On a snowy night in Nuremberg, a city that encapsulates the best and worst of Germany, a huge crowd has gathered in the ancient Marktplatz for the opening of the Christkindlesmarkt, Bavaria’s biggest Christmas market. Cradling mugs of steaming Glühwein, stamping our feet to keep out the cold, we’re all waiting for the Christkind (Christ Child) to appear on the balcony of the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), an event that marks the start of Nuremberg’s Advent season.
Five hundred years ago, Nuremberg was one of the biggest cities in Central Europe
Turns out we have Martin Luther to thank for this quaint Teutonic custom. Before the Reformation, German children used to get presents from St Nicolas on 6 December, but Luther didn’t approve of saints, so he decided children should wait until Christmas Eve and receive their gifts from Christ himself. Despite his best efforts, St Nicolas never went away and all across Central Europe the Christkind still runs him a close second.
Over the centuries, the Christkind has morphed into an angel, and here in Nuremberg, the part is always played by a local girl in her late teens. It’s a charming tradition, a throwback to a more innocent, less avaricious age, and seeing the little children gazing up at her, agog, I feel my grouchy cynicism melt away. Maybe I’m a bit biased (my father’s family are German), but for me, Advent always feels particularly special in Germany. Yet part of what makes it special is the underlying sadness, the darkness amid the light, and nowhere is this contrast starker than here in Nuremberg – a salutary reminder that the Nativity is a story of hope and redemption, rather than unbridled joy.
For younger visitors, Nuremberg is synonymous with Christmas kitsch, but for those of us who grew up in the shadow of the second world war, it will always be a byword for the bombastic barbarity of Hitler’s Reich. This was the Nazis’ cultural capital, the setting for their annual Reichsparteitag – a monumental rally immortalised in 1934 in Leni Riefenstahl’s hypnotic film, Triumph of The Will. I interviewed Riefenstahl in 1992, the year that she turned 90, and the memory of it has never left me: her alluring, frightening intensity; her lack of intellectual curiosity… This talented, amoral woman made Hitler seem heroic and Nuremberg gave her the perfect stage.
Five hundred years ago, Nuremberg was one of the biggest cities in Central Europe: the centre of the German Renaissance, the hometown of Albrecht Dürer (his home and studio are still here, now an evocative museum). The city came through subsequent centuries remarkably unscathed, and when Hitler came to power in 1933, its rich Germanic heritage made it a place of pilgrimage for his acolytes. On the edge of town, his minions constructed an enormous arena, where he could address 200,000 devotees at a time.
You can still visit the site today and wander around the parade ground which staged Albert Speer’s spectacular nocturnal searchlight displays, his so-called ‘Cathedral of Light’. The sculpted swastikas and eagles are long gone, and the long colonnades have been demolished, but it’s still intensely atmospheric. Hitler’s megalomania is revealed in its gargantuan dimensions. A short walk away, his gigantic half-built congress hall (one of several colossal buildings planned for this spooky site) is currently being converted into a new museum.
Nuremberg was bombed flat by Allied aircraft in January 1945 and after the fierce street battle that followed, between the Wehrmacht and the US Army, 90 per cent of its antique Altstadt (old town) lay in ruins. Only Dresden fared worse. And yet, like Dresden, Nuremberg has risen from the ashes. It will never be beautiful again, and maybe that’s only fitting, but when you see photos of what it looked like in 1945, you realise its renovation has been astonishing. Buildings that survived the war have been lovingly restored and most of the postwar additions are remarkably sympathetic. Looking out across these tiled rooftops from the Kaiserburg, the robust castle which looms over the city, it’s hard to tell which buildings are new and which ones are original. By building in a similar style, to the same scale, with the same local sandstone, modern architects have revived the medieval ambience of this battered city. If only other architects in Germany and beyond had been so conscientious.
I finished my weekend in Nuremberg in the city’s Palace of Justice – famous (or rather infamous) as the setting for the Nuremberg Trials. The original courtroom is still there and still looks much the same. It feels eerie to sit in the austere room where Nazi ringleaders were tried and sentenced. Upstairs, a sombre exhibition guides you through every step of this painstaking judicial process and explains its enduring implications. In 1935, the Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws legitimised the persecution of German Jewry, setting Germany (and Europe) on a path which culminated in the final solution. Ten years later, this groundbreaking trial set a crucial precedent for international justice, warning future tyrants that they would be held accountable for their crimes.
It was only when I went back to Le Méridien to collect my suitcase that I realised this grand hotel was where the Allied lawyers and journalists had stayed during the trials. Today, it was full of American tourists, here for Advent. I had half an hour before my train to Bayreuth – just enough time for one last visit to the Christkindlesmarkt. The cobbled square was full of happy families and the Nuremberg Rallies seemed a world away. As I said, the best and worst of Germany, side by side.
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