Adolf Hitler
Biography
Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945 and the man at the centre of the murder of about six million Jews,[1] came to Weimar more than forty times.[2] For his party the town meant two things at once: the birthplace of the republic it hated, and the home of the German cultural tradition it wanted for itself. That is why a walk through Weimar keeps arriving at places he touched — the theatre where the party held its rally in 1926 and later rebuilt a box for him, the hotel on the market square with his suite and his balcony, the Gauforum that cost a whole quarter its houses, the Nietzsche-Archiv whose memorial hall he paid for, and the camp on the Ettersberg above all of it.
A town with two meanings, 1925–1940
Between the wars Weimar became a centre of conservative and nationalist currents, and for the National Socialists it carried a double symbolism: the hated republic had been founded here, and the great German cultural tradition had its home here. Hitler himself visited the town more than forty times.[2] Those visits, from 1925 to 1940, are the subject of a study by Holm Kirsten, head of the Buchenwald memorial's collection, and the memorial has published a historical town plan of Weimar in those years. The party could count on the Thuringian state government's goodwill early, which is one reason it chose Weimar for its rally of 1926.[3]
The rally in the Nationaltheater, 3–4 July 1926
The party's second rally, and its first since the refounding of February 1925, met in Weimar on 3 and 4 July 1926.[2] Its purpose was to bind a fragmented party unconditionally to Hitler and to stage it as one closed movement, and in two days it invented pieces of the later cult: the youth organisation was renamed Hitler-Jugend, the so-called Blutfahne was handed to the SS, and the raised-arm salute was shown as a mass phenomenon for the first time.[3] The youth session sat in the Armbrust hall in Schützengasse, today a cinema.[2] On the night of 3 July Hitler slept at the Hotel Elephant for the first time, registered under the profession of writer.[4]
Votes, a government and a boycott, 1930–1937
In March 1930 Wilhelm Frick became the first National Socialist minister in any German state government, here in Thuringia. In the presidential elections of March and April 1932 Hitler took 34.5 and then 42.8 per cent of Weimar's votes, and in August 1932 the party under Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel, whose seat was Weimar, took over the Thuringian government.[2] Across the Reich he had reached about 30 and then 37 per cent; on 30 January 1933 Hindenburg appointed him chancellor.[5] In Weimar as everywhere the persecution of opponents began at once: Jewish shops were boycotted on 1 April 1933, books were burned at a solstice fire in Niedergrunstedt on 21 June, and in 1937 a large number of modern works were seized from the Schlossmuseum as degenerate art, most of them destroyed afterwards.[2]
At the Nietzsche-Archiv, 1932–1944
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche met Hitler for the first time early in 1932, at the German premiere of Mussolini's play about Napoleon's hundred days, and afterwards he called at the archive on the Silberblick several times.[6] She received him there between 1932 and 1934 and gave him her brother's walking stick.[7] On a visit in October 1934 he gave 50,000 Reichsmark from his own funds, which set the planning of a Nietzsche memorial hall in motion; when she died in 1935 he attended the funeral, in April 1937 he approved Paul Schultze-Naumburg's compromise design, and the topping-out was celebrated in August 1938. Work all but stopped when the war began. For Nietzsche's centenary in 1944 Weimar had a half-finished hall and a telegram from Hitler, who sent Alfred Rosenberg in his place.[6]
The Gauforum, 1936–1943
In June 1936 Hitler decided the architectural competition for a Gauforum in favour of Hermann Giesler and added ideas of his own: a bell tower of about sixty metres on the Gauleiter's building and a hall for 20,000 people standing.[8] On 4 July 1936 he and Sauckel turned the first spade. To make room the Asbach valley was filled in and 139 houses of the Jakobsvorstadt were pulled down, 462 flats for about 1,650 people; on 1 May 1937 Rudolf Heß laid the foundation stone of the hall before some 40,000 people and renamed the square Platz Adolf Hitlers.[8] Forums of this kind were planned for every Gau capital in Germany and largely built only here. By 1943 every building but the hall stood, and prisoners from Buchenwald had worked on the site.[9]
The Elephant and its balcony, 1937–1938
The old Hotel Elephant on the market square was demolished to its foundations in 1937, on the grounds that it was unsafe, and Giesler built the new one. The balcony to the square was designed as a speaker's tribune, with flagpoles and a relief of the Reich eagle, and a first-floor suite on the garden side was fitted to Hitler's own wishes and kept for him alone. The topping-out fell on his birthday in 1938, and at the Gau day in November the house opened with Hitler as its first guest.[10] The foundation stone had been laid on 3 November 1937, the opening was on 5 November 1938, the party owned the hotel, and Hitler stayed in it forty times.[4] When he was in the house the market square served as a parade ground, and the crowd chanted rhymes to bring him out onto the balcony.[10]
The theatre and its box, 1933–1944
Hitler wanted to make the Nationaltheater a leading stage of the Reich. He supported it with money and came to many opera and operetta performances; the centre box in the first tier was remodelled for him and hung with a swastika cloth over the parapet. Hans Severus Ziegler, a confidant of his, ran the house as Generalintendant, banned the works of Jewish and politically unwanted authors and pressed for the dismissal of actors and musicians the regime called non-Aryan, while the SS guards of the camp nearby were courted as an audience, with the best seats reserved for them. The tenth anniversary of the 1926 rally was celebrated in 1936 with crowds outside the theatre cheering their Führer.[11]
Buchenwald, 1937–1945
Two of Hitler's orders tie him to the camp on the Ettersberg, opened in 1937. On 21 March 1942 he appointed Sauckel Plenipotentiary General for Labour Deployment, the decree that began the mass deportation of millions of European workers into the German war economy.[12] And in the night of 17 to 18 August 1944 Ernst Thälmann, the Communist leader held since 1933, was shot at the entrance to the crematorium's furnace room, probably on Hitler's direct order; a note Himmler made at a meeting with Hitler on 14 August 1944, item 12, that Thälmann was to be executed, is shown in the memorial's exhibition. For Hitler's fiftieth birthday in 1939 the camp had released prisoners in a so-called act of mercy.[13]
30 April 1945, and a square renamed
Hitler killed himself in the bunker under the Reich Chancellery in Berlin on 30 April 1945.[5] In Weimar the Adolf-Hitler-Platz became Karl-Marx-Platz in May 1945, agreed between the mayor and the American town commandant; in March 1946 the Soviet military administration for Thuringia moved its staff into the Gauforum's north building, and in 1955 and 1956 a Stalin monument stood on the square.[8]
Questions visitors ask
- How often did Hitler visit Weimar?
- More than forty times, by the count in the German Wikipedia article on the town;[2] the hotel article counts forty stays at the Elephant.[4] Holm Kirsten of the Buchenwald memorial wrote the study of his visits from 1925 to 1940.[3]
- Why did Weimar matter to the National Socialists?
- It meant two things at once: the birthplace of the republic they hated and the home of the great German cultural tradition. The party held its first rally after refounding here in 1926, and the town later drew Hitler's particular attention as a place to rebuild.[2]
- What did Hitler build in Weimar?
- The Gauforum, whose competition he decided for Hermann Giesler in June 1936 and to which he added a bell tower and a hall for 20,000;[8] the new Hotel Elephant, opened in November 1938 with him as first guest;[10] and the Nietzsche memorial hall, which he financed with 50,000 Reichsmark in 1934 and never saw finished.[6]
- Where did Hitler stay in Weimar?
- At the Hotel Elephant on the market square, first on 3 July 1926 during the party rally, registered as a writer, and from 1938 in a suite on the garden side of the house rebuilt for the party; the balcony to the square was built as his speaker's tribune.[4][10]
- What happened at the 1926 party rally in Weimar?
- On 3 and 4 July 1926 the refounded party bound itself unconditionally to Hitler in the Nationaltheater: its youth organisation became the Hitler-Jugend, the Blutfahne passed to the SS, and the raised-arm salute was shown as a mass phenomenon for the first time.[3]
Sources (13)
- Adolf Hitler — Wikipedia (English), retrieved 13 September 2026
- Weimar — Wikipedia (German), retrieved 13 September 2026
- Veranstaltung: Reichsparteitag der NSDAP in Weimar — Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Hotel Elephant — Wikipedia (German), retrieved 13 September 2026
- LeMO Biografie – Adolf Hitler — Deutsches Historisches Museum (LeMO), retrieved 13 September 2026
- Nietzsche-Archiv — Wikipedia (German), retrieved 13 September 2026
- Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche — Wikipedia (German), retrieved 13 September 2026
- Gauforum Weimar — Wikipedia (German), retrieved 13 September 2026
- Gauforum – Weimar im Nationalsozialismus — Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Hotel Elephant – Weimar im Nationalsozialismus — Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Deutsches Nationaltheater – Weimar im Nationalsozialismus — Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Fritz Sauckel — Wikipedia (German), retrieved 13 September 2026
- KZ Buchenwald — Wikipedia (German), retrieved 13 September 2026
Connected Places in Weimar
Humboldtstraße 36, 99425 Weimar
He called at the villa several times from 1932 and in October 1934 gave 50,000 Reichsmark towards the memorial hall beside it.[^wikipedia-de-nietzsche-archiv]
Theaterplatz 2, 99423 Weimar
The party's rally of July 1926 met here in his presence, and the centre box of the first tier was later remodelled for him.[^buchenwald-reichsparteitag][^weimar-im-ns-dnt]
Historical Context
In Weimar's 1932 presidential elections he took 34.5 and then 42.8 per cent; in August 1932 his party took over the Thuringian government, five months before he became chancellor.[^wikipedia-de-weimar]
Germany's first democracy is named after this town for an almost accidental reason: in 1919 the capital was too dangerous to write a constitution in, and Weimar was quiet.
Read more about this period →More than forty visits, the Gauforum, the Elephant, the theatre box and the camp on the Ettersberg: the period's Weimar is the town he shaped.[^wikipedia-de-weimar]
The regime wanted Weimar for what its name meant, and it built a concentration camp on the hill above the town. Both facts belong to the same twelve years.
Read more about this period →Quick Facts
1889
1945
Austrian-born German
Stay and eat nearby
Where to stay
Markt 19, 99423 Weimar
His Weimar quarters from the first night on 3 July 1926 to the garden-side suite of the house rebuilt for the party in 1938; he stayed forty times.[^wikipedia-de-hotel-elephant]
Historical figures
Historical figures
1894–1946 • Gauleiter • Reichsstatthalter • war criminal
Sauckel turned the first spade of the Gauforum with him on 4 July 1936, and on 21 March 1942 Hitler made him Plenipotentiary General for Labour Deployment.[^wikipedia-de-gauforum][^wikipedia-de-sauckel]
1846–1935 • archivist • editor • publisher
She met him early in 1932, received him at the archive between 1932 and 1934 and gave him her brother's walking stick; he attended her funeral in 1935.[^wikipedia-de-efn][^wikipedia-de-nietzsche-archiv]
In Weimar's history
In Weimar's history
On 3 and 4 July 1926 the party held its first congress after being refounded, with Hitler present, in the hall where the Republic had voted its constitution seven years earlier.
The rally that bound the refounded party to him and named the Hitler-Jugend, held in Weimar on 3 and 4 July 1926.[^buchenwald-reichsparteitag]
The party built itself an administrative quarter in the middle of Weimar, with a hall for twenty thousand — and used concentration camp prisoners to do it. Most of it is still standing.
He decided the competition for Giesler in June 1936, added the bell tower and the hall, and turned the first spade on 4 July 1936.[^wikipedia-de-gauforum]
From July 1937 the SS had prisoners build a camp on the Ettersberg, the wooded hill above the town. 277,800 people from more than fifty countries were held there; 56,000 did not survive.
The camp above the town released prisoners for his fiftieth birthday in 1939 and was the place of Thälmann's murder on his order in 1944.[^wikipedia-de-kz-buchenwald]
On 18 August 1944 the leader of Germany's communists was killed inside the Buchenwald crematorium. Nine years later the first memorial plaque in the prisoners' camp marked the spot, and the GDR arranged its visits around it.
Thälmann was shot in Buchenwald in August 1944 probably on his direct order; Himmler's note of 14 August 1944 records the instruction.[^wikipedia-de-kz-buchenwald]