ABSTRACT
The monumental buildings of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg formed an integral part of the National Socialists’ self-presentation. The photos of the area still define the visual image of the National Socialist dictatorship. The question of how to deal appropriately with this “difficult inheritance” has presented a challenge to the political leadership and the urban community of Nuremberg since the end of the Second World War. For decades, the city of Nuremberg developed a critical and reflective attitude towards the specific historical legacy of the “Nazi perpetrators and followers” as part of a protracted process of social self-understanding that was generally characteristic of the culture of remembrance in Western Germany. The author advocates for linking this local practice of remembrance – institutionalised by the documentation centre in the area – with the internationally oriented commemoration of the victims of National Socialism by building a complementary memorial site – thus establishing the Nazi Party Rally Grounds as a pan-European place of “dialogical remembrance”.
