Building the Cathedral of Democracy: Frankfurt’s Paulskirche in Hitler’s Shadow

Abstract

Abstract After Nazi horrors disgraced German nationalism, Frankfurt’s Paulskirche became an ideal monument through which to redeem the German nation. In 1848, the first democratic German parliament convened here to debate the contours of a united, politically liberal German nation-state, only to be dispersed by reactionary forces. In 1944, the Paulskirche burned. Out of this shell, postwar politicians, intellectuals and architects fashioned a veritable ‘cathedral of democracy’ in which to celebrate the ‘better Germany’ now reborn. This article analyses formative issues at stake as the ruin was reconstructed into a sacred site for national identity after Hitler. At the same time that the Paulskirche provoked debates about whether modernist or traditional architectural styles were properly ‘democratic’ or represented an ‘authoritarian’ false path after Hitler, onlookers were disturbed that though few of the architects had been party members, most had worked for Hitler, deployed an aesthetic reminiscent of Nazism and applied tyrannical planning methods. For the greater good of ‘German democracy’, the city also confiscated the church from its Protestant congregation. Subsequent feuds about whether the Paulskirche should keep its 1948 aesthetics or be retrofitted to look as it had in 1848 served as ideological ‘events’ that once more questioned what the ‘German nation’ should represent after Hitler. At a time of overwhelming material suffering, Germans poured resources and energy into proving in physical space that Germany had a democratic past, present and future. However, debates about how that democratic tradition should architecturally manifest itself conjured shadows from the Nazi past.