Berlin Attraction Reveals an Uneasy Phenomenon: Hitler Sells

A replica of Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. It was built about a mile from the original site by a private company, Historiale, which also runs the Berlin Story Museum next door.CreditGordon Welters for The New York Times

What do you do about the buildings associated with Hitler’s life and death? In Austria, they are hitting the delete key, but in Germany, it’s more like copy and paste.

After decades of indecision and delay, the Austrian government is moving to seize and either demolish or drastically remodel the house where Hitler was born, so that it never becomes a shrine for neo-Nazis.

Wieland Giebel of Berlin Story showed a model of Hitler’s bunker to a tour group last month.CreditGordon Welters for The New York Times

In Berlin, where the authorities have generally taken a somber approach to the terrible history, the story is different. Most landmarks of Nazi rule in the city were demolished long ago, but a commercial firm has now re-created one of them as a tourist attraction: the bunker where Hitler committed suicide in 1945.

The new bunker was built about a mile from the original site by Historiale, which also runs the Berlin Story Museum next door. Wieland Giebel of Berlin Story says the intent is to show tourists more of the city’s past.

The company attracted some publicity by inviting dozens of foreign correspondents to an opening tour in the fall, and then began admitting the general public for tours twice a day. Mr. Giebel said each tour has attracted at least 30 visitors at 12 euros ($12.5) a person.

Tours of the replica bunker last about 90 minutes and cost 12 euros ($12.5) a person.CreditGordon Welters for The New York Times

Like the museum — a mishmash of memorabilia — the bunker tour seems to appeal to a public appetite that several experts have recognized. Hitler sells.

“Of course it sells, that is clear,” said Stefanie Endlich, a professor at the University of the Arts in Berlin and an expert on Nazi art. “But all these revivals of National Socialist situations are a little unsettling.”

Historians at state-funded institutions, like the widely praised Topography of Terror center nearby, are also disturbed by Mr. Giebel’s venture. “We don’t work with sets,” said Kay-Uwe von Damaros, spokesman for the center. Besides that, he said, Mr. Giebel “demands an entry fee; we do not.”

Mr. von Damaros estimated that about 1.3 million people a year visit the Topography of Terror exhibition, a dense and grim accounting of how the Nazis rose, ruled and destroyed. “This shows the interest in working through the story continues to be high,” he said. “And it also is proof that the quality is right.”

P.C: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/28/world/what-in-the-world/berlin-attraction-reveals-an-uneasy-phenomenon-hitler-sells.html