Nuremberg - City of the Nazi Party Rally

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• published: 27 Jul 2013
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Nuremberg held great significance during the Nazi Germany era. Because of the city's relevance to the Holy Roman Empire and its position in the centre of Germany, the Nazi Party chose the city to be the site of huge Nazi Party conventions -- the Nuremberg rallies. The rallies were held 1927, 1929 and annually 1933-1938 in Nuremberg. After Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933 the Nuremberg rallies became huge Nazi propaganda events, a centre of Nazi ideals. At the 1935 rally, Hitler specifically ordered the Reichstag to convene at Nuremberg to pass the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws which revoked German citizenship for all Jews. A number of premises were constructed solely for these assemblies, some of which were not finished. Today many examples of Nazi architecture can still be seen in the city. I have been toying with the idea of doing this video for almost two years. After I had made my "Welthauptstadt Germania" video ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOXmrVR00RI ) in August 2011, it was the obvious, logical step to do a video about my hometown Nuremberg and the Nazi Party Rally. I thought I would do this after I had completed several other videos, I've started but alas time and leisure doing so, are always a problem. Nevertheless things became more concrete when I got the book "Bauen in Nürnberg" by Michael Diefenbacher for Christmas. It revealed the whole scale of the Nazi's construction plans for Nuremberg, especially the changes in and around the medieval downtown which was rather surprising for me. I didn't go deeper into the organisation since this would have elongated my still very long video and it would have slowed down the pacing and therefore might have caused boredom. After all I still want to inform and entertain. And I wanted to complete this video before I lose my drive as I did with my other unfinished projects. I didn't include the transfer of the Imperial Regalia and Leni Riefenstahl's movies on purpose, the first one because it is simply a footnote, the second one because this subject would demand for an own video. But, since I didn't just want to list up buildings and their data, I also included a small history of the rallies, e.g. background, course of action, necessities and atrocities connected to it. The latter one was a personal necessity for me because I wanted to show that next to the bright veneer of the Third Reich, there is also the barbaric, inhumane reality of the war, forced labour and the extermination of humans considered to be subhuman. People far too often overlook the connection to this greater context. Making this video was surprisingly quick. The script of 10 pages was written within two weeks - with interruptions of course. I have a life, too! Damned! My work was simplified by dividing the text into several units of meaning for which I searched specific pictures which I built into a segment for this video, e.g. one segment solely about the course of action of the rallies (05:26 -- 07:42 ) with the next segment solely about the refurbishment of downtown Nuremberg added to the preceding one ( 07:42 -- 11:38 ). With this method, the video was completed within another two weeks - with interruptions of course. The music was quickly chosen, too, since Wagner conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch worked pretty well for my Germania video. And finally I want to thank German television for its dull, unimaginative and painful program which gave me the strength and time to execute this project. I hope you enjoy the result