39) Zoobunker

The second anti-aircraft gun tower is a massive concrete cube, designed by Speer and built in 1940, north of the zoo’s hippopotamus house, in Tiergarten. Square and forty meters high, it is called Zoobunker. Built to contain 15.000, when the sirens scream 30.000 people gather in front of its doors, run through the large staircases and fill the first two stories of damp and sick air. Inside there are three level bunk beds, a barber-stand and a canteen: the vital pretense of a normal routine in a fucked up situation. Goebbels’ idea to have music playing when meals are served is categorically declined by the refugees. The third floor is a treasure vault keeping the Pergamon Altar and other precious artifacts together with the gold from different museums. A silent elevator brings the wounded upstairs, to the military hospital on the fourth floor, with surgery and X-ray rooms. On the fifth floor and roof are several operative guns that shoot down airplanes. By 1943 they are operated by teenagers who receive school lessons between attacks. After the end of the war the Zoobunker is still in use as an hospital for some time; the patients are seen on the roof breathing fresh air between ruinous guns. In 1947 the British Army attempts many times to demolish the Zoobunker with dynamite, but it remains mostly unfazed, while the shock waves from the explosions destroy several other buildings in the zoo. Eventually the Zoobunker cracks in half, its concrete is sold to build roads, and soon enough on its place stands a fragile aviary.

The second anti-aircraft gun tower is a massive concrete cube, designed by Speer and built in 1940, north of the zoo’s hippopotamus house, in Tiergarten. Square and forty meters high, it is called Zoobunker. Built to contain 15.000, when the sirens scream 30.000 people gather in front of its doors, run through the large staircases and fill the first two stories of damp and sick air. Inside there are three level bunk beds, a barber-stand and a canteen: the vital pretense of a normal routine in a fucked up situation. Goebbels’ idea to have music playing when meals are served is categorically declined by the refugees. The third floor is a treasure vault keeping the Pergamon Altar and other precious artifacts together with the gold from different museums. A silent elevator brings the wounded upstairs, to the military hospital on the fourth floor, with surgery and X-ray rooms. On the fifth floor and roof are several operative guns that shoot down airplanes. By 1943 they are operated by teenagers who receive school lessons between attacks. After the end of the war the Zoobunker is still in use as an hospital for some time; the patients are seen on the roof breathing fresh air between ruinous guns. In 1947 the British Army attempts many times to demolish the Zoobunker with dynamite, but it remains mostly unfazed, while the shock waves from the explosions destroy several other buildings in the zoo. Eventually the Zoobunker cracks in half, its concrete is sold to build roads, and soon enough on its place stands a fragile aviary.