Eagle

20th century 1937

Somewhere between May 25 and November 25, 1937

Bibliography

AGEORGES Sylvain, Sur les traces des expositions universelles 1855 – 1937. À la recherche des pavillons et des monuments oubliés, Paris : Parigramme, 2006.
FRAMPTON Kenneth, Histoire critique de l’architecture moderne, Paris : édition Philippe SERS, 1985.
VONDUNG Klaus, Magie und Manipulation ; Göttinger, 1971.

Sources

French postcard, H. CHIPAULT

Created in 1928, the International Bureau of Expositions now codifies and regulates international gatherings. In particular, he ensures a logical rotation of the host countries, calming susceptibilities and rivalries.

The Universal Exhibition of 1937 was scheduled for 1934, and it was the new French government of the Popular Front, elected in May 1936, which inaugurated “the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques Applied to Modern Life”. The exhibition is fixed from May 25 to November 25, 1937, it is the first Exhibition organized in France under the rules of the Paris Convention issued by the International Bureau of Expositions.

Tensions between employers and the government delayed the construction of the pavilions. But the tensions largely exceed the national framework: the last international meeting that Paris organizes is indeed above all the great ring of fascist, communist and pacifist ideologies. "The Exhibition will be open to all productions which will represent an indisputable character of art and novelty": The 1937 Exhibition excludes the traditional pavilions on crafts and industry and takes the turn of a gigantic architectural competition , prefiguring what the post-war Universal Exhibitions would be like.

The visitor is especially struck by the pavilions of the Third Reich and the USSR, which face each other on each side of the Warsaw square. The colossal statue The worker and the kolkhoz woman of the pavilion of the USSR, made by Vera Moukhina (in stainless steel weighing 65 tons), confronting the pavilion of the Third Reich, 54 meters high, surmounted by a solid bronze eagle, holding a swastika in its talons, designed by architect Albert Speer.

View of Warsaw Square from the Trocadero

The style of the pavilion is that of the official architectural style of the Third Reich, a rather harsh and ascetic reductionist classicism. The pavilion was designed for confrontation with that of the USSR. This confrontation is done in the opposition of architectural style. On one side, the Soviet pavilion is made of rigid and classic blocks, assembled together to form a single impetus to attack the Nazi pavilion. The latter seems to be made of a single block raid and neat, as calm, stoic and solid as a fortress facing the Soviet assault.

Hitler chose the imperialist and warrior emblem of the eagle, a huge bird of prey surmounts the building containing the German stands. It is designed to represent a massive defense against the onslaught of communism. The martial aspect of the German pavilion, designed by Albert Speer, as well as the monumental sculptures of his dear friend Joseph Thorak displayed there, manifest the ideology of Nazi art. Official art is presented, in architecture and sculpture, in a monumental classical style, supposed to symbolize the claim of power and the emphasis of the totalitarian system. The Nazi Pavilion, overflowing with products of German industry, exhibits compositions on the theme of factories and agricultural or labor work. We see trains, railways, highways under construction. Over all, dominates the figure of the “irreproachable and indestructible German worker; on his tenacity and his devotion to the fatherland rest the expectations of greatness and prosperity of the Reich”.

« In each period of history, architecture expresses the profound nature of the spirit, of the art and of the social and political conditions of the moment. »

Albert Speer