Albanian anticommunists are more protective of Axis architecture than communist architecture

The plan to entirely demolish [Gherardo Bosio’s] stadium was met with swift objection from both opposition politicians and media. Questions were immediately raised by Rilindja Demokratike, the newspaper of the opposition Democratic Party, about how the wholesale demolition of the stadium could go ahead given the protected status of Mother Teresa Square in which it stood.

Architect, academic and Democratic Party councillor on Tirana’s municipal council, Besnik Aliaj, decried the plans in stark terms, arguing that neither the [People’s Socialist Republic of Albania] nor Italy’s […] post‐war governments had demolished Tirana’s fascist‐era architecture.

He accused [Prime Minister Edi] Rama of hypocrisy for having objected strenuously to the proposed demolition a decade earlier of the Pyramid, the museum dedicated to Hoxha built in 1985, and summed up his view on the stadium plans as: “Let us not destroy and Talibanize even the little history and identity we have left!” (“Prishja e stadiumit” 2016).

These and other vociferous objections forced Rama into a U‐turn and just a week after the announcement of the stadium design, he revealed a modified plan that would preserve Gherardo Bosio’s façade and monumental staircase, in his view “the only thing of value in that ruin” (“Akuzat për stadiumin” 2016).

Rama’s initial suggestion that the original fascist‐era façade would be preserved in a museum inside the stadium was soon dropped in favour of disassembling it piece by piece and then reintegrating it, in its original position, into the new design (“Portat e stadiumit do hapen brenda 15 muajve” 2017).

Rama was adamant, however, that the two Communist‐era bas‐reliefs that had been embedded into the façade in 1974 be removed and destroyed, declaring: “Those bas‐reliefs […] shamed even socialist realism. They have fulfilled their mission of ugliness and do not possess any cultural heritage value” (“Rama, përgjegjësi penale për prishjen e fasadës së stadiumit” 2016).

Thus, in the highly charged rhetoric surrounding the plans for the stadium, the fascist architecture of Bosio was set up as an aesthetically pleasing and historically significant counterpoint to the worthless Communist‐era interventions, the implication being that unlike Communist heritage, the legacies of the fascist occupation could be uncontroversially celebrated and preserved as significant elements of Albania’s collective cultural memory.

During the three‐year‐long construction period and notwithstanding the intense public interest in the project’s development, at no point were attempts made to contextualize the original structure by Bosio within the history of the fascist occupation and how this experience of dictatorship might be incorporated into Albania’s national memory building.

[…]

The fate of the National Theatre in Tirana’s city centre, just beside Skanderbeg Square, had been at the centre of considerable debate since 2018 but reached a dramatic climax in May 2020 when, with no advance warning, on the final day of Albania’s restrictions to deal with the first wave of COVID‐19, the theatre was entirely demolished. […] The theatre, overcoming its history as an edifice built by the […] fascist dictatorship, became a symbol of Albanian democracy, or lack thereof, in the eyes of many opposition figures.

[…]

On the whole, the arguments employed by Veliaj to defend his position were somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, he accused those campaigning against the demolition of “neo‐colonialism,” asking why Tirana should be denied a modern theatre in a central location as was the case for other European cities.

On the other, he explicitly praised exactly those who had been responsible for colonialism in the Albanian context and cast the fascists in a favourable light, claiming that, “The last people on the right who did something in Tirana were the fascists. The Albanian right has not done anything” (Veliaj, interviewed by Tonelli 2020).

In the months that followed, the demolition of the theatre continued to be employed by the opposition Democratic Party as a political stick with which to beat the government. Opposition leader Basha used the occasion of International Cultural Heritage Day in September 2020 to draw attention to the “‘barbarism and hatred that this government nurtures for the values and institutions of our nation’ and to cast the ruling party as a ‘régime’ working against the desires of the citizenry at large” (“Basha mesazh” 2020).

[…]

The partial or complete demolition of the stadium and theatre did not prompt reflections on the legacies of fascist colonialism and heritage for […] [pseudo]democratic Albania. Rather, any such consideration has been overtaken by the lived experience of the sites in subsequent decades, overshadowing their origins and establishing them as symbols not of fascist colonialism but of the survival of sport and the arts in Albania despite the years of oppressive Communist dictatorship and, latterly, as symbols of the importance of democratic transparency in contemporary Albania.

(Emphasis added.)

Although the survival of Fascist‐era architecture in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie should be unsurprising, some of you may be rightfully concerned that it was allowed to exist at all in a people’s republic, and the author herself goes so far as to liken this to the widespread reuse of Axis architecture under Italy’s and West Germany’s post‐1945 régimes. Even the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya demolished more Fascist architecture than the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania did. What happened?

The anticommunist author, inevitably, offers no explanation, presumably because she wants us to arrive at a horseshoe theorist’s conclusion on our own, but she did give us this hint:

Albania emerged from the Second World War “as easily the most backward country in Europe” (Vickers 2001, 165). A third of all buildings and livestock had been destroyed, almost all transport and industrial infrastructure was damaged or with very limited functionality, many thousands were homeless and food was in short supply.

Couple this with how the Fascist occupation of Libya was longer (and arguably more traumatic) and we have a possible explanation for why the Albanian lower classes preferred to simply recycle Axis architecture: demolition of these structures was simply a privilege that we could hardly afford here. We gave organized religion a higher priority because it remained an active phenomenon and we frequently associated it with subjugation or oppression.

While the preference for recycling Axis architecture over demolishing it in the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania may be regrettable, I would be more alarmed at how most of it not only survived under Albania’s present anticommunist régime but has received a privileged status as well. Apparently, anticommunists are more protective of Axis structures—even ones that we recycled for whatever reason—than they are of ours.

:::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (October 13). 1887: Jozef Tiso was, I am sad to say, born.
1937: In a note to Brussels, Berlin guaranteed the inviolability and integrity of Belgium. Apart from that, fifty thousand Imperialists marched for Xinkou, Shanxi, China, supported by thirty aircraft, twoscore pieces of artillery, and fifty light tanks and tankettes.
1939: With the offer for peace rejected by Paris six days earlier and by Ldon yesterday, Berlin announced that the (other) Western powers desired war, and that the German Reich could not be blamed for military action on the German–French border. As well, the 1,819‐ton neutral Norwegian merchant steamer Kvernaas, captured by the Third Reich in September, became released from Kiel along with its cargo of 2,585 tons of cellulose.
1940: Axis submarine U‐103 torpedoed Estonian ship Nora two hundred miles west of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, and an Allied flying boat spotted Axis destroyer Camicia Nera at dawn towing destroyer Artigliere, which succumbed to damage yesterday during the Battle of Cape Passero east of Malta. Flightcraft from HMS Illustrious forced Camicia Nera to cut the tow line, and then cruisers HMS York and HMS Ajax and four destroyers sank Artigliere with torpedoes. The Allied warships dropped rafts for the Axis survivors before departing; many of the survivors would be rescued by an Axis hospital ship on the following day.

Four raids of 25–50 Axis flightcraft (consisting mostly of fighters) attacked southern England between 1230 and 1600 hours. The Axis and the Allies each lost two fighters. Overnight, the Axis bombed London from 1900 hours until 0600 hours of the next day, and the Axis also assaulted Middlesborough, Hull, Huddersfield, Grantham, Liverpool, and Manchester. Lastly, Axis submarine U‐37 sank Allied ship Stangrant west of Scotland at 1957 hours, massacring eight folk (but leaving thirty alive).
1941: The Axis captured Kalinin (now Tver) and Rzhev northwest of Moscow, and the Axis encircled the Soviet 30th Army at Rzhev and annihilated it. To make matters worse, the Axis occupation administration in France formally commenced regulating the transfer of food from the countryside to family members in cities, and announced a weight limit of fifty kilograms. Philippe Pétain visited a school in village Périgny in Allier department, France. Radio reporter M. Jean Masson praised Périgny as an ideal traditional village, hence Pétain’s visit. Children sang La Marseillaise (even though the Third Reich prohibited that song) at the radio programme’s end.

Finally, Heinrich Kreipe received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross medal, and Johannes Hähle turned in seven photographs with the title ‘Umfassungsschlacht ostw. Kiew’ to his superiors.
1942: Axis battleships Haruna and Kongo bombarded Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, destroying more than twoscore Allied flightcraft on the ground; they retired up New Georgia Sound at 29 knots. Aside from that, U‐132 joined wolfpack Panther, and Axis auxiliary cruiser Komet departed Le Havre, France, escorted by the Third Reich’s 3rd Torpedo Boat Flotilla (T4, T10, T14, and T19), attempting to break out into the Atlantic Ocean.
1943: Agents from the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in Paris captured Noor Inayat Khan (maybe around the same time that Marshal Pietro Badoglio announced that the Kingdom of Italy has officially declared war on the Third Reich).
1944: The Axis abandoned Athens and left Rethymno in Northern Crete, retiring unharrassed to the region around Canea in the north west of the island. The Axis also lost Riga City to the Soviets, thereby discontinuing the Salaspils concentration camp, and Armeegruppe Nord withdrew to the Kurland (Latvian: Courland) pocket in western Latvia. Meanwhile, a V‐1 flying bomb fell on the Suffolk town of Southwold and caused major damage but surprisingly no serious injuries; in all 337 houses were damaged, 68 shops, three churches and the fire station were all reported as being harmed in some way to the blast. Another impacted on RAF Raydon near Ipswich; the bomb narrowly missed the bomb dump concealed in woods next to the perimeter; at the time of the strike somebody was loading bombs onto transport trucks.
2013: Martin Drewes, Luftwaffe aviator, expired. :::