Architectural Competitions as an Avenue of Promotion in the “New German East”
Architectural Competitions as an Avenue of Promotion in the “New German East”

Summary/Abstract: This article deals with architectural competitions as an important element in how German architects pursued careers in occupied Poland. Reports on the competitions were the subject of numerous press articles — both in the daily press and specialist newspapers. Via these channels, information about the projects submitted reached a wide audience—the German settlers—and shaped their ideas about the hitherto alien Polish territories. My analysis is based on examples taken from various competitions in the Warthegau. I examine both the aesthetics of the submissions and how they were presented in the newspapers with textual commentaries. This reveals that press coverage gave the projects a significance similar to that of newly completed buildings and that, in a broad sense, the topic of architecture became an important tool of propaganda. This was also a way to convince the society of the successes achieved by the Germans in the occupied territories and to reinforce a sense of the stability of the new German authorities during the war.

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