Introduction
  Benjamin, Walter
  Bismarck, Otto v.
  Brecht, Bertolt
  Celan, Paul
  Döblin, Alfred
  Fontane, Theodor
  Grosz, George
  Grünbein, Durs
  Heartfield, John
  Honigmann, Barbara
  Isherwood, Christopher
  Johnson, Uwe
  Kleist, Heinrich v.
  Kollwitz, Käthe
  Kracauer, Siegfried
  Lang, Fritz
  Lasker-Schüler, Else
  Liebermann, Max
  Liebknecht, Karl
  Luxemburg, Rosa
  Marc, Franz
  Ossietzky, Carl v.
  Riefenstahl, Leni
  Ruttmann, Walther
  Schinkel, Karl Friedrich
  Speer, Albert
  Tieck, Ludwig
  Tucholsky, Kurt
  Ury, Lesser
  Varnhagen, Rahel
  Wenders, Wim

 
Speer, Albert

b. March 19, 1905, Mannheim, Baden
d. Sept. 1, 1981, London

German architect who was Adolf Hitler's chief architect (1933-45) and minister for armaments and war production (1942-45).

Speer studied at the technical schools in Karlsruhe, Munich, and Berlin, and acquired an architectural license in 1927. After hearing Hitler speak at a Berlin rally in late 1930, he enthusiastically joined the Nazi Party (January 1931) and so impressed the Führer by his efficiency and talent that, soon after Hitler became chancellor, Speer became his personal architect. He was rewarded with many important commissions, including grandiose plans to rebuild the whole of Berlin (never accomplished) and the design of the parade grounds, searchlights, and banners of the spectacular Nürnberg party congress of 1934, filmed by Leni Riefenstahl in Triumph of the Will.

In 1942 Speer became minister of armaments and munitions, a title enlarged the following year to minister of armaments and war production, when he was charged not only with armaments production, transportation, and placement but also with final authority over raw materials and industrial production. With this authority, Speer expanded a system of conscript and slave labour, supplied primarily from concentration camps, that maintained production of war material for Nazi Germany.

Speer confessed his guilt at the Nürnberg trials in 1945-46 and served a 20-year sentence at Spandau prison in West Berlin. Following his release in 1966 he had a career as a writer. His published works include Erinnerungen (1969; Inside the Third Reich, 1970), Spandauer Tagebücher (1975; Spandau: The Secret Diaries, 1976), and Der Sklavenstaat (1981; Infiltrator, 1981).

Source

"Speer, Albert" Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
<http://www.eb.com:180/bol/topic?eu=70839&sctn=1>