Even devil minds needs a rest.
The Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude) resort of Prora, on the Isle of Rügen, was planned in the mid-1930s to the designs of Clemens Klotz. It the largest in the world at nearly three miles long, stretching in a sandy arc along the Baltic Sea.
But Prora would never become civil. Its use has been largely military, first as a training camp for the Nazi military police.
The Third Reich destroyed many cities, but it never built one. It began some – notably the industrial city of Wolfsburg – and it planned many others. But mostly, its ideas about what they called the Volksgemeinschaft (“people’s community”) went unrealised. With one exception: the Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude) resort of Prora, on the Isle of Rügen.
Its architecture has none of the colorful style of the Ibiza or Hawaii. It has chilling machine aesthetic. Complete lack of sentimental details.
Now this '' Shining - Overlook hotel'' resorts awaiting for its new residents. The Strength Through Joy resort is for sale.
The first civilian use for Prora, in the late 1990s, was for a YMCA in one of the eight mindbendingly long blocks.
The youth hostel was recently renovated, but other blocks have been sold to developers. Some of these are being renovated, some are being stripped back to their concrete frames for the same purpose, but walk along the sandy beach and you’ll find that one huge long block has been transformed, its dun concrete painted and gleaming glass balconies added; two others are undergoing a transformation into the same.
The units in Block 1 have been on sale now since 2016, and they cost between £300,000 and £600,000. Most have now been sold.
It’s much like any contemporary luxury apartment, with sleek kitchens and glass balconies. The flats are aimed at the typical German luxury clientele – middle aged, wealthy, seldom from the local area.
Units are advertised on the promise that the buyer can be beside “one of the most beautiful beaches in Baltics at any time”. It is striking, visiting Prora, how normal the imagery put out by the property companies is. You could be anywhere. But of course you are not – you’re in the largest built relic of Nazi Era, a place where ''Sauron's Army'' were trained.
For Katja Lucke, who works at the Prora Documentation Centre museum, Prora offers “a chance to explain National Socialist ideology and to experience it, because one can see it”. Given how similar Prora now seems to many modern resorts, it also makes clear how certain Nazi ideas about mass tourism became “normal”, albeit in a different form.
Sourse: Hitler's holiday camp: how the sprawling resort of Prora met a truly modern fate
The Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude) resort of Prora, on the Isle of Rügen, was planned in the mid-1930s to the designs of Clemens Klotz. It the largest in the world at nearly three miles long, stretching in a sandy arc along the Baltic Sea.
But Prora would never become civil. Its use has been largely military, first as a training camp for the Nazi military police.
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| The Prora resort on the Isle of Rügen under construction in 1939 |
Commissioned by KdF, the leisure organisation operated by Robert Ley’s German Labour Front, Prora was planned in the mid-1930s to the designs of Clemens Klotz and substantially built before the outbreak of the second world war.
Prora was the first modern holiday resort, decades before the coasts of Ibiza and Hawaii have been filled with deck chairs.Its architecture has none of the colorful style of the Ibiza or Hawaii. It has chilling machine aesthetic. Complete lack of sentimental details.
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| Prora under construction in the 1930s. |
Now this '' Shining - Overlook hotel'' resorts awaiting for its new residents. The Strength Through Joy resort is for sale.
 |
| '' Shining - Overlook hotel'' Prora, with its painted concrete and gleaming glass balconies. |
The first civilian use for Prora, in the late 1990s, was for a YMCA in one of the eight mindbendingly long blocks.
The youth hostel was recently renovated, but other blocks have been sold to developers. Some of these are being renovated, some are being stripped back to their concrete frames for the same purpose, but walk along the sandy beach and you’ll find that one huge long block has been transformed, its dun concrete painted and gleaming glass balconies added; two others are undergoing a transformation into the same.
The units in Block 1 have been on sale now since 2016, and they cost between £300,000 and £600,000. Most have now been sold.
It’s much like any contemporary luxury apartment, with sleek kitchens and glass balconies. The flats are aimed at the typical German luxury clientele – middle aged, wealthy, seldom from the local area.
Units are advertised on the promise that the buyer can be beside “one of the most beautiful beaches in Baltics at any time”. It is striking, visiting Prora, how normal the imagery put out by the property companies is. You could be anywhere. But of course you are not – you’re in the largest built relic of Nazi Era, a place where ''Sauron's Army'' were trained.
For Katja Lucke, who works at the Prora Documentation Centre museum, Prora offers “a chance to explain National Socialist ideology and to experience it, because one can see it”. Given how similar Prora now seems to many modern resorts, it also makes clear how certain Nazi ideas about mass tourism became “normal”, albeit in a different form.
Sourse: Hitler's holiday camp: how the sprawling resort of Prora met a truly modern fate
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