coliseum

Big, huge, vast, impressive, intimidating, monumental, majestic, colossal. It's these terms that start spinning through my head when looking at the unfinished tons of brick and granite of the Congress Hall (German Kongresshalle) in Nuremberg. The often so called Coliseum has been designed by Franz and Ludwig Ruff in 1935 as part of Hitler's fantasy of a thousand year Reich. It's part of the Nazi Party Rally Ground (German Reichparteitagsgelände), a huge, only partly finished area at the outskirts of the city and was meant to house 50000 members of the Nazi Party during their annual Congresses. The advent of Word War II brought the construction to a halt in 1939.

coliseum 01 1/1376 s, f/2.2, ISO 20, 64 mm, iPhone 12 Pro Max

Today the building remains in its unfinished state, with 39 m it only reached about half the planned height of 70 m. The roof has never been finished. The great hall in the center remains an open space.

For decades there's an ongonig discussion of what to do with such a massive building. The sheer volume is just to big to ignore. In parts the building today houses a museum, there's a room for the philharmonic orchestra and since 2021 the construction of the new opera house has begun inside the huge interior. But all these new use cases are and feel like intermediates, they alone would never justify such a massive construction.

coliseum 02 1/747 s, f/2.2, ISO 20, 64 mm, iPhone 12 Pro Max

So whenever I get to the site my overwhelming feeling is often one of hybris and despair, also of decay, of lost dreams and lost hope. It's not a place to lift you up. It's an intimidating site, intimidating because humans have done this, not aliens. And humans could do this over and over again, with all the consequences, with all that brutality, with all that inhuman attitude.

Honestly I don't know what's worse, a warzone with all its ruins and destroyed buildings, destroyed by huge explosions, by weapons of mass destruction, by drones and bombs. Or a place like Nuremberg's Nazi Party Rally Ground where unfinished ambitions are preserved for decades and centuries, where the confrontation with the worst parts of human excellence is never ending. A warzone is finished at some point, it's done, it's allowed to become a thing of the past, cruelty and suffering have a chance to heal. This place in Nuremberg is forever real, forever existent. There is no horrible end, there's just this endless horror.

coliseum 03 1/1096 s, f/2.2, ISO 20, 64 mm, iPhone 12 Pro Max

I guess these kinds of overarching feelings and moods make this location so hard to describe and so hard to deal with. It's no wonder that it has become one of these forgotten places, these lost places, a place of demise and decay. Probably that's okay, probably it has to be like that. Europe and Germany have luckily turned into modern Western societies, they've become liberal, multifaceted, full of color and bright diversity. I'm forever thankful to be able to live under such incredibly privileged conditions. And it's this kindness, this forgiveness that allows us to leave such open questions unanswered, at least for now. Final often seems to be a dangerous word.

Maybe one of the most important lessons that we all can learn from old buildings is that healing takes time. Lots of time. Lock at all those old castles and churches all through Europe, at all those ancient landmarks all over the world, once signs of mighty power, now mundane tourist attractions. Maybe these are all very kind ways of healing. And maybe one day the Coliseum in Nuremberg will be once more inspired by the real one, the ultimate one, the unforgettable one, the majestic and intimidating one, the colossal one, the one in Rome. Tourists as healers, you're welcome.