Berlin Underworld don't just do tours of this one bunker. They have others, though some of them are not visited as regularly. We found out that to celebrate the organisation's 20th Birthday, they were having a "Long Night of the Underworld" much like the Long Night of the Museums - 10 of the organisation's Bunkers or facilities in their care would be open between 6pm until late (with the closing hours varying), all for one fixed fee. Having been meaning to do another bunker tour, but unsure which one or ones, we took this opportunity to do as many as we could.
One of the things we most recommend to people visiting Berlin is to visit the World War 2 air raid shelter at Gesundbrunnen, run by Berlin Underworld. It is built into the U-Bahn and S-Bahn railway station, and is quite fascinating - because of all the stuff you hear about World War 2, you never quite hear much about what the German people went through and particular the Berliner's as their city became the focus of Allied bombing efforts and eventually, ground occupation as the War in Europe came to a close - and ended right here in Berlin. Not only did Berlin have to go through its own Blitz, but when the Soviet tanks rolled in they had to fight their way in to control the city. This particular bunker tour gives you a good introduction to what the German people, but Berliner's in particular, had to go though and even what they had to deal with at the end because once it was all over, the city was in ruins. Berlin Underworld don't just do tours of this one bunker. They have others, though some of them are not visited as regularly. We found out that to celebrate the organisation's 20th Birthday, they were having a "Long Night of the Underworld" much like the Long Night of the Museums - 10 of the organisation's Bunkers or facilities in their care would be open between 6pm until late (with the closing hours varying), all for one fixed fee. Having been meaning to do another bunker tour, but unsure which one or ones, we took this opportunity to do as many as we could. We started off by going to the southernmost exhibit - the Fichtebunker, a former brick Gasometer building which was converted into a "Mother and Child" bunker during WW2. It even had a Prison in the basement, and as far as bunkers go is quite spacious - each family was allocated a small room to themselves with bunks, located on one of the circular floors. We then travelled up to the northernmost exhibit - the Op-Bunker, which is literally a small bunker formerly located on the grounds of a hospital where surgery or operations could be carried out safely. This building was outdoors half above ground, but very solidly constructed and it still housed all the equipment - all a bit primitive looking and kind of scary, but obviously functional given the times and circumstances. Next, we headed back south a bit and visited the ABC-Schutzanlage, otherwise known as the Atombunker. This is located at the Pankstrasse U-Bahn station - literally the U-Bahn station is the entrance to this bunker and its built over the station complex, both being built at the same time in the 1970's. It is still fully equipped and operational - this one is hardly a museum piece, it is still in commission and ready to be used in an emergency. Atomic war is not seemingly as much of a risk these days as it once was (though Trump and Kim Jong-Un seem to be ratcheting it up again) so I wondered what the merits of keeping such an installation in commission might be with its inherent costs. I guess if you've got it, it makes sense to keep it going just in case - but I did work out that in the case of the Zombie Apocalypse, this will be a very safe place to be. Almost all of the rest, bar 2, of the exhibits are all located slightly further south from Pankstrasse at Gesundbrunnen. We had done it this way deliberately to end up around Gesundbrunnen around dinner time with the idea of getting some quick and easy food from a venue around the station there, but first we wanted to visit the Flakturm Humboldthain. The Germans tended to construct 2 types of bunker in World War 2 - underground bunkers, like the one at Gesundbrunnen which was not safe from bombs from being dropped on it, or above ground multi-storey structures which also had anti-aircraft guns on them. Above ground structures might seem counter-intuitive, but actually these things were mega-solid and the anti-aircraft gun emplacements ensured that no plane wanted to go near them. There were 3 of these massive structures in Berlin, and this one is the only one largely intact - one was completely removed by the British, the other mostly destroyed by the Soviets leaving behind a few remains. There was a large queue to get into this one - it was quite popular and we had to queue for 45 minutes to get into it. During that wait, we passed a conveniently placed food and drink stand and had something to eat. The entrance was a door at the top of the tower, which we could access from the hill which butted right up against it. Once inside, we had to wear hard hats, and be careful wandering around the defined path. There were lights, but it was quite dark - and it was 5 storeys inside. If you didn't know, you'd think this structure was built into the hill - but in fact the hill is former Berlin rubble, placed on the remains of the bunker to try and partially bury it. Why did the Soviets want to bury the tower? well, they blew it up to destroy it - but only succeeded in partially collapsing one side, the damn thing was so solidly built. They had a huge amount of trouble destroying the other tower in the Soviet zone, so they just decided to bury the blown up portion to hide it and leave the rest sealed off. So there is a lot of rubble inside the tower and some collapsed floors and staircases, but there is a safe pathway through many of the floors through the destruction and standing in the tower looking at the broken, but solid and partially bent floors with all the steel reinforcing apparent is quite impressive - definitely a mega-solid structure that would have withstood any bombs thrown its way. Our next exhibit was to visit the Mythos Germania museum, located in a part of the Gesundbrunnen station. This is a small museum which is dedicated to "Germania" - the so-called name for Hitler's new capital which involved demolishing a lot of inner city Berlin and replacing it with massive new buildings designed by Albert Speer, the Nazi Architect. This museum, although small is a lot more comprehensive than we bargained for and there was a lot of information - plus a large model of what Berlin, or Germania would have looked like had they built the buildings. At first, it was hard to reconcile the model against modern day Berlin and where the structures would have been located until I spotted a small Reichstag, dwarfed by the proposed Congresshalle and it started to make sense. Where the Hauptbahnhof (main station) is now, is roughly where this hall would have been; there would have been a big avenue cutting all the way from there to Südkreuz station, through what is now Greifswalder park next to where we first lived in Berlin; meaning all of these buildings were on a hugely grandiose scale. Some projects that were part of Germania were completed before World War 2 brought a hiatus to work - the reconfiguration of the Tierpark including the relocation of the Victory Column, the Luftwaffe headquarters, and the building of the new Templehof Airport building south of Südkreuz - although the final iteration would have seen Templehof replaced by two, bigger airports with even bigger terminal buildings. It is very difficult to imagine what Berlin would have looked like had more of Germania been built, or built in its entirety. We'd seen quite a bit already, but there was more to see so we decided to keep going and see how much more we might be able to do - having now done all the important ones we'd wanted to see. So we tried the S-Bahn Museum but it was just a couple of placards about one particular train line in Berlin housed in a former toilet and all the placards were in German. So we went across the road to the Blockplatz bunker, a former WW2 bunker that had been turned into an Atomic shelter and had a lot of exhibits about escaping across the Berlin Wall as well. There was one more exhibit at Gesundbrunnen - the Untrwelten Museum, but having been there twice already we decided to give it a miss. So we headed south, and visited the other two exhibits - the AEG Test Tunnel under the AEG Factory, which is apparently Germany's first underground train tunnel and was used to connect factories for the transfer of goods and personnel. This one is the Berlin Underworld group's latest exhibit and not set up for normal visits - because its located in the Factory grounds, it requires special permission for them to open it up. We walked the length of this tunnel, before going to the final exhibit - a series of vaults in the former Oswald-Berliner-Brauerei, which were used to help people escape from East Berlin to West Berlin and showed some of the methods of escape used. We were a bit exhausted, but had a great sense of accomplishment and got a late night kebab before we headed home (which was about an hour away from where we were by that point). We had, by any stretch of the imagination gotten our moneys worth from the event - even having to brave a police cordon to pick up the tickets as a large group of Fascists, or anti-immigration protesters were assembling outside of the ticket collection office. My favourite was the Flakturm - the way the collapsed side of the building had kind of collapsed in a uniform way to leave the stories intact but slumped is unbelievable. The active Atomic Bunker and the Mythos Germania would rate as my equal next favourites - how often can you go into a still active bunker, and just the sheer amount of comprehensive but easy to understand history about Germania was quite something. No photos in this blog post I'm afraid - in a lot of the bunkers we weren't allowed to take photos, and others where you were, it was almost impossible to take anything decent due to the darkness or confined spaces anyway! We've seen far more of underground Berlin that anyone else I know - and I dare say, unless we have an opportunity to visit the Flakturm again (its only open in warmer months as it becomes a nest for bats) that will probably be it!
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A Kiwi out travelling in the UK and surrounding countries Archives
August 2019
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