In Hamburg, the new life of a Nazi bunker

For residents of the St. Pauli district in the northern German metropolis, the change is primarily visual.

The square, gray mass is now topped by five tree-lined floors. A pedestrian ramp wraps around the building and takes visitors to the top.

A 134-room hotel has opened in the raised part, inaugurated in July. In addition, there is a space that can accommodate more than 2.000 spectators, rooms and garden beds available to local associations.

"The idea of ​​enhancing it with greenery was to add something peaceful and positive to this massive block that was left over from the Nazi dictatorship," explains Anita Engels, one of the leaders of the Hilldegarden neighbourhood association that supported the project.

Nearly 80 years after the end of World War II, Germany has not yet finished with the architectural legacy of the Nazi era.

The St. Pauli bunker is one of the most cumbersome, in every sense of the word: almost 40 meters high originally, exterior walls 2,5 meters thick, a roof reinforced with 3,5 meters of reinforced concrete. A fortress weighing 76.000 tons.

Propaganda

It is one of the eight "Flaktürme", or anti-aircraft defense complexes, that Hitler had built on the territory of the Third Reich.

"With the range of their guns, they had to protect the government district in Berlin, the port facilities in Hamburg, and the historic centre dear to Hitler in Vienna," explains historian Michael Foedrowitz.

These monumental buildings also offered shelter to the inhabitants while "serving propaganda" on the power of Hitler's rule, he emphasizes.

Only the Flackturm at Berlin Zoo could be completely destroyed after the war, as the quantities of explosives required proved too dangerous in an urban area.

In Hamburg, the so-called "IV" has already had several lives. After the conflict, apartments were set up there for those who no longer had a roof over their heads, and companies from the media and advertising sectors moved there in the 1950s.

The place still hosts on the lower floors a club popular with night owls, a radio station, and a climbing room.

"But this did not lead to the story of the bunker being told, to critical reflection. There was not even a sign at the entrance," Anita Engels emphasizes.

"Ugly wart"

With the elevation project launched in 2019 by the city, in association with private partners, the Hilldegarden association was able to carry out this work of remembrance, collecting documents and testimonies from "those who lived in the bunker during and after the war" or from the hundreds of forced laborers who had to build this fortress in 300 days, in 1942.

On the first floor, an exhibition now presents the history of the place. It will be enlarged and translated into several languages.

"In Berlin, there were up to 60.000 civilians sheltering in a pair of towers designed for about 30.000 people. The size of a small city," Foedrowitz points out.

The St. Pauli complex housed up to 25.000 civilians, particularly during the Allied bombings of Operation Gomorrah in July 1943, which devastated Hamburg.

Brigitte Schulze, a 72-year-old retiree who came to visit the renovated tower, deciphers this information: "It's good to keep a trace of this history, especially since the witnesses are disappearing. And the setting is pleasant with the park and the trees."

Living near Hamburg, she had never thought of coming to the bunker, "which was just an ugly wart," according to her. It attracted several thousand visitors in a month of operation.

Hamburg's second Flackturm was converted a few years ago into a mini power station producing electricity from renewable energies.

To guess the ones in Berlin, you have to look at the artificial hills in two large parks in the city in the middle of which they have been buried.