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.
I think I'm gonna puke.
There is nothing to indicate that this guy is a Nazi. If the city felt it had historical significance then they should have preserved or developed it.
It's real estate, no more no less.
It's a Nazi bunker. Hello?
Well should we preserve it for posterity? Life goes on ... this site will be here forever.
You want to hang onto it! Why?
I think it is a great idea... I would buy one.
Will someone explain Germany to me? This is the land that gave birth to Goethe...did it all start disintegrating after the Franz Ferdinand assasination fiasco? Why did this amazing powerhouse of a country turn sour?
There is nothing indicating that the business man buying it is a NAZI.
On that note, living there would be bigtime creepy.
"During the last ten years, a large number of these examples of Nazi ideology have been destroyed due to extensive building. Criticism arose on their destruction: The Berlin Underground Association, which has been fighting for the survival of these underground shelters since 1997, regards the bunkers in Berlin has authentic examples of Germany's terrifying past. Examples which should therefore be left, as a reminder and a warning."
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,339896,00.html
Sounds like it will be a good place to hold out against rampaging Islamo-fascist hordes in about ten or fifteen years.
I'd heard that Prinz-Albrecht-Straße-8 was going to be reconstructed.
"Nazi stronghold."
It was a @#&(*$ air raid shelter. If it was the flippin' Fuhrerbunker I might agree with you.
Specialists still argue about the evaluation of current events, now that the bag of Nazi has fallen over in Berlin. Contact to our correspondent could not be established up to now, as he seems to have fallen unconscious due to a drinking contest with some 14 year olds in the neighbourhood.
Well, I guess it's just "Springtime For Hitler" all over again,
only the bunker is under new management.
I'd actually like to visit after the renovations are completed...
so I could be amongst the first to say:
"I really love what you've done with the bunker!"
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