NAZI BEACH RESORT RUIN TRANSFORMS INTO LUXURY PLAYGROUND
One of the biggest relics left behind by the Nazis is undergoing a radical transformation on a German island, harnessing a property boom to become a luxury tourist destination.
Developers are now bringing to life the hulking grey ruin at Prora where Adolf Hitler failed to realise his dream of a giant beachfront indoctrination camp.
The planned resort has once again entangled economic interests with historical memory in Germany, where the past looms large at evocative sites across the country and a generation of survivors is dying off. The original complex was intended for up to 20,000 Germans as part of the Third Reich’s so-called Strength Through Joy propaganda programme, whose other lasting achievement was the Volkswagen Beetle “people’s car”.
Recreation and hearty exercise would have been coupled with on-site ideological teaching to build loyalty to the Nazis and strong racial identity among the “Aryan” working class.
Building started in 1936 but halted with the onset of World War II in 1939, leaving a concrete skeleton known as the Colossus of Prora stretching 4.5 kilometres (2.8 miles) down one of Germany’s most stunning beaches.
Under East Germany’s communist state, the camp served as military barracks so secretive that they did not appear on travel maps.
EERIE RELIC: “This is a site that quintessentially stands for both the Nazi and the communist eras, where you can gain a more complete picture of how both systems worked,” the director of one of two Prora museums, Susanna Misgajski, said.
“Military conscripts, prisoners of war, forced labourers, refugees – they were all in Prora at various points.”
Since the regime’s collapse in 1989, the complex continued to crumble.
After years of false starts, four of the eight original uniform six-storey blocks are being developed.
A fifth went to the cash-strapped regional government, which allowed a youth hostel to open in 2011 and now aims to sell it off entirely. Blocks six and seven belong to a shadowy company from Liechtenstein. The Soviets blew up block eight. The Prora Solitaire complex opened this summer complete with a creamcoloured facade, glass-fronted balconies, swish apartments and an on-site spa.
The new look is targeted at moneyed urbanites, with a ramshackle art gallery and the down-at-the-heel “Miami” nightclub now gradually giving way to a hipster burger joint and a bakery serving latte macchiato. “On the one hand there’s an interest in maintaining it as a memorial,” said sales representative Werner Jung of Irisgerd real estate, which is building the neighbouring 270-flat Neues Prora (New Prora).
“And on the other there are the interests of the investors who have put a lot of money into this and want to see something for it. I think it’s a pretty good compromise.” The company bought its block for 2.75 million euros ($3.1 million) in 2012 and put about 88 million euros into the renovation.
ENDURING AWE: But opinions are divided about the dramatic changes, which are expected to be completed by 2022.
“We have enough memorials in Germany,” said Karsten Rarrasch, 50, a postman from nearby Stralsund who was building a sandcastle with his grandson.
“So many years have passed, it’s time to make something beautiful out of Prora.” However Katja Lucke, chief historian at another private museum on site, said that while developers have rescued the building from disintegration, they should do more to own up to its murky origins. “This is a place where 20,000 people were to be groomed to work and wage war,” she said. Misgajski added that witness accounts indicate that between 500 and 600 forced labourers worked on the complex under the Nazis.