It is disturbing to think that Adolf Hitler still has something important to say. It is even more disturbing that we should pay attention. And yet, Despina Stratigakos shows us why we should in her book Hitler at Home.
It is clear that architectural historians have long favored the schemes of Albert Speer over those of Gerdy Troost—Hitler's preferred interior designer. Speer's work was public, Troost's private. His work was grandiose, hers mundane. And perhaps most important, his work was male and hers, well, female. Given the subject matter of her previous book, A Women's Berlin, we should not be surprised that Stratigakos reminds us how important females have been to the history of visual and built culture.1 As she says, if Speer had been more involved in Hitler's domestic sphere, maybe the Führer's domestic spaces would be more familiar. She also points out that the primary...
University of California Press