Posted on 12/01/2005 12:15:10 AM PST by nickcarraway
A five-storey Nazi-era bunker in the German capital is being transformed into a luxury penthouse suite, complete with swimming pool and gardens.
Equipped with three-foot-thick ceilings and walls and narrow window slits, the building has been acquired by a German businessman who plans to move in early next year.
Situated near the Friedrichstrasse, close to the famous Deutsches Theater, at the junction of Albrecht and Reinhardtstrasse, the bunker is one of more than 30 huge pieces of Nazi wartime architecture that still remain in Berlin.
It has been acquired by Christian Boros, a German entrepreneur and contemporary art collector who plans to move from Wuppertal, in western Germany, to Berlin with his family once work on the penthouse, swimming pool and roof-top garden is completed early next year.
Boros is having the interior totally revamped, floor by floor, by a team of architects.
If his plans work out, he will move his extensive contemporary art collection - of more than 400 works - by artists Franz Ackermann, Dirk Bell, John Bock, Uwe Henneken, Sergej Jensen, Jonathan Meese, Manfred Pernice, Daniel Pflum, Katja Strunz and Thomas Zipp - into the premises in 2007.
The bunker, which offers magnificent across town view from its top, was built in 1942 as a refuge for 2,500 German railway workers at a time when massive wartime British and US bombing raids were taking place.
Each of its floors was divided into eight chambers with seating space for over 3,000 people, and 50 beds. By the end of the war, vast areas of Berlin had been destroyed and people were desperately seeking shelter. The Achillesstrasse bunker served as a refuge for some of the homeless in 1945-46.
The bunker became a heaving Techno-Disco haunt for a spell in the 1990s.
Many bunkers - both above and below surface were ordered built by Hitler during the war in a futile bid to reassure citizens their city was "indestructible". Following the Nazi defeat, the Allied forces blew up most of them.
Bingo. LOL
It's still a plug ugly building. What are the windows going to look like in those 3 foot thick walls? Should've been demolished and a new building erected on the site.
Technically, its NOT a "bunker" but a Massive "Flak Tower."
I was in Berlin right after reunification. They were still pulling down the wall, and no-man's land was untouched.
I went out on a hot summer day, and walked all over the dividing line between East and West Berlin.
I found the mound over THAT bunker, which still had a bent metal vent pipe sticling up above the ground.
I climbed the little hill.
It was remarkably cold up at the top.
Can't demolish it. Too expensive, too hard to blow up.
Story is wrong about "walls" being 3 foot thick.
Much of the interior (the four floors between ground and upper ammo handling and gun rooms) IS "walls" connecting and intersecting between elevator shafts, machinery rooms, and civilian omb shelter areas. 10-15 foot solid concrete is common.
It's not a bunker. It's a Flak Tower.
I don't agree. And I don't think you do either. You said you want "to puke". That tells me you're disgusted ... but you're not a historic preservationist.
There may be Germans who want to make monuments for various reasons out of their Nazi past but why? Better to let them be made into bastions of capitalism!
Oops, sent to the wrong person ... but same sentiment.
Goring's Air Ministry, Goebbel's Propaganda Ministry, Wermacht Headquarters.
Click here for buildings in Berlin.
I don't see anything really wrong with it at all. Use it for something useful.
I was took a day trip to Berlin back in August and was on a tour that took us to the site where Hitler's body was found. It is a children's park now. The reason for this is that they did not want to leave the place intact the way it was because of a fear of neo-Nazis treating it as some sort of sick shrine. I happen to agree with that reasoning.
Jim,
I was in Hamburg right after the borders opened on business - my first and last trip to Germany. Everyone had the day off, so we crossed into the former East Germany and visited a few towns (Lubeck, Schwerin, and some other - it was years ago, I'd have to look at a map to recall exactly where we went).
It was an eerie scene. I still remember how the whole area smelled like an industrial complex because they were still burning coal. Also, I remember that every church that was still standing had holes in the roof and/or piles of rubble. In many ways, it was like WWII had ended yesterday. The East German troops will still there and still armed with automatic weapons. That was an interesting sight.
There was at least one bunker still standing in Hamburg as I recall. My hosts explained that, because the construction was so strong, it was not economically feasible to tear it down. Several attempts had been made at dynamiting it, to no effect - it was designed to resist blasting. It was definitely a grim reminder of the past, like the bombed-out churches that are scattered throughout Germany as constant reminders.
The bunker sat unused when I was there. Not sure what happened with it and I've since left that company and no longer travel internationally.
- Chris
It's a pile of concrete & rebar that was built as a bomb shelter . Giving it a sinister reputation simply because it was built in the early 40's is silly. Why it wasn't destroyed after the war is anybodies guess . The German govt. may have had plans to use it as a records storage vault, then later sold as surplus govt. property .
As for the failure to tear it down after it was sold, the cost of tearing down something built to withstand direct hits from 1000lbs. high explosive care packages from the RAF & the U.S. 8th Air Force would be extremely prohibitive.
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