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You can tell a lot about a national culture from its holidaymakers. How people act, away from home and on their free time can offer a glimpse as valuable as any number of films, plays or books. Head to the resorts on the Spanish coast and observe the young Brits or Germans at play, abroad and under the influence of alcohol. It might not tell the whole story about the respective nations but it shows at least, however much the Brits in particular might not like it, that there is not all that much difference between the two.
Binz, on the Baltic Sea island of Rügen, offers another, more sedate, impression of Germans on holiday. A picturesque resort of beach chairs, a promenade, plush sea-front hotels and back street guesthouses, well-tended flower beds and a mini train for the kids, plus numerous venues for afternoon Kaffee und Kuchen, this is a seaside holiday town not that far removed from its English counterparts. Binz however looks good for its age, which is more than can be said for Blackpool.
Along the coast from Binz is another stretch of sand and another collection of buildings built in a place of natural beauty for the purposes of an annual vacation. What you find here, however, is nothing like anything you can find in England, or the rest of Germany for that matter. And what it says about the nation has nothing to do with the culture of the present but of the past, and the question it raises of how to deal with it.
Pulling into the car park, all cracked tarmac and emerging weeds, there is no sense of the spectacular. From a ramshackle building to the left hangs a sign advertising ‘Rügen’s Largest Discotheque’. In front a six-storey block with the odd cracked window appears to be housing a youth hostel. Pine trees surround the car park, obscuring any view beyond about fifty metres. From here Prora does not seem to be anything much at all, just a few shabby-looking buildings and a lot of trees. Only the fact that you have to pay for the car park suggests that there might be something worth seeing.
There is. That block containing the youth is actually half a kilometre long, one of eight identical buildings that run along the coast in a steady arc for over a mile in either direction. On the other side is the Prora Wiek, one of Germany’s most beautiful beaches, and a wide expanse of the Baltic Sea. This is Prora, ‘Colossus of Rügen’, built by the Nazis as a retreat for the vacationing workers of the city. This is what a totalitarian holiday camp looks like.
Prora was supposed to be the first of five massive resorts built by the Nazis as part of the Kraft durch Freude (KdF – Strength through Joy) organisation, and was designed to house 20,000 visitors at any given moment. Putting the ‘social’ in National Socialism, the aims of the KdF were intrinsically linked to the overriding political and militaristic aims of the Nazi party. In the words of Robert Levy, head of the KdF: “Everything we do…all, all, all of it only serves this one aim to make people strong so that we can solve this most urgent problem. That we do not have enough land.” This was a place to rest and relax in preparation for war, as well as being a sop to the workers who had found their rights eroded and their organisations banned since Hitler and his cronies had come to power.
Behind the eight blocks that would house the German workers on holiday was to be a whole complex in which these aims could be fulfilled and joy could be organised. A gymnasium, swimming pool, concert hall and cinema would offer distractions beyond the more obvious appeals of the Prora Wiek. The centrepiece of the whole resort, which was never built, was to have been a Festivities Hall, large enough to hold all 20,000 visitors to Prora at the same time. The effect of a holiday here was to iron out individuality, to remind people that even in their free time they were just a very tiny part of an overriding, overseeing whole.
Beyond the blocks towards the sea is a strip of thick trees that hide the sand and water beyond. Combined with the natural curve of the coastline it means that looking along the row of buildings in either direction it is impossible to see where they end. It creates a feeling of unimportance, of being small. The buildings themselves may be rectangular and ugly but the overall effect is both impressive and awe-inspiring. Prora is so large that it can only be photographed in its entirety from the air.
A narrow path runs through the path to the three-mile sweep of the beach and the Baltic Sea beyond. Looking back, the blocks of Prora are hidden again by the trees; the only structure visible is the wide jetty that juts out into the bay. It was to be a docking point for the cruise ships of the KdF fleet, on route to the fjords of Norway or the warm waters of the Mediterranean. The fact that the blocks of Prora, unless you are up close to the buildings, are so often and suddenly hidden adds to the otherworldly feel of the place. In the winter, with the beach deserted, it is more than a little spooky.
The resort was designed by a man named Clemens Klotz, chosen by Albert Speer more for his party connections than any great talent, but his design – modern, functional, linear – fit the architectural mood of the time, and not just in Germany. It won the Grand Prix at the 1937 Paris World Exhibition despite the fact it was not, and would not be, completed. Work began in 1936 and would continue until 1939 when war interrupted and priorities changed. The accommodation blocks were completed but many of the other plans were shelved, as resources were re-directed to more urgent concerns. Following the war Rügen was in the DDR, and Prora was finally put to use, by the East German Army.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany there has been a debate over what to do with Prora. Protected by its listed status, the complex cannot be torn down. Renovating the insides whilst maintaining the integrity of the structures would cost a fortune, and although tourism is the most obvious use for the place, there is no guarantee that the public would feel comfortable taking their vacation in the Nazi’s holiday resort. The German government who owns Prora at one point considered a plan from a developer to turn the complex into a modern resort, although the fact that this would have doubled the number of available hotel beds on the island led to a protest from local hoteliers which in turn caused the project to be scrapped.
Prora is not entirely empty, however. Alongside the aforementioned disco and youth hostel, there are an eclectic mix of tenants in at least some of the buildings, including a number of museums such as the Prora Documentation Centre that houses an historical exhibition on the complex, a couple of bookshops, the odd Imbiss, art galleries, and a small honey manufacture. Rügen remains an extremely popular tourist destination for Germans, even in this era of cheap flights and package tours, and a visit to Prora is on the itinery for many of them.
Some people however, and despite its listed status, would like Prora to be demolished. They would prefer that this ‘eyesore’ was removed not only from the map – as it was in the DDR due to its military status – but completely from what is potentially one of the most lucrative pieces of beach front real estate anywhere in Germany. It would certainly make selling the place to developers less of a headache. But Prora is, alongside the Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, one of the largest examples of Nazi-era architecture in Germany, and as with the demolition of the Palast der Republic in Berlin, there seems to be something questionable about the idea of erasing the past because people don’t like what it represents through the use of a wrecking ball.
This is the question that Prora raises. Should a building, or collection of buildings, be destroyed because of who built them? On moral grounds there is perhaps an argument, but it seems as if the motivation would be more economic than anything else. After all, both the Tempelhof airport and the Olympic Stadium in Berlin are prime examples of the architecture of the Nazi era and they have remained in use since the end of the Second World War. So if not to demolish Prora, and the government can find no one to renovate it, then what should be done?
It takes about an hour to walk just half of Prora’s length and back again, and beyond the eccentric collection of enterprises at its heart the endless sameness of each half-kilometre block is reminiscent of those scenes in Scooby Doo, when the characters would run along a corridor passing the same plant, picture and window frame over and over again. Continually the sense of feeling small compared to the scale of the place washes over you. Herr Klotz certainly earned his money. Any length of time spent in the company of these buildings is both fascinating and uncomfortable, and as a way of showing – however small – how a totalitarian regime interacts with the individuals in society, it certainly makes an impact.
Perhaps being left as it is should be the aim of the government planners charged with deciding what to do with the Prora resort. At the same time they should extend that youth hostel, so that young people from all nationalities can come together at the Prora Wiek, giving a metaphorical two-fingered salute to those that built it and what it was to stand for.
More information on Prora can be found on the website of the Prora Documentation Centre at www.documentationszentrum-prora.de.
Copyright © 2006 Paul Scraton
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