Documentary Tour through a cold war Bunker

**Update: November 14, 2011 ** Sorry, once again, Some Germans are being “stereotypically” German….. Someone at the bunker sent me a nastygram, telling me that I have to take down ALL the photos I took at this place, and remove all reference to the bunker – even though they were being used for my use only, and I wasn’t making any money off of them. How dare I… take a paid for a tour which allows pictures – so take pictures and dare to use them…to publish a review, provide history, and document the place

Wouldn’t it just be more simple to ban the cameras and photography from the start than to get a burr up your butt and cause hassle for everyone? Oh wait.. that’d make sense. **

The End of September, I took the day off and headed up to an old cold war bunker that was offering tours through it. It has taken me just over a month to get the photographs edited and uploaded (my apologies) but they’re up now at:

Honecker Bunker

if you’d like to check them out.

A brief history of this huge 3 story underground bunker near Berlin can be found on the website:

Bunker5001.com

But here’s information from the site:

The first stages in the construction of the bunker started in 1971. First, a suitable location had to be found close to Berlin, while the project office (PBS) in Dresden dealt with planning the design. Once the Prenden site had been selected, the ground could be excavated and the area for the barracks complex prepared. Presumably, the barracks would have been completed before the bunker was constructed, thus ensuring a greater degree of secrecy. This is confirmed by a similar facility where the barracks have already been completed, whereas the planned bunker had not yet been started.
Excavation of the pit was started in 1976. By this time, the deep well had already been bored. Once the preparatory measures had been completed, work on the actual bunker construction was started in 1978 and lasted some five years, with the official handover taking place on 13 December, 1983. This dates the active period of the bunker, i.e. the period from when it was permanently manned around the clock, initially with only 10 – 20 personnel. These were responsible for maintenance and keeping it operationally ready. At a time of crisis, the NDC could have moved here at short notice. However, apart from the occasional exercise, the daily life here was fortunately relatively peaceful.

With the fall of the Wall in 1989 the bunker lost its significance almost overnight. Shortly afterwards, it was taken over by the Bundeswehr, the (West) German armed forces. However, since the presence of the bunker was now public knowledge and was not deemed suitable for the Bundeswehr, it was closed in 1993. Some of the equipment and fittings were removed up until April 1993, some of the larger machines sold (primarily, the five diesel generators) and then the access was sealed with a thick concrete wall. The life of the bunker thus came to an end and in 2003 the bunker was declared a historical building, and rightly so.

The page then goes on to say:

The bunker was officially sealed up in April 1993 once the Bundeswehr no longer needed it. Before it was sealed, hazardous materials were removed as were several items of equipment, in particular, office fittings such as tables, cupboards, office equipment, etc. While the technical equipment in the bunker can no longer actually operate, it is, to a great extent, still there.

In the middle of 2002, the bunker was opened up illegally after almost 10 years by means of a hole being made in the concrete seal which had been cast in the access tunnel. During the next 18 months, the bunker was repeatedly re-sealed and just as often re-opened. Unfortunately, vandals and scrap metal thieves also got to know about the bunker. As a result, the theft of various metals, especially the copper from the numerous large cables) led to the final demise of the equipment remaining in the bunker. In addition, parts were removed from countless machines – presumably for their spare-parts value – which the made it impossible to restore the affected equipment. The bunker was facing its final days. However, at the end of 2003 two organisations, the Berlin Bunker Network (BBN) and the Berlin forestry association, sealed up the access to the tunnel in a joint action and also the original site of the concrete seal.

By the end of 2004, entry to the bunker had been achieved yet again. It was obvious that preservation of the bunker and relevant health and safety regulations could not be maintained using normal methods. BBN developed a concept at the beginning of 2005 to secure the bunker properly. Access holes were sealed yet again and an additional security door was added (Fig. left. Source: dpa, Berliner Kurier). This made it possible to obtain rapid access in an emergency and also allowed the police to get in following a break-in. Further security measures were developed and put into practice. Since then, the number of break-ins has dropped dramatically and practically anyone trying to break in was caught in the act by the police.

Since these security measures came into force, it has been possible to maintain the current state of the bunker and, in some cases, to eradicate some acute hazards which had arisen. Despite the current positive situation, the need remains to re-establish the original sealed state of the bunker. The immense personnel requirements necessary to secure the bunker cannot be provided for ever, and individual break-ins have still occurred, some of which could not be detected in time to prosecute those involved. Fortunately, very little was damaged.
In order to create a permanent seal, the existing concrete seal will be extended and reinforced at the end of 2008. The weak spots in the bunker will be eradicated and the access tunnel, which always provided “cover” for those involved in their nefarious activities, will be destroyed, thus removing such possibilities and the bunker will be secured against further damage for a prolonged period, with the relevant safety measures being met.

A Bit on the Construction can be found here, including technical data and schematic drawings. In summary

The 5001 bunker is really like a mini-town which could function independently for some 14 days. In addition to the water, air and electrical supplies, there were also air-conditioning systems, washing and toilet facilities, a medical centre with an emergency operations room, a decontamination area and a large kitchen available. Up to 400 personnel could have survived for two weeks.

I hope you’ll check out the photographs, and stop to think about what would have happened if this bunker had been needed.

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A tour of Templehof – the Mother of All Airports

Recently, I was lucky enough to participate in a tour of Berlin’s Templehof Airport. Called the Mother of All Airports, Berlin’s Templehof airport will close in the Fall of 2008 and become well, we don’t yet know what.

Zentral Flughafen

To understand Templehof airport, you need to understand that it has, after nearly 300 years, become an integral part of Berlin’s culture and history. Pre WW2, the airport was used as a Royal Prussian parade ground starting in and around the 1700’s. From around 1895 to 1918, in between being used as a parade ground, the airport served as a demonstration area for hot air balloons, airships and aircraft.It was also was
Quoting The Local “the scene of an Orville Wright air-show in 1909, of zeppelin flights in the thirties, and in 1948 – 49, of the Berlin air-lift – when American and British “candy-bombers” landed and launched here every three minutes to save West Germany’s spiritual capital from Communist oblivion. It was the scene of Berlin’s Dunkirk. We damn well wanted to see it.
Now Tempelhof has fallen on uncertain times. It has recently been struck down by the apathy of the people of Berlin, who in an April referendum could not muster enough nostalgia to force the Berlin senate to reconsider its decision to close it down.

The senate’s plan is to redirect all business to the Berlin-Brandenburg International (BBI) mega-port that will, in the next few years, consume and replace Schönefeld on the south-eastern outskirts of town. Tegel, a very convenient and well-travelled airport to the north-west of the city, will also fall victim to this behemoth, though with a lot less protest. Tempelhof will probably be turned into a museum next to a huge, very flat park.

But despite the final defeat, Tempelhof’s demise has not come without a fight. The referendum was forced by a heroic street-initiative that collected 200,000 signatures. Only then did Merkel’s CDU realise there was electoral capital to be gained from the airport, and mobilised a heavy-duty advertising campaign and enlisted a host of B-List celebrities in aid of the threatened airport. In opinion polls, anything up to 75 percent of Berliners said they wanted to keep it open”

1980's open house layout

The thing is though, that the airport – at the referendum in April – didn’t get enough votes to stay open. Just over 500,000 Berliners voted to keep the options open – less than 25% of the electorate even bothered to turn up. So, the airport is closing, and facing a slow painful death.
So, why was it so important to me to go on this tour? For me, Templehof airport is a glimpse into the past. It’s a glimpse into the 1920’s, a world of flappers, jazz music, modern art-deco architecture. A world where architecture plans were dominated and changed repeatedly by the third reich, planned in part by Hitler, and dreamed of by the Germans as they hoped to embark on a larger than life (and ill fated)bit of glory in the form of WW2. It was a part of a world where the cold war split a city in two, dropped aid from the sky for years, and, when the wall fell – helped to reunite the city by becoming a way for everyone to travel to/from the airport at the same time as other – more modern – airports were built. This was a chance to document history as it prepares to change – all in the name of progress.
From the Wikipedia on Templehof: The site of the airport was originally Knights Templar land in medieval Berlin, and from this beginning came the name Tempelhof. Later, the site was used as a parade field by Prussian forces, and by unified German forces from 1720 to the start of World War I. In 1909, Frenchman Armand Zipfel made the first flight demonstration in Tempelhof, followed by Orville Wright later that same year. [1] Tempelhof was first officially designated as an airport on 8 October 1923. Lufthansa was founded in Tempelhof on 6 January 1926.
The old terminal, originally constructed in 1927, received politicians and celebrities from around the world during the 1930s. As part of Albert Speer‘s plan for the reconstruction of Berlin during the Nazi era, Prof. Ernst Sagebiel was ordered to replace the old terminal with a new terminal building in 1934.
The airport halls and the neighbouring buildings, intended to become the gateway to Europe and a symbol of Hitler’s “world capital” Germania, are still known as the largest built entities worldwide, and have been described by British architect Sir Norman Foster as “the mother of all airports”. With its façades of shell limestone, the terminal building, built between 1936 and 1941, forms a massive 1.2-kilometre long quadrant yet has a charmingly intimate feel; planes can taxi right up to the building and unload, sheltered from the weather by its enormous overhanging canopy. Passengers walk through customs controls and find themselves in a dazzlingly simple and luminous reception hall. Tempelhof is served conveniently by the U6 U-Bahn line along Mehringdamm and up Friedrichstraße (Platz der Luftbrücke station).
Zentralflughafen Tempelhof-Berlin had an advantage of central location just minutes from the heart of Berlin and quickly became one of the world’s busiest airports. Tempelhof saw its greatest pre-war days during 1938–1939 when more than 52 foreign and 40 domestic aircraft arrived and departed daily.
The air terminal was designed as headquarters for Deutsche Lufthansa, the German national airline. As a forerunner of today’s modern airports, the building was designed with many unique features including giant arc-shaped hangars for aircraft parking. Although under construction for more than ten years, it was never finished because of World War II.
The building complex was designed to resemble an eagle in flight with semicircular hangars forming the bird’s spread wings. A mile long hangar roof was to have been laid in tiers to form a stadium for spectators at air and ground demonstrations for up to one million people.”
All of the pictures attached on this are my own, and copyright by me. I hope you will take a minute to look, think and read of the history of this mighty airport which is being closed in the name of progress. There are no plans to tear down portions of it – yet. Most of it is historically protected, including the green space where the runways and tarmacs currently are. However, this site is endangered – because once it’s closed, with no buyers, and no plans (other than the green space becoming a park) – it will surely be left to rot – much like many other buildings in the city.

Ready for Takeoff

So, it is that we in Berlin are saying good bye to an old friend. Templehof airport was never finished, the plans are there – the ideas are there – and had it been finished, it truly would have been a timeless masterpiece dedicated to one thing we humans can’t do – FLY.

I started to add pictures, then decided to provide a link – it’s just easier that way. The pictures are at: Templehof Airport Tour on my Flickr Site.

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