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By surfing the website of German architecture, I was wondering whether those well preserved classic
architecture in German towns are original or refurbished or just rebuilt completely? As we all know, during
the WWII, Nazi Germany was heavily bombed by the US and UK air power, how could those German towns still keep so many historical buildings? I am not talking about Berlin or Dresden which was almost rebuilt after WWII. Anyone has clues? I am posting some pics here which look really amazing architecturally. You folks may surf this website to get some ideas of how well German preserve their historical architecture. Germany - Some photos every few days - Page 721 - SkyscraperCity
Not every city or town was bombed to the ground, as they had no industrial importance. You'll find a lot of those. The landmarks which were destroyed were reconstructed.
Anyway, if there wasn't a good reason to destroy a historic building like a castle the Allies usually refrained from doing so. In most cases, historic city centres weren't of much interest for them either since the heavy industry was usually located outside of those areas.
Train stations were a popular target, so there are hardly any old train stations left in any major city that used to belong to Nazi Germany.
Anyway, if there wasn't a good reason to destroy a historic building like a castle the Allies usually refrained from doing so
In Bavaria they bombed Würzburg. It looks like destroying the cultural heritage on intention. The frescoes survived, thanks God. Perhaps, in Austria it was better.
In Bavaria they bombed Würzburg. It looks like destroying the cultural heritage on intention. The frescoes survived, thanks God. Perhaps, in Austria it was better.
Quite sadly, some area bombings also happened in order to demoralize Germany's population as it was the case with Würzburg. We were lucky that they mostly focused on our industry (Vienna, Linz, Graz), but even Innsbruck was raided 22 times. Most other cities were just too small to be of relevance.
Another thing that saved a lot of historic buildings was that most Austrian Wehrmacht officers failed to comply with Hitler's "Nerobefehl" (Nero Decree) and just surrendered without any major fights in most cities.
But many west German cities were reconstructed by American civil engineers just for expediency.
Never heard about that - do you have any additional informations?
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Coming from Nuremberg - the city was destroyed by 80%. The second picture is the Frauenkirche at the main market square ( there the christkindlesmarkt is located ). Many of the builidings are reconstructed with the original material. The most important cultural items werde stored in huge shelters, but it was not possible to take all out ( simply to much ). Mostly the glas windows were safed. Some smaller things were covered by concrete protections directly - you can see at picture #3 in the link below - this is a fountain which was covered completely with a own *shelter* of concrete.
Never heard about that - do you have any additional informations?
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Coming from Nuremberg - the city was destroyed by 80%. The second picture is the Frauenkirche at the main market square ( there the christkindlesmarkt is located ). Many of the builidings are reconstructed with the original material. The most important cultural items werde stored in huge shelters, but it was not possible to take all out ( simply to much ). Mostly the glas windows were safed. Some smaller things were covered by concrete protections directly - you can see at picture #3 in the link below - this is a fountain which was covered completely with a own *shelter* of concrete.
Being tired of those boxy buildings everywhere around the world, I pay great respect to the German
who work hard to preserve their history and heritage.
Görlitz is an example of a small, quiet city of 50K residents in the southeast corner of Germany along the present day border with Poland that was not bombed during WW2. In Görlitz there is no large industry, no large rail yard, so like many other places of it's size it was not a war target. Even so, the distance from Dresden to Görlitz is relatively short so they were lucky to be further east.
Several small cities west of Dresden like Chemnitz were nearly leveled in WW2. Chemnitz (Karl Marx Stadt during the era of East Germany) was mostly re-built in concrete box architecture during the post WW2 reconstruction, and would be one of top candidates for having the least historical looking central cities in Germany.
posted this already in another thread. the castle got hit in WW2, but not too serious and the people rebuild parts of it. also some pictures of our old town.
old town
castle in town
castle at night
old town
church
park
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