Remodelling the führer: Hitler’s domestic spaces as propaganda

In the mid-1930s, Adolf Hitler’s inner circle refashioned the Führer’s private persona, transforming him in the eyes of the world’s media from an oddball bachelor to a gentleman of fine taste and morals. Domestic architecture played a key role in that public makeover, which coincided with major renovations of Hitler’s three residences-the old chancellery in Berlin, his Munich apartment, and his mountain home on the Obersalzburg. Positive lifestyle stories that focused on the off-duty Hitler and the warmth and elegance of his homes appeared not only in German newspapers and magazines, but also in the foreign press, including in the New York Times, Homes and Gardens, and LIFE Magazine. By the eve of the Second World War, this coverage had created a powerful image of the private Hitler as a gentle, refined man-an image that has been given new life today by the Internet. Design historians have largely ignored Hitler’s domestic spaces as either too mundane or kitschy to deserve scholarly attention. This chapter argues for taking them seriously, both as design and propaganda, and for the historian’s responsibility to deconstruct their lingering power.