The Reich Chancellery was the traditional name of the office of the
Chancellor of Germany in the period of the German Reich from 1871 to 1945. The
Chancellery's seat from 1875 was the former city palace of Prince Antoni
Radziwiłł on Wilhelmstraße in Berlin. Both the palace and a new Reich
Chancellery building were seriously damaged during World War II and
subsequently demolished. Today the office of the German
chancellor is usually called Kanzleramt, or more formally Bundeskanzleramt. The
latter is also the name of the new seat of the Chancellor's Office, completed in
2001. Old Reich Chancellery
When the military alliance of the North German Confederation was reorganised as
a federal state with effect from July 1, 1867, the office of a Federal Chancellor
was implemented at Berlin and staffed with the Prussian Prime Minister Otto
von Bismarck. After the unification of Germany on January 18, 1871 by accession
of the South German states, Bismarck became Reich Chancellor of the new
German Empire. In 1869 the Prussian state government
had acquired the Rococo city palace of late Prince Radziwiłł on Wilhelmstraße
No. 77, which from 1875 was refurbished as the official building of the
Chancellery. It was inaugurated with the meetings of the Berlin Congress in July
1878, followed by the Congo Conference in 1884.
In the days of the Weimar Republic the Chancellery was significantly enlarged
by the construction of a Modern southern annex finished in 1930. In 1932/33,
while his nearby office on Wilhelmstraße No. 73 was renovated, the building also
served as the residence of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, where he
appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor on 30 January 1933. The Hitler Cabinet held
few meetings here. In 1935 the architects Paul Troost and Leonhard Gall
redesigned the interior as Hitler's domicile. They also added a large
reception hall/ballroom and conservatory, officially known as the
Festsaal mit Wintergarten in the garden area. The latter addition was unique
because of the large cellar that led a further one-and-a-half meters down to an
air-raid shelter known as the Vorbunker. Once completed in 1936, it was
officially called the "Reich Chancellery Air-Raid Shelter" until 1943, with the
construction to expand the bunker complex with the addition of the
Führerbunker, located one level below. The two bunkers were connected by a
stairway set at right angles which could be closed off from each other.
Devastated by air raids and the Battle of Berlin, the ruins of the Old Reich
Chancellery were not cleared until 1950. New Reich Chancellery
In late January 1938, Adolf Hitler officially assigned his favourite
architect Albert Speer to build the New Reich Chancellery around the corner on
Voßstraße, a western branch-off of Wilhelmstraße, requesting that the
building be completed within a year. Hitler commented that Bismarck's Old
Chancellery was "fit for a soap company" but not suitable as headquarters of a
Greater German Reich. It nevertheless remained his official residence with its
recently refurbished representation rooms on the ground floor and private
rooms on the upper floor where Hitler lived in the so-called Führerwohnung.
Old and New Chancellery shared the large garden area with the underground
Führerbunker, where Hitler committed suicide at the end of April 1945.
Speer claimed in his autobiography that he completed the task of clearing the
site, designing, constructing, and furnishing the building in less than a
year. In fact, preliminary planning and versions of the designs were already
being worked on as early as 1935. To clear the space for the New Reich
Chancellery, the buildings on the northern side of Voßstraße No. 2–10 had
already been demolished in 1937. Hitler placed the entire northern side
of the Voßstraße at Speer's disposal assigning him the work of creating grand
halls and salons which "will make an impression on people". Speer was given a
blank cheque — Hitler stated that the cost of the project was immaterial — and
was instructed that the building be of solid construction and that it be
finished by the following January in time for the next New Year diplomatic
reception to be held in the new building.
Over 4,000 workers toiled in shifts, so the work could be accomplished
round-the-clock. The immense construction was "finished" 48 hours
ahead of schedule, and the project earned Speer a reputation as a good
organiser, which, combined with Hitler's fondness for Speer played a part in the
architect becoming Armaments Minister and a director of forced labour during
the war. Speer recalls that the whole work force — masons, carpenters,
plumbers, etc. were invited to inspect the finished building. Hitler then
addressed the workers in the Sportpalast. However, interior fittings
dragged on well into the early 1940s. In the end it cost over 90 Million
Reichsmark, well over one billion dollars today, and hosted the ministries
of the Reich. In his memoirs, Speer described the
impression of the Reichskanzlei on a visitor:
The series of rooms comprising the approach to Hitler's reception gallery
were decorated with a rich variety of materials and colours and totalled 220 m
in length. The gallery itself was 145 m long. Hitler's own office was 400 square
meters in size. From the outside, the chancellery had a stern, authoritarian
appearance. From the Wilhelmplatz, guests would enter the Chancellery
through the Court of Honour. The building's main entrance was flanked by
two bronze statues by sculptor Arno Breker: "Wehrmacht" and "Partei". Hitler
is said to have been greatly impressed by the building and was
uncharacteristically free in his praise for Speer, lauding the architect as a
"genius". The chancellor's great study was a particular favourite of the
dictator. The big marble-topped table served as an important part of the Nazi
leader's military headquarters, the study being used for military
conferences from 1944 on. On the other hand, the Cabinet room was never used
for its intended purpose. The New Reich Chancellery was badly
damaged during the Battle of Berlin in April 1945. After World War II ended,
the remains in what was now East Berlin were demolished by orders of the Soviet
occupation forces. Parts of the building's marble walls were said to be
used to build the Soviet war memorial in Treptower Park or to renovate the nearby
war-damaged Mohrenstraße U-Bahn station. Some of the red marble was used in the
palatial Underground stations in Moscow. Also a heater from Hitler's rooms was
placed in a Protestant hospital. While the western half of the premises
were seized for the "death strip" of the Berlin Wall in 1961, a Plattenbau
apartment block and a kindergarten were built on the eastern corner with
Wilhelmstraße in the 1980s. Gallery
See also German Chancellery
Führerbunker Nazi architecture
Vorbunker Welthauptstadt Germania
References and citations = General=
Speer, Albert. Inside the Third Reich. New York: Macmillan. LCCN 70-119132.
Kellerhoff, Sven Felix. Berlin unterm Hakenkreuz. Berlin: Berlin Edition
be.bra Verlag GmbH. ISBN 978-3-8148-0147-6.
Allied Intelligence Map of Key Buildings in Berlin
Further reading Lehrer, Steven. The Reich Chancellery
and Führerbunker Complex: An Illustrated History of the Seat of the Nazi Regime.
McFarland. p. 214. ISBN 0-7864-2393-5. Lehrer, Steven. Hitler Sites: A
City-by-city Guidebook. McFarland. p. 224. ISBN 0-7864-1045-0.
Taylor, Blaine. Hitler's Headquarters: From Beer Hall to Bunker, 1920–1945.
Cowdery, Ray and Josephine. The New German Reichschancellery 1938–1945.
Schönberger, Angela. Die Neue Reichskanzlei Von Albert Speer. Zum
Zusammenhang von nationalsozialistischer Ideologie und Architektur. Berlin:
Berlin: Gebr. Mann. Scobie, Alex. Hitler's State
Architecture: The Impact of Classical Antiquity. University Park and London:
Pennsylvania State University Press. Taylor, Robert. The Word in Stone. The
Role of Architecture in the National Socialist Ideology. Berkeley: University
of California Press. Speer, Albert. Die Neue Reichskanzlei /
Architekt Albert Speer. München: Eher Verlag.
Neubauer, Christoph. Stadtführer durch Hitlers Berlin. Frankfurt: Flashback
Medienverlag. ISBN 978-3-9813977-0-3. Neubauer, Christoph: Die Reichskanzlei –
Architektur der Macht, Band 1. Chr. Neubauer Verlag, Großschönau 2014, ISBN
978-3-9813977-1-0. Documentary
Ruins of the Reich DVD R.J. Adams Hitlers Berlin 3D – Die Reichskanzlei
Interaktiv DVD. Flashback Medien UG, 978-3-9813977-4-1.
"Albert Speer's New Reich Chancellery" DVD
25fps-filmproduction GmbH & Co. KG External links
Photographs of the Reich Chancellery Animation of the Reich Chancellery
3D-stereoscopic images of Chancellery Website with photographs of the Reich
Chancellery Website of the German History Museum
with photographs and information Photographs of the Reich Chancellery