Nürnberg

Last week I started working at my internship again, luckily though I had another week after my Mom and brothers had left. So I spent most of that week just resting, as stores and museums have some weird hours in the lead up to New Years. I visited a few antique shops around Stuttgart one day and picked up this world atlas from 1936.

I also found out that Canada is apparently world renowned for their burgers.

For New Years, I only had to go outside to see fireworks since people were setting them off in the streets. It was also kind of interesting going through New Years about three times, once for myself, another six hours later for my family in Atlanta, and then another one three hours later for my friend in California!

Since I still had time to do something, I decided to travel a bit before going back to work. Eventually I settled on going to Nuremberg, or Nürnberg in German. Since museum and shop schedules were mostly closed on New Years day, I decided to head up on Saturday morning and return Sunday night for work.

My journey began extremely early, it had to if I wanted to get on the 8:00 AM train. Once on the train though there wasn’t any trouble, except for the conductor having a bit of trouble scanning the ticket on my phone. After that was settled it was just a two and half hour train ride to Nürnberg HBF. There was a bomb scare in Munich’s train station for New Years so before our train arrived at the main Nürnberg station, we stopped to allow a few police to walk through the train.

Morning at Stuttgart HBF

Typical interior of a Deutsche Bahn train

Nürnberg HBF

After getting off of my train, I immediately got onto one of the S-Bahn trains heading south for my first stop in the city, Dutzendteich. Better known to the world as the site of the Nazi Party Rallies.

After I got off the train, my first site was this Burger King located inside a former power station for the rally grounds

Former power building turned Burger King

Then I headed over to the Zeppelin Field Grandstands, where the rallies actually took place. Today the grandstands are completely open to the public and serve as the stands for a racetrack and football field. The US actually used them for the latter until troops left Nürnberg in 1994. The stands are in an extreme state of disrepair due to years of neglect. There are actually signs saying "enter at your own risk" since there's a chance you'll be hit by masonry falling off the facade. Currently, there's an effort going on to assess the damage and eventually repair the grandstands since the surviving Nazi structures as they've been registered as historical buildings since the 1970's

Coming up on the back of the stands

This portion was fenced off as part of the restoration project

This door enters the halls inside the grandstand, which are closed to the public

So as someone who is very much into WW2 history, it was amazing seeing this monumental structure. Reading about Nazi architecture, the primary factor that gets brought up is the immensity of it and I don't think you really understand that fully until you see it person. Even with the columned galleries removed from the structure, it's an amazing sight to see.

After that I went over to Kongresshalle, located only a short distance away.

This was to be a meeting hall for the Nazi party, and it's size matches that. Only the outer structure was completed before the war, while the incomplete middle section would have been the actual meeting hall.

Incomplete interior

It was used for a variety of purposes after the war, and there was even a proposal in the 70's to repurpose the entire structure into a shopping mall. Today it holds a museum on the history of the Nazi party and serves as an education center for combating it. 

The museum's entrance is specifically designed to clash with the original architecture

Interior shot, what people would have walked through before entering the hall. The model is for a different stadium that was never built.

Exterior of the Kongresshalle

The museum was excellent and had a lot of information about the party's rallies in Nuremberg and the different buildings that were built around the site. It also mentioned that Hitler made most of his money off of the royalties from Mein Kampf, which I just discovered became public domain this year. Previously the state of Bavaria held the copyright as when Hitler committed suicide, his entire estate transferred to them. Germans do not mess around with copyrights.

After that I went over to what remains of the Lutipoldarena, which is not a lot. What was once this,

Is now a big park

The only portion that remains is the Ehrenhalle, Hall of Honor or that part in the foreground in the old picture, which is now a memorial to everyone who died at the hands of the Third Reich.

My next destination was the Hall of Justice, made famous for being the site where the Nuremberg trials took place.

Hall of Justice

The building, and in fact the Courtroom 600 where the trials took place, are still used for their original purposes, so the museum is located in the attic of the building. 

Inside the museum

The museum is thorough, maybe even to a fault, but it provided an extremely detailed timeline of the first Nuremberg trial and how the procedures were decided. They even listed the controversies regarding the accusations that the trials were unfair. There were a couple of artifacts from the trials, including the benches that the defendants sat on. Courtroom 600 was also open, luckily I came on a weekend when it wasn't in use.

Courtroom 600

It's pretty much unchanged since the trials. What amazed me was how small the room was, it was amazing that they managed to fit all the trial personnel in there, let alone an audience.

Back wall of the room, during the trial there was a balcony here

It was pretty late after I finished up in the courtroom, so I started heading to the hotel I reserved. I decided to try staying in a hostel near the train station, which was exactly what I expected. A bed and nothing else, which is all I really needed anyway.

I just put everything valuable in a safe and then left first thing in the morning. When I left I discovered that it had snowed a bit the previous night, and it was still coming down pretty heavily. 

Remains of the Christmas Market

My first stop for the day was the Imperial Palace, located at the highest point in the medieval section of Nuremberg. 

Imperial Palace

There I got some good views of the entire city from this watch tower, which was one of the few parts of the palace not destroyed during the war. 

View from the tower

I also got to see the well that the castle used, which is impressive because it's 50 meters deep through solid rock.

I then went to the Nuremberg toy museum, which I didn't really know a whole lot about going into really. The place was incredible though, having not only the toys that were originally made in Nuremberg, but an extremely detailed history of the evolution of different types of toys.

Toy version of the tower I was just in

Amazing how creative tin toys could get

It's equally amazing how creepy old toys can be

A steam powered brewery toy, possibly the most German toy in existence

Model train set of Omaha, Nebraska

Some of the original Lego toys

They also had a collection of toys made during the war years

Class warfare, maybe the most German board game. Though it probably has to share that title with Anti-Monopoly

They even mentioned video games! It's always nice to go to a museum and see that you own what's in one of the cases.

My last stop for the day was to the Kunstbunker, or art bunker. This is the location where all of the movable art of Nuremberg was stored during the war, in order to protect it from destruction from bombing. 

The bunker was built from existing cellars in the rock and expanded, this location was ideal since it goes right under the hill of solid rock that the Imperial palace is built on.

Blast doors to protect the art from bomb shockwaves

Hal with a couple examples of bombs that were dropped on the city

Along with just seeing the bunker, they listed some of the important objects that were stored here such as the Imperial Regalia from the Holy Roman Emperor. Albert Speer's original blueprints and documents for Party buildings were also stored here, along with art stolen from Poland. 

When I was done in the bunker, it was time to get to the train station for my train back to Stuttgart and my visit to Nuremberg was officially over. Overall it was a great city to visit and I'm glad I took the time to go there.