©Ullstein Bild / Titel Weimar: Kulturkundgebung der europäischen Jugend, Weimar – Florenz 1942, 1942
Built in 1838 as a clubhouse for the crossbowmen's association, the building with its shooting range was am well-known meeting place for the Weimar bourgeoisie. On 4 July 1926, on the occasion of the NSDAP party conference, the various groups of the nationalist youth movement were renamed "Hitler Youth, League of German Workers' Youth" in the large hall and from then on formed the only youth organisation of the NSDAP. A memorial plaque on the building later commemorated this event. Baldur von Schirach was appointed Reich Youth Leader of the NSDAP by Hitler in 1931. In addition to the Hitler Youth, he was also in charge of the Nazi Student Association and the Nazi Pupils' Association. His father was General Director of the Weimar Court Theatre until 1918 and the family maintained close personal contacts with Adolf Hitler. When Schirach was awarded honorary citizenship in 1937, the Thüringer Gauzeitung wrote that he had "set the youth the enormous task of consolidating the foundation of their national socialist creed, their belief in eternal Germany, with all the cultural values and laws of life revealed by the great ideologues Goethe and Schiller and resting in the concept of
Weimar." As a mass organisation for girls and boys, the Hitler Youth was the most important instrument of totalitarian education under National Socialism. Since 1960, a cinema has been located behind the classicist façade of this building.