Колосс Проры: История гигантского комплекса на Рюгене.

Building complex in Rügen, Germany

The Colossus of Prora, commonly known as simply "Prora", is a building complex in the municipality of Binz on the island of Rügen, Germany. It was built by Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1939 as part of the Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude or KdF) project. It consisted of eight identical buildings and was in length parallel to the beach, with the surviving structures stretching
Although the buildings were planned as a holiday resort, construction was not completed, and they were not used for this purpose. Prora, as it was known, was however used largely by the Nazi Party for propaganda, with the supposed strength and power displayed in the construction effort of the complex likened by the party to that of themselves. After World War II, the complex found various military uses, first by the Soviet Army, then by the East German Volksarmee, and then by the German Bundeswehr. Today, it houses a large youth hostel, a hotel, and holiday apartments. The complex has a formal heritage listing as a particularly striking example of Nazi architecture.

Prora lies on an extensive bay between the Sassnitz and Binz regions, known as the Prorer Wiek, on the narrow heath (the Prora) which separates the lagoon of the Kleiner Jasmunder Bodden from the Baltic Sea. The buildings extended over a length of and are roughly from the beach. The coast offers a long flat sand beach which stretches from Binz to the ferry port. This beach was thus an ideal location for the establishment of a seaside resort.

The Strength Through Joy program was designed to attract the working class – who had during the Weimar Republic been the power base of the Social Democrats and, to a lesser extent, the Communists – to the Nazi Party by offering numerous cultural events and mass tourism at affordable prices. They also presented an opportunity for the inculcation of Nazi ideology through constant indoctrination by propaganda. Founded in November 1933, in the year 1934, 400,000 people took Strength Through Joy package tours, a number which rose to 1.7 million by 1937, not to mention 7 million who availed themselves of weekend excursions and 1.6 million who participated in organized hikes. Robert Ley, head of the German Labour Front – of which Strength Through Joy was a subsidiary – envisioned Prora as a parallel to Butlins, which were British "holiday camps" designed to provide affordable holidays for the average worker. Prora was designed to house 20,000 holidaymakers, under the idea that every worker deserved a holiday at the beach. Designed by Clemens Klotz, who won a design competition overseen by Adolf Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer, all rooms were planned to overlook the sea, while corridors and sanitation are located on the landward side. Each room of by was to have two beds, a wardrobe, and a sink. There were communal toilets, showers, and bathrooms on each floor. Hitler's plans for Prora were much more ambitious. He wanted a gigantic sea resort, the "most mighty and large one to ever have existed", holding 20,000 beds. In the middle, a huge building was to be erected, which would be a grand hall for speeches and concerts. At the same time, Hitler wanted the complex to have the ability to be converted into a military hospital in case of war. Hitler insisted that the plans of a giant indoor arena by architect Erich zu Putlitz were to be included. Putlitz's Festival Hall was intended to be able to accommodate all 20,000 guests at the same time. His plans included two wave swimming pools, a cinema, and a theatre.

Construction began in 1936 and during the few years that Prora was under construction, all major construction companies of the Reich and nearly 9,000 workers were involved in this project. With the onset of World War II in 1939, building on Prora stopped and the construction workers transferred to the V Weapons plant at Peenemünde. The eight housing blocks and the theatre and cinema remained empty shells. The swimming pools and festival hall never materialised. If the complex had been completed, it would have been the largest holiday resort in the world.

During the Allied bombing campaign, many people from Hamburg took refuge in one of the housing blocks, and later refugees from the east of Germany were housed there. In September 2010, plans were announced by a German Austrian investor group to renovate blocks 1 and 2 as housing for the elderly and a hotel with 300 beds that includes tennis courts, and swimming pool, and a small shopping centre. The investment costs are estimated at €100 million.

In 2013, a German company, Metropole Marketing, bought the rights to refurbish Prora and market the units as summer homes. By that year, refurbished apartments in the so called Colossus were on sale for as much as €700,000 each. The Prora Solitaire hotel in Block 2 opened for the summer of 2016, and some reconstructed flats were for sale in that Block by mid 2017. At that time, four of the buildings were in the process of redevelopment, a fifth was used as a youth hostel while the remaining three remained in ruins. A November 2017 update indicated that most of the units (flats) in Block 1 had been sold, having been marketed as summer homes for those who live in Hamburg and Berlin. It was the setting of the 2012 short film Prora. Prora is the setting for the first and fifth of the series of crime novels by David Young set in pre unification East Germany: Stasi Child (2016) and Stasi Winter (2020). Both stories feature a fictional Jugendwerkhof, a workhouse for juvenile delinquents, located in the planned holiday resort.