Strength Through Joy

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It sounds like a Gold’s Gym slogan, but I think Hitler had something a little different in mind. He dreamed of a holiday camp on a beautiful island in the Baltic Sea, where 20,000 people at a time could come to relax and gear up for the inevitable rigors of world domination. He would call it Colossus, and it would be the cornerstone of the Kraft Durch Freude movement: a string of six-story buildings stretching nearly three miles along the beach near a village called Prora, on Rügen Island. The construction began in 1936, but within a few years things had gotten a little more complicated than expected, and building holiday camps went on the back burner. Colossus was never finished.

In 2010, those buildings are gently mouldering in the crisp sea air. Many of the windows are busted out, as chunks of stucco fall into the brush that is slowly covering the complex. If you peek into the undergrowth you see shattered toilets and sinks, and wonder if someone strong threw them through those broken windows.

The thirty-something German woman, who’d gotten off the bus at the same stop and walked with me to the complex, said that she’d only decided at the last minute to walk over to see the KDF camp. She was on the island for a few days visiting from Hamburg, and told me that a friend had told her that it was worth a look. Her guidebook didn’t even mention this ruin, among its extensive coverage of the many interesting and beautiful things to see on Rügen.

“Why do you think that is?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Maybe they want to just forget. Or maybe they don’t find it interesting.”
“Would it be as interesting,” I asked her, “if these were just old office buildings or something?”
She said she wasn’t sure. “But these weren’t office buildings. These are buildings we need to remember—or tear down. I’m not sure which.”
One of the buildings now houses a 1000-bed youth hostel, another a museum. As for the rest, wrangling continues as the huge buildings fall slowly to ruin. From the look of the graffiti, I’d say that Vegan Nazi-haters were on the verge of dominating the complex. Another slogan I saw several times was, “Fuck KDF.”

Just because the slogan has bad historical associations, I don ’t think we should all give up on Strength through Joy. The idea itself is a pretty good one.

Although I’ll admit that the only thing joyful I can imagine about these buildings, even when they were fresh and new, would be getting out of them and onto the beach.

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