Bidding for Prora.

Running the length of 4.5 kilometres of the coastline of Rugen, Germany's largest island, stands the unwanted relic of what is one of the earliest prototypes of mass tourism. Prora, built during the Third Reich under the direction of Hitler, was designed to accommodate 20 000 holidaymakers at any one time. The holiday camp, a product of the Kraft durch Freude (KdF) - 'Strength Through Joy' - campaign, was designed to provide every German worker with the opportunity to enjoy two weeks of holiday for a nominal fee of two marks per day. The building's masterplan embraces an ambitious ideology creating an artificial community of hospitals, schools and kindergartens for the 2000 employees, and theatres and cinemas providing round the clock entertainment and supervision for the holidaymakers.

Before 1936, when the first pine trees were erased from the site, the name Prora only existed as a bay running parallel to an area of environmentally protected land. Prior to construction, a great infrastructure was planned to accommodate the influx of 20 000 tourists, consisting of a railway system, ferry link and road network.

Prora, the largest executed building of the Third Reich, was designed by a favoured architect of Hitler, Clemens Klotz (1886-1961). Klotz, a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, was commissioned to design many of the state projects built during this period. Although Klotz had completed his design for the KdF holiday camp in 1935, a competition was organised by Albert Speer and a selection of 11 architects made. The largely farcical competition produced very similar results, due to the design requirement that all bedrooms were to be orientated towards the sea and restrictions on all building over five storeys high. Hitler chose Klotz's design for the total concept and that of an architect from Hamburg, zu Putlitz for the design of the central festival square.

The dormitories, the principal element of the design, were divided into four wings, each 500 metres long and intersected with auxiliary buildings five storeys high, containing various functions such as catering areas, reading rooms, billiard rooms and cafes. Perpendicular to the main facade were 10 further blocks housing the staircase towers, lifts, bathrooms and laundrette. Each of the 20 000 bedrooms measuring 2.4 by 5 metres was designed to accommodate two people. The bedrooms were orientated towards the sea, with the circulation on the land side. Promenades led the holidaymakers down to the shore where centrally-heated rest halls in the forms of boats jutted out into the water. The central festival hall completed the axial symmetry, supplying holidaymakers with a sports hall, two swimming pools (complete with artificial waves) and a tower 85 m high with a panoramic cafe. The holiday complex never fulfilled the Fuhrer's concept of creating a healthy master race; the start of the War called the workers away to more urgent concerns and the building lay barren with areas fully fitted out with such paraphernalia as embroidered towels and bed-linen.

Monumental in size, the planning was purely functional, with only the central festival square pertaining to the grand exhibitionist style of totalitarian architecture, symbolised in buildings such as the Reichstagspartei building in Nuremberg. The planning for Prora was a strict exercise in the control and supervision of holiday activities. Technically, the building was constructed using a cast in-situ skeleton frame with brick infill. The prestressed reinforced ceiling slabs were considered an advanced building system for that period. The most southerly part of the site, incomplete at the time of the outbreak of war, was blown up by the Red Army and has now been left to crumble, with the remains of staircase towers hanging on by a few reinforcement bars. A chain fence does little to deter vandals or the many curious visitors who make the pilgrimage to the relic of Nazism.

Erased from all GDR maps until the reunification in 1990, the building was passed into the hands of the Federal State of Germany. Proving itself to be a white elephant with maintenance costs mounting to 14 million marks, the regional state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommerania, in charge of the overall administration of the building, is keen to be rid of the financial burden. Some 200 000 marks have been spent on commissioning a development proposal by a Danish practice of architects. The scheme resulted in a commercialised vision of aquaparks, shopping malls and waterside cafes. The outcome caused outrage among local residents, conservationists and historians afraid the vision of Prora as leisure centre, under the management of one single investor, would be little more than a thin reworking of the original concept. A pressure group was formed forcing the Regional Council to commission a comprehensive feasibility study producing an in-depth analysis of the environmental consequences on the island. There is also the question of Prora's historical role as an exemplar in the chronicle of architecture of the Third Reich.

The Regional State Council now faces the dilemma of whether to preserve the building as a reminder of the megalomaniacal propaganda machinations of National Socialism or to let the building deteriorate until a suitable investor meets the costs. Within the feasibility study suggestions have ranged from creating a multifunctional use, to dynamiting the entire complex, leaving behind 90 000 cubic metres of rubble. The sales documents (omitting any reference to the politics surrounding the building) list each plot in a hierarchical order of potential lucrative development - yet the Federal State still awaits the offer of 95 million marks purchase price, backed up with a further 300 million marks to renovate the site. And it could be a long wait while the debate still rages over the future of Prora, oscillating between holiday park or museum as a remembrance of the politics of the Third Reich.