The Führer and the Decorator: Hitler’s Homes as Nazi Propaganda

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Adolf Hitler’s makeover from rabble‑rouser to statesman coincided with a series of dramatic home renovations he undertook during the mid‑1930s. This talk explores the powerful role of Hitler’s residences as propaganda and how they bolstered the myth of the Führer as a morally upstanding and refined man. The speaker also reflects on the challenges of writing a book about Hitler’s interior decorator, Gerdy Troost.

Despina Stratigakos is SUNY Buffalo’s vice provost for inclusive excellence and professor of architecture in the Department of Architecture. She is the author of three books that explore the intersections of power and architecture, including Where Are the Women Architects? (Princeton University Press, 2016), and Hitler at Home (Yale University Press, 2015). She is currently writing a book on the Nazis’ building plans for occupied Norway (forthcoming 2020). Stratigakos is a Graham Foundation grantee has served as a director of the Society of Architectural Historians, an advisor of the International Archive of Women in Architecture at Virginia Tech, and a trustee of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation in New York.

Related Graham supported projects:
2015 grant to Despina Stratigakos for the publication Hitler at Home
2010 grant to Despina Stratigakos for research on the publication Hitler at Home

For more information on the exhibition, Spirit of the Waves , click here.
 

Image: Left: Heinrich Hoffmann, postcard of the Berghof, Hitler’s mountain home on the Obersalzburg, ca. 1936. Right: Heinrich Hoffmann, photograph of Hitler escorting a girl to his Obersalzburg house, from Hoffmann’s Youth around Hitler (1934).