LIGHT AND SHADE

The white concrete cube cuts a contrast against the muted stone and neatly neoclassical architecture of nearby Königsplatz, a square commissioned by Bavarian king Ludwig I in the early 19th century to make Munich look like Athens. It punctures the landscape deliberately: a statement of intent and a new sign of consciousness for a city that had buried its past for 70 years.

“In German we have the saying: let grass grow over it,” says Professor Winfried Nerdinger from his airy office on the top floor of this building, the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism (NS-Dokumentationszentrum). Billing itself as a place of learning and remembrance, this bold institution within the city’s Kunstareal museum quarter opened in 2015 on the spot where the headquarters of the Nazi Party once stood. After