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A forgotten monument to Hitler’s ideology has emerged from a 70-year time warp — a castle built in the 1930s to train a new Nazi elite. Vacated by the Belgian army last year, it sheds light on the systematic brainwashing that churned out a generation of fanatics. Now it’s being spruced up to teach visitors about the perils of indoctrination.

Deep in the Eifel region of western Germany, a stone-clad reminder of Hitler’s racist ideology towers above the surrounding wooded hills — the remains of a training college for aspiring Nazi leaders that was built in the style of a medieval castle.

“NS-Ordensburg Vogelsang” (Vogelsang National Socialist Castle) is a dour arrangement of barracks, community halls and sports arenas hugging a steep slope down to a scenic reservoir. It was built between 1934 and 1936 to give selected Nazi party members aged between 25 and 30 a solid grounding in the superiority of the German race and its need for “Lebensraum” in the east.

Read full article (Spiegel Online, July 24, 2007)
Pictures of Vogelsang

Wired Magazine of August brings a story about the ambition of the California Academy of Sciences to be the greenest museum on earth:

Nestled into the fog and forest of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the California Academy of Sciences aims to be the world’s largest eco-friendly public building when it reopens in 2008. (It’s bucking for a platinum LEED green-building certification.) Architect Renzo Piano used a textbook’s worth of enviro-engineering tricks for the seven-year effort, an almost total teardown and rebuild. At $484 million, it’s one of the most expensive museum projects in a century. But if it all works as planned, the city will boast a natural history museum that enhances nature instead of just stockpiling it.

Read further on Wired.com
Building The New Academy

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The Dutch hip hop artist and underground phenomenon DuvelDuvel is about to release his latest album Puur Kultuur at the Netherlands Architecture Institute, says his label TopNotch Records in a press release. The acclaimed DuvelDuvel is a true product of the city of Rotterdam, with his uncompromising lyrics and straightforward diction.

The NAi however does not announce this event on its Web site. It seems that where other museums are looking for more popular means of attracting younger crowds by inviting youth culture onto its premises, the NAi hosts one of the Netherland’s most respected figures of urban culture without making this public.

DuvelDuvel homepage
NAi homepage

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A woman who says she was so overcome with passion for a valuable painting on display in France, has been charged with criminal damage after kissing it. The 3×2m (9×6-foot) painting by US artist Cy Twombly is valued at more than $2m (£970,000).

Staff at the Collection Lambert museum in the southern French city of Avignon alerted police after the incident on Thursday afternoon and she was arrested as she was walking out. Ms Rindy, herself an artist, is due to appear in court on 16 August.

Read full article (BBC News, 21 July 2007)