‘Brutality in Stone’: the inhumanism of Nazi architecture
The rise of the Nazi Party during the 20th century was accompanied by severe changes in sociopolitical conditions and artistic censorship, alongside the unimaginable amounts of death and destruction. The fascistic foundations of the regime impacted every sphere, including contemporary German architecture, which played an important part in shaping the country’s international image. It is this complex image that Alexander Kluge and Peter Schamoni set out to deconstruct in Brutality in Stone.
Drawing inspiration from neoclassicism, rural styles and utilitarian ideology, Hitler had a very strange approach to architecture that informed most of the designs during his reign. Condemning modern art for its transgressive sensibilities and rejecting Bauhaus ideas, Nazi architecture tried to imitate the grandeur of ancient Greece and Roman monuments but miserably failed, ending up as grotesque caricatures of a dangerously fabricated sense of history.
“Every structure left to us by history expresses the spirit of its builder, even if later used for other purposes. The abandoned buildings of the Nazi Party serve as witnesses in stone to a time that played host to the most terrible events in German history,” the filmmakers warn at the start of Brutality in Stone. Made in 1961, during a period when New German Cinema was just beginning to find its identity, it’s a radically bold self-reflection.
Kluge and Schamoni examine the inhuman proportions of the buildings that grew like malignant tumours out of Nazi ideology, desecrating the landscapes with their magnitudes. These shots of the country’s violent legacy are paired with authoritarian speeches from that time, inviting the viewer to think deeply about what these structures represent and the men who built them. Brutality in Stone also features personal sketches by Hitler and his desire to rename cities and reshape history, filtering through to modern audiences as remnants of a horrifying “immortality project”.
It’s almost impossible to watch the film and not think of Judge Holden’s infamous words in Blood Meridian when he contemplates the ontological frameworks of ruins. These constructs will forever be marked by their inescapable history, by the “residue of a nameless rage”. The judge’s conclusion is strikingly applicable here: “Here are the dead fathers. Their spirit is entombed in the stone. It lies upon the land with the same weight and the same ubiquity.”
The directors trace the evolution of Nazi architecture from their origins to their inevitable conclusion, patiently capturing its disintegration and collapse. But these are scars that are not just made to the land but also to the fabric of time, permanently lingering under the surface of the present and the future as a constant reminder of humanity’s unabashed capacity for evil.
Watch the film below.
