s hotel’. A devilishly black column of smoke rose to the cloudless sky, from which the sun, glowing red as if drenched in blood, shone down on the inferno […].'

As the former property of the NSDAP, the Deutscher Hof passed into the ownership of the Free State of Bavaria after the war. Until 1949, the Nuremberg teachers fought for the rear building of the old building – with success. The new building, however, remained state-owned and served as the seat of the Federal Employment Office and the city’s employment office after its reconstruction.

Source: Sebastian Gulden, https://jd-kielkowski.com/

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