The "Albert Speer in the Federal Republic" special exhibition

"Albert Speer in the Federal Republic. Dealing with the German Past," a well attended special exhibition at the Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, attracted interregional regard and unmasked the myth surrounding the Nazi architect and Minister of Armaments. Speer was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, but through clever manipulation and marketing of his image, he was able to build a second career in the Federal Republic. In countless interviews and publications, he disseminated the myth of the purportedly purified "good Nazi." At the entrance to the special exhibition, visitors were confronted with an overpowering reproduction of Speer's signature, in a seven-meter-high installation. Once the visitor passed through or walked around the letters, Speer's actual role in the National Socialist state unfolded in a collage of quotations and film clips from Speer himself. An innovative idea here was to include historians as "experts in attendance" at specially developed media desks.