A huge former Nazi bunker in Hamburg, Germany, has been transformed into a leisure complex filled with restaurants, a concert hall and roof terraces where visitors can relax in an orchard.
It is a novel answer to the question that has long vexed Germany — what to do with former Nazi sites that are too complex to demolish?
The five-story concrete structure in Hamburg’s St Pauli district, one of the largest bunkers in the world, can now be accessed via steps bolted onto the outside of the building.
Photo: AFP
The complex includes a hotel with 134 bedrooms, a 2,000-seat concert space and allotment plots for locals.
“The idea of raising the height of the building with greenery was to add something peaceful and positive to this massive block left over from the Nazi dictatorship,” said Anita Engels from the Hilldegarden neighborhood association, which supported the project.
Almost 40m tall and weighing 76,000 tonnes, the St Pauli bunker has exterior walls 2.5m thick and a roof consisting of 3.5m of reinforced concrete.
The building was one of eight “flak towers” constructed by Adolf Hitler during the Third Reich, with anti-aircraft guns standing where the apple trees now grow.
Three were in Berlin, two in Hamburg and three in Vienna.
“They protected the government quarter in Berlin, the port facilities in Hamburg and the historic center that Hitler loved in Vienna,” historian Michael Foedrowitz said.
The huge structures also functioned as shelters, as well as serving as a kind of architectural “propaganda” about the power of Hitler’s rule, he said.
The flak tower at Berlin zoo is the only one that has been completely destroyed, since the explosives required would pose too big a risk for the heavily populated areas where the others stand.
After the war, the bunker in St Pauli was initially used as accommodation for homeless people before being transformed into office space for media and advertising companies in the 1950s.
The lower floors have more recently been home to a popular nightclub, a radio station and a climbing gym.
“But that didn’t lead to the story of the bunker being told, to critical reflection. There wasn’t even a sign at the entrance,” Engels said.
As part of the renovation project launched in 2019 by the city of Hamburg and private investors, Hilldegarden has been helping to bring the history of the building back to life.
The association has collected testimonies from people who lived in the bunker during and after the war as well as records of the hundreds of forced laborers who built the structure in just 300 days in 1942.
On the first floor, an exhibition now presents the history of the site.
“In Berlin, up to 60,000 civilians were counted taking refuge in a pair of towers designed to hold around 30,000 people — the size of a small town,” Foedrowitz said.
The St Pauli complex housed up to 25,000 civilians including during the Allied bombing raids of Operation Gomorrah in July 1943, which devastated Hamburg.
Brigitte Schulze, a 72-year-old pensioner who came to visit the refurbished bunker, said she felt it was “good to keep this history alive, especially as the witnesses are disappearing.”
“And the setting is pleasant, with the park and the trees,” she said.
Schulze lives near Hamburg, but it had never occurred to her before to visit the building, which she described as “just an ugly wart.”
She was one of thousands of visitors to the new complex in its first month.
A few years ago, Hamburg’s second flak tower was converted into a mini power station producing electricity from renewable sources.
In Berlin, the towers in Friedrichshain and Humboldthain have been buried beneath unassuming artificial hills in two city parks.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a