The Shadow of Mussert’s Wall: Lifting the Taboo on Dutch National-Socialist Heritage?

Inspired by the Nazi rally grounds in Nurnberg, the National Socialist Movement of the Netherlands (NSB) purchased a plot of land near the village of Lunteren where they created an open-air theatre that could accommodate thousands of people. On one side of the terrain a long curved wall was constructed, which is known today as ‘Mussert’s wall’ after NSB-leader Anton Mussert who used it as a podium to deliver his speeches. Since the early 2000s, discussion arose about the site’s future. On the one hand, some local political parties and heritage organisations wanted to restore and preserve it. On the other hand, the Centre for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI) tried to prevent this, fearing that Mussert’s wall would become a place of pilgrimage for right-wing extremists. In 2018, the national heritage agency of the Netherlands (RCE) decided to enlist the building as a national monument. This started a new discussion about how the site should be presented to visitors. This paper analyses the interplay between stakeholders involved in discussions about Mussert’s wall, including local communities, governments, heritage professionals, and other interest groups, as well as the strategies they considered for this site, ranging from demolition to preservation and adaptive reuse.