Type: Limited edition prints
Size: 33cm x 48cm / 50cm x 65cm
Tirage: 100 copies each
A pencil drawing of a model of the Triumphal Arch on the North-South Axis, c. 1940. Like the Volkshalle this too originated from a sketch dated from about 1925. This too was never built.
In the final designs, this became 118 meters high and 170 meters wide, so the arch would have been about twice as high as the Victory Column. The basic form, as well as the portico below, can be seen as attempts to make the proportions of the enormous cube more comprehensible to the human observer. The triumphal arch was intended to stand at the northern end of the one-kilometer-long station forecourt and form the monumental prelude to the central section of the north-south axis.
Judging from the photograph of the presentation model, it was about 1.5 meters high and was designed for better inspection.
While triumphal arches were traditionally erected following military victories, the intention here was presumably to glorify the victorious conclusion of the Second World War as a retrospective “fulfillment of meaning for the immense blood sacrifices” made between 1914 and 1918. Reportedly it was planned to have “the names of all German soldiers who fell in the First World War carved into this arch.”
