Prora: the Fascist wonder that never was

Pictured: Artist’s impression of the Prora after its hypothetical completion. As seen in Civilization V: Brave New World.

Quoting Shelley Baranowski’s A Family Vacation for Workers: The Strength through Joy Resort at Prora:

As the first to begin construction, the KdF resort at Prora (KdF‐Seebad Rügen) assumed pride of place in KdF’s brochures and periodicals, not least because, according to Ley, the Führer himself conceived it. It was situated on Prora bay on the island of Rügen, off the Pomeranian coast, between the spa towns of Sassnitz and Binz, and scheduled to open in the spring of 1940. The Labour Front’s construction crews broke ground in early May 1936 even before the final architectural plans had been approved.

From Prora’s launching until the outbreak of war in 1939, when construction virtually ceased, KdF and DAF publicists resorted to hyperboles to highlight their project’s uniqueness: ‘The words “KdF resort” have already become a concept known at home and abroad, which binds the image of its construction’s imposing size with the total novelty of its purpose’, wrote Otto Marrenbach. Prora was to be the ‘largest hotel in the world’, proclaimed another announcement.²⁴

Typical of the superlatives, which the [Third Reich] borrowed from American advertising for its own underlying purposes, Hitler envisioned a vacation complex so large that it would dwarf all others in existence; a complex that would serve both civilian and military needs. Housing twenty thousand beds with a huge convocation hall as its axis, Prora would entertain holidaymakers to be sure, but it would also be large enough to be transformed into a military hospital in the event of war.²⁵

Nevertheless, providing inexpensive holidays for working‐class families was its immediate concern. The resort was to become, in the words of the KdF spokesman Werner Kahl, the ‘Eldorado of holidaymaking families with children’, a seaside paradise that would ‘therefore remedy a notable deficiency in the KdF trips so far.’²⁶

Ley claimed in a newspaper interview that a worker, his wife and their children would enjoy a ten‐day seaside vacation for the remarkably low price of nineteen marks, which would include lodging, meals, access to all recreational facilities and staged events, and even beach chairs, towels and the spa tax.²⁷

We see here an example of the Fascists blurring the lines between civilian and military life: soldiers on duty attending the same facilities as their civilian counterparts becomes nothing extraordinary. (Sound familiar?) Don’t get excited over the appeals to the proletariat either, as you’ll soon see the reason.

The circumstances by which Strength through Joy acquired the land for the resort seemed to confirm the Third Reich’s oft‐repeated claim to having achieved the ‘socialism of deed’. The timing of the construction, in fact, arose from Ley’s desire to break ground for his project on the anniversary of the abolition of the trade unions.

According to Ley, the Labour Front and its subsidiary would deliver the cultural privileges of the middle and upper‐classes by building a resort on an island well‐known for its well‐heeled and famous summer sojourners, a rebuke to the Marxists who stirred up class hatred without offering practical solutions for mitigating it.

Yet, in adherence to the [Third Reich’s] practice of honouring workers while avoiding an assault on the class structure as a whole, the resort was to occupy its own space on the secluded Prora bay, courtesy of Malte von Veltheim, Prince of Putbus. It would not intrude upon the established coastal towns, as this might have caused friction between KdF and commercial tourists.

An ardent [Fascist] and SA member, who typified the rightward movement of Pomerania’s large landowners prior to the [Fascist] takeover,²⁸ the prince signed over property to Ley from a nature reserve belonging to his estates, virtually on a handshake and the testimony of a vaguely‐worded, hastily‐drawn document.²⁹ A resort for male workers and their families emerged from the financing of the Labour Front, putatively the workers’ representative, and the patronage of one of Pomerania’s largest landowners.

As with the contemporary upper classes, the Fascist bourgeoisie was not only in good shape but, unsurprisingly, in no habit of consulting the lower classes for such an ambitious project either, and that alone should make their appeals to the proletariat questionable.

Its chief architect, Clemens Klotz, whose association with Ley dated back to the Kampfzeit and probably guaranteed his commission over eleven other competitors, had already anchored his reputation with, among other structures, ‘order castles’ for the Hitler Youth and the SS modelled on the fortresses of the medieval German crusader‐colonizers of the Slavic lands.

Prora curiously blended the overseas dimension of German imperialism with the continental, for Le Corbusier’s architectural drawings from the early thirties for a kilometre‐long resort city on the Algerian coast, with his emphasis on openness and sunlight, served as Klotz’s initial inspiration.³⁵

A minor way in which European colonialism in Africa inspired the Fascists.

Not surprisingly, Prora’s size was to have a major impact on its natural surroundings. Contrary to reports in the press, which insisted that the construction would respect the natural environment, Klotz authorized the removal of one hundred and fifty thousand cubic metres of woods that had once occupied the space between the beach and the resort.⁴⁴

Another example of the profit motive harming the environment.

As you might have guessed, total war interrupted Prora’s construction, but fortunately the building still provided some use:

During the war, Prora temporarily housed hundreds of German refugees, such as the victims of the bombing of Hamburg in July 1943 or expellees fleeing the eastern Prussian provinces ahead of Soviet forces. Although, after 1945, island residents plundered silverware and linens and Soviet troops destroyed part of the facilities, hauling off whatever was useful as reparations, Prora was subsequently used as a military installation by the German Democratic Republic.

Since unification in 1990, portions of the complex have housed two museums, a youth hostel, and the improbably named Miami Discotheque. Local resistance foiled a buyer’s attempt to reopen Prora as a hotel.⁶¹

(Emphasis added in all cases.)