This is Berlin!
Am Kupfergraben's ww2 time capsule
In the last years Berlin city has undergone a radical transformation, with an influx of money from public institutions and private companies, far away from the cold days of the German reunification in 1990. This has benefited in the architectural modernization and services improvement for its inhabitants but in contrast led to the loss of its unique condition among other European capital cities: historical buildings, bridges, roads and streets, survivors of the 1939-1945 war years and its battle fires are all being refurbished to clean and nearly new condition (the Reinhardtstraße bridge of the Stadtbahn is one of the last examples of this).
Berlin is now losing its value as a “time capsule” from the past.
This battle-damaged building is located at Am Kupfergraben Ecke Dorotheenstraße nr 1 in Berlin-Mitte district, today home of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin School of Business and Economics. With its walls full of signs of war, smoke and fire from Luftangriffe by British RAF and American air-raids, and shrapnel from howitzers and splinters due to street-fighting with the Soviets during the final Battle of Berlin in May 1945, it is an evident survivor of the destruction experienced by the city. The heavily damaged building was restored and cleaned a few years ago, helping in preserve it but in the process erasing forever its original state, much more blackened and holed, a true-live survivor of the aerial bombings and battles suffered by the city during the Second World War which now has lost its past.
Two pictures of this building before the restoration work, as viewed in 2008 when I first came to Berlin and got astonished with this ww2 street-capsule.
This aerial view taken a few days after the war’s end in Berlin, clearly shows the devastation suffered by Mitte district. Museumsinsel with Altes Museum is in the foreground, Unter den Linden crossing from top to bottom, and other main sites like the Zeughaus, Staatsoper, Humboldt Universität, and the green Tiergarten park far behind. Our “time-capsule” building is seen at extreme right, marked with a red arrow.
New shots from Dorotheenstraße 1 taken last summer, in front of the Berlin’s Pergamonmuseum.
It has survived in those conditions due to its location in Berlin-Mitte, near the Museumsinsel. During the postwar years, located at the Soviet Occupation sector and later part of the East Berlin-DDR zone, it was repaired by a number of securing provisions of concrete and brickwork, a patchwork which made extend its life until the end of the Cold War in 1990.
Different views of today’s condition of the Humboldt building.
This building was built in 1879-83 with a four-storey sandstone facade in Italian Renaissance forms mixed with simple Prussian functional design. It was renovated in 2002 to be the Faculty of Economic Sciences and from 2009 started the restoration of the roof and facade in cooperation with the Landesamt für Denkmalpflege (the State Office for preservation of historic monuments), with emphasis in that the signs of war remain legible on its 1.200 m2 facade. The work was made by Ellwart Steinrestaurieung, an experienced company focused on monument and ancient buildings restoration, in close cooperation with the architecture office Martin Focks. In their study they asked themselves before the restoration began: “…Can a façade repair appropriate to the monument be realized without neglecting the age value of the building and without distorting or even eliminating the historical traces of war damage?”
Massive work was made to exchange the facade stones as well as a removal of post-war provisories, but not the projectile impacts. The final result is a mixture of two periods, with a facade full of holes in a secured and cleaned building.
It costs approx. €2.5 million and ended in the Autumn of 2013.
It stands today under monument protection.
You can read a full report (in German) about the renovation process HERE.
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