Prora: The Nazi 'resort' for nerves of steel

That Nazism wanted to be a utopia is a finding as chilling as it is true.

To endure,

.

This explains why Hitler's utopia had dark sides and bright sides: imprisonment of dissidents but construction of highways;

annihilation of democracy but garden cities;

death to the Israelite but paid vacations.

It was an effective juxtaposition, because at the same time that it channeled the human instinct of destruction, it attended to the search, no less human, for well-being.

, far from being in contradiction,

Like all utopias, the Nazi was territorial.

The Führer dreamed of a Germany spread over the vast Ukrainian fields.

Some fields that the inferior races would work and on which endless highways would be laid to connect the new hygienic cities where the subjects of the Reich would live happily.

In every city there would be a park;

in each house, a garden;

in every garage, a Volkswagen Beetle.

.

Life on horseback of death.

Since its purpose was not so much the improvement of each German as the perfecting of the Germanic race, the Nazi utopia was confused from the beginning with eugenics.

On the one hand, the harsh eugenics of the elimination of Jews, Gypsies, cripples and the mentally ill.

On the other, the soft eugenics of the

.

That the last was not the least important was made clear by Hitler himself: "It is necessary for the worker to recover during his vacations. I want a people with nerves of steel."

The Führer thought of the nerves of steel in those hard bodies that Nazi magazines exhibited, Aryan mountaineering films showed, or Leni Riefenstahl's documentaries idealized.

Hard bodies and nerves of steel that became the obsession of scrupulously managed state organizations, such as that

, whose objective was the promotion of mountaineering, hiking, the popular car and the beach rest.

In other words, the type of leisure to which democracies such as France, where a pioneering paid vacation law had been enacted in 1936, aspired. from

the work is beautiful

At the head of the Kraft durch Freude was Robert Ley, head of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront, the single trade union, and other organizations such as the Schönheit der Arbeit ("Beauty of Work").

Seen from the Nazi perspective, the choice of location could not have been more convenient.

It was not only an enclave with a mild climate and excellent beaches;

it was a real Germanic place.

At the height of nationalism, Caspar David Friedrich had painted the white Cretaceous formations of the island.

Another romantic, Carl Gustav Carus, had described its mighty cliffs and dense forests.

Later, writers like Elisabeth von Arnim had made Rügen the protagonist of a novel.

And in the hard times of World War I, architects such as Bruno Taut had wanted to make that territory a kind of bright and colorful work of landart.

Although the Nazis took advantage of Rügen's imaginary, their utopia was hardly romantic.

, so rigid, so Soviet.

Far from evoking the presumed German national architecture -cubic bodies, sloping roofs-, the Nazi resort was conceived as an endless block aligned with Prora beach for four kilometers.

whose colossalism, a priori so Nazi, responded to a rather trivial hygienic purpose: that German workers had views of the Baltic and enjoyed the sun and the wind.

But not everything would be for the body.

In their efforts to strengthen their muscles and calm their nerves, the workers would be immersed in the clean air and purifying waters, but they would also

that would open onto a large plaza flanked by billowing Nazi flags.

Nothing would be left to chance in the project of creating the "new German man."

The man with a hard body, nerves of steel and a brainwashed brain who would soon demonstrate his abilities as a soldier of the Third Reich.

The charms of the largest island in Germany

Rügen is the largest island in Germany, with about 900 square kilometers (about the size of Lanzarote) in area.

Known by the Romans as Rugia, it is home to 77,000 inhabitants, spread between the capital (Bergen) and the spa towns of Sassnitz or Binz.

The island is also home to Jasmund National Park, famous for its white limestone cliffs.

The war, in effect, summoned the soldiers, at the same time that it led the Nazi vacation city to have very different uses from those foreseen by its architect, the very Nazi Clemens Klotz.

and, after the great bombings of 1944, welcomed thousands of refugees from devastated Hamburg.

Then, not knowing quite what to do with it, the East German authorities left it to the army so that the soldiers could train - real bombs and demolitions involved - in urban guerrilla tactics.

With the reunification of 1991, the controversy arose: while some proposed the complete destruction of the enclave, others proposed the change of use or, rather, the recovery of the original use.

The latter triumphed, and

In the unlikely event that you want to spend your holidays in the Baltic, all you have to do is rent a room at the refurbished resort.

It will strengthen his body, without a doubt, but in return he will pay the price of receiving a nocturnal visit from the Nazi lares, guardians of the site.

Isn't that another way to calm your nerves?

TOTALITARIAN HOLIDAYS (II)

Artek, soviet vacation

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