Brandnacht 1944 is a digital remembrance project about Darmstadt’s lost Old Town.The project is currently in the planning and concept phase. Its goal is to make the historic Old Town accessible not only as an image or model, but as a spatial experience. Based on historical sources, photographs and the Old Town miniature model, a digital reconstruction will be developed step by step, allowing the city to be walked through, explored and communicated in the future.
The current state is based on a high-resolution scan of the Old Town model. As an interactive 3D scene with information points, it offers a first way to explore buildings, streets and places that no longer exist today.

In the long term, this will become a walkable digital Old Town. The reconstruction is intended to do more than visually restore what was lost. It aims to make remembrance, education and historical communication spatially tangible. At its center are the places, the people and the changes that preceded the destruction.

Brandnacht 1944 is currently being developed independently of public funding. Progress is therefore slow, but continuous. Every form of support helps to further develop the project and make the reconstruction accessible in the long term as a walkable digital experience.

Special thanks go to Altstadtverein Darmstadtia e.V. and Prof. Dr. Martin, Stadtarchiv Darmstadt, Hessisches Staatsarchiv and Harald Höflein for their support and access to historical material.
We would also like to thank Mr Häusler for creating the Old Town model, as well as Mr Uhland for setting up the model and making the scanning process possible.

Further information for supporting the project can be found on Patreon:Patreon

Explore a web-optimized preview of the digitized Old Town miniature model here.
The model quality has been significantly reduced for smoother browser performance. The full scan model exists in a higher-resolution version.

Use the icon in the lower right corner to open the viewer in fullscreen. The navigation modes are located next to it. Enable performance mode if the viewer does not run smoothly. You can leave first-person view by pressing Esc.

The information points in the model provide short notes on selected buildings and places in the historic Old Town.