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Success of the "Bunker Kissers": For the first time: Schaustelle leads us to Berlin's underworld

A peat toilet. You don't know what a peat toilet is? Never heard of it? Well, peat toilets were set up in air-raid shelters during the Second World War. They consisted of a toilet bowl with a reservoir tank, which - at the push of a lever - dispensed peat into the bowl, thus guaranteeing a certain degree of hygiene. The peat toilet is located in the underground air-raid shelter of the subway station Gesundbrunnen in Berlin's district of Wedding. Berliners can marvel at this contraption and other "relics of the underworld" by climbing down into the bunker's eerie labyrinth. Its entrance is located behind an inconspicuous door in the passageway of the subway station. The Schaustelle has now included the bunker in its program, and three guided tours are being offered every Saturday between June 12th and July 18th (1 p.m., 2:45 p.m., and 4:30 p.m.).

This most imposing of Berlin's underground air-raid shelters, which was awakened from its long slumber only last year, has now been listed as a historical monument. This is thanks to the persistent fight by the organization "Berliner Unterwelten" ("Berlin's Underworlds") to protect underground constructions - be they bunkers, tunnels or the gigantic water reservoirs of the breweries - from dilapidation or intentional destruction.

"At first we were looked upon with suspicion or laughed at as "bunker kissers" and "concrete romantics". But now, even the authorities are beginning to realize that Berlin's underworld reflects the history of the city with all its positive and negative aspects and is therefore worth preserving," says urban planner Dietmar Arnold, one of the organizations initiators, acknowledging the active support of the bunker project by Weddings district mayor and the district councilor for planning and construction. For the year 2000, the organization is planning a permanent exhibition in the bunker at the Gesundbrunnen subway station, which it has leased from the BVG, Berlin's public transportation authorities. Then, the most recent acquisitions - two one-man bunkers - will be set up on the street to advertise the underground bunker system. "They were standing around on a private lot in Fronau. The owner offered them to us because he wants to develop the lot. Originally, a top-brass Nazi probably had them set up," says Arnold. Last weekend, members of the organization dug the two-and-a- half ton monsters out, lifted them onto a truck with a crane and deposited them at the Wedding planning department for the time being.

Full of pride, Arnold shows us his underground realm - 1000 square meters on four levels. Most of the more than 40 different-sized rooms are still empty. Amazingly, the phosphorescent floor and stairway markings still light up with a pale-white glow. There are signs referring to the "Men's latrine", the "Gas airlock", and "Room 18: 50 persons". The first-aid room is painted from top to bottom with phosphorescent paint. "This is where Helga R. was born on April 26th, 1945. She recently brought us a copy of her birth certificate," says Arnold with a smile. He is also exceptionally happy about a bundle of rather rusty pipes. "We discovered them at the Hackeschen Markt, where they had been digging around. A pneumatic dispatch system - you can still see the cartridge grooves on the inside." The underground pneumatic-tube network, which connected Berlin's post offices, had a total length of 254 kilometers with 27 individual lines - an early form of fax. "Up to 20 cartridges at a time were conveyed via pressurized air with a speed of ten meters per second," says Arnold.

It is planned to set up a part of this pneumatic dispatch system in the bunker. Two weeks ago the Deutsche Telekom let the organization have the telephone system of the former Nazi district administration of Berlin, whose head was Joseph Goebbels. It had its seat at Wilhelm-Strasse 76, into which - after renovations are completed - the federal ministry of agriculture will move. The "underworld" organization was less lucky with the Japanese embassy. The well- preserved original Draeger ventilation system of the old air-raid shelter under the garden of the embassy ended up in the dump-yard, even though the organization had asked if they could have it.

Nonetheless, the organization has already collected around 1000 exhibits, ranging from the bunker's medicine chest over little toy Stuka dive-bombers that had been left behind all the way to the aforementioned peat toilet.

Some of Berlin's underground constructions - like the air-raid shelter under Hermann Göring's former ministry of aviation, which is now the new seat of the federal ministry of finance - only exist as photographs, which will also be on exhibit in the bunker. There will also be a small in-house cinema. "Of course, we will only show film material that has something to do with life underground," says Arnold.

Incidentally, the whole area is heavy with history. Opposite the bunker, on Humboldthain, are the remains of the once huge anti-aircraft tower. Two air-raid shelters still remain untouched under Brunnen-Strasse. The last two shacks that once housed slave-laborers from Eastern Europe and Italy on the narrow street to the right of the subway entrance have totally fallen into oblivion - they will soon have to make room for new buildings. Dietmar Arnold and his 50 colleagues are confident that the underground vaults of their bunker will become a center of attraction for tourists and history freaks alike.