Conclusion

Abstract

Nowadays the choreography of bodies, so prominent in the interwar period, has been by and large confined to theatre stages or festive ceremonies of international sporting events. In Germany former Thingspiel arenas, as the Waldbühne in Berlin or the Loreley stage in St. Goarshausen, are used for open-air rock concerts and opera performances.¹ The original purpose of these sites as home of ‘a new Nazi theatre’, based on mass staging and allegedly expressing the new ‘people’s community’ of the Third Reich, has been largely forgotten. In fact, the Thingspiel arenas, which still exist, are one of the few examples of National Socialist architecture. Mostly, Nazi architecture consisted of grandiose and spectacular rebuilding plans that never materialised.² Accepted, and perhaps appreciated, as forms of representation for cultural, sports and entertaining events, mass choreographies and mass spectacles have lost their appeal as political representation of the nation in Germany.