Why Does Trump Want a Reception Hall

Königsplatz had always served as a venue for public events and political gatherings. As Munich grew rapidly in the early twentieth century, several proposals were made to redesign the square. But it was the Nazis who radically changed its character and significance.

Shortly after his appointment as Reich Chancellor in 1933, Adolf Hitler commissioned his favorite architect, Paul Ludwig Troost, to redesign the square and to erect new Party buildings on its eastern side. This was Hitler’s first monumental building project and with it he demonstrated the new regime’s power and ambitions from its Munich base. 

But even before construction had properly begun, Königsplatz became the scene of public burnings of books defamed as “un-German” by Nazi and other right-wing extremist students. This was part of a nationwide book-burning campaign conducted in the German Reich in 1933.

In the course of 1933, old buildings were demolished and the trees on the east side of the square felled. By 1935, the “Führerbau” had been erected on the north side of Brienner Straße and the “NSDAP Administration Building” on the south side to form a symmetrical ensemble.

Königsplatz itself was turned into a parading ground in 1935. The grassy areas were replaced by granite slabs, and the square was closed to traffic. Two 33 m high flagpoles bearing eagles and Party symbols visible from afar marked Königsplatz as the center of the new Party quarter.

The location that had originally been dedicated to the arts now served as a backdrop for parades, propaganda rallies, and the pseudo-religious Nazi cult of the dead, celebrated every year on November 9, the anniversary of the Hitler putsch.

A large reception hall or ballroom was added to the Reich Chancellery starting in 1935, with the project completed in 1936.

Source: Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism – nsdoku . de