Bunker at Welfenplatz

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The bunker (left) at Welfenplatz in January 2005

The bunker on Welfenplatz in Hanover , actually a " bunker on Welfenplatz ", is a former air raid shelter from the Second World War . Günter Wallraff brought the later emergency shelter for the homeless in the headlines. Today, parts of the facility serve as a release station for bats .

History and description

The bunker on Welfenplatz was built at the time of National Socialism and in the middle of World War II in 1940 as one of 64 air raid shelters planned in Hanover as part of the “ immediate Führer program ” . From this time there is a picture of the bunker construction site, where a soldier is watching the iron benders. The concrete construction was planned as one of three Hanoverian bunkers of the type H III and camouflaged as a high bunker with a sloping roof covered with roof tiles , so that during the air raids on Hanover from above it only looked like a normal residential building and not like a target of its own. But "that was of course a naive way of thinking against the area bombing ."

After the preserved Hanoverian bunkers had already been used as emergency shelters by the British military authorities or, in 1946, as exhibition venues for the revival of culture , the bunker on Welfenplatz was soon operated as a makeshift hotel .

In 1974 the Hanoverian photographer Wilhelm Hauschild recorded the police evacuation of the bunker after young people had occupied the vacant building with the demand that the building be rededicated for an Independent Youth Center (UJZ).

After the city of Hanover later set up the bunker as an emergency shelter for the homeless, the journalist Günter Wallraff spent several nights “undercover” in the facility in February 2009. The "inhumane" conditions described by him at the time and reproduced in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit confirmed the homeless Bianca and other men and women at the central bus station (ZOB) to journalists from the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung in March of the same year . On 9 March 2009, the then baupolitische spokesman for the Lower Saxony capital and deputy chairman of the advised SPD - Council faction Thomas Hermann in a press release to close the bunker on Welfenplatz soon as possible. But it was not until January 2011 that the "worst place by far" that the investigative journalist Wallraff had experienced in his time as a "homeless person" was only about five minutes' walk away on the site of a former school in Wörthstrasse which had previously been used as an emergency shelter by Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe (JUH) for drug addicts.

After numerous bats fled the extreme cold during the winter of 2011 to 2012 or lost their quarters when trees were felled and a working group led by the biologist Elke Mühlbach took care of the animals on a voluntary basis, on March 5, 2012, with the support of Bingo -Unweltstiftung , the city of Hanover and private donors and in the presence of representatives of the Federation for Environment and Nature Conservation Germany (BUND) and the then Hanoverian Environment Department Head Hans Mönninghoff on the bunker at Welfenplatz the so-called "Bat Center Hanover" for the later release of the animals in Be put into operation.

literature

  • Michael Foedrowitz : Bunker Worlds. Air raid systems in Northern Germany , Augsburg: Weltbild Verlag (under license from Links-Verlag, Berlin), 2011, ISBN 978-3-8289-0927-4 , pp. 92–94 and others.
  • oV : Bats get new quarters in the bunker at Welfenplatz. Association for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) opens bat center on city bunker , press release from Bat Center Hanover [undated, 2012]; Downloadable as a PDF document from hannover.de

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Thorsten Fuchs: Bunker at Welfenplatz Emergency accommodation for the homeless: "I will never go there again" ... on the page of the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (HAZ) from March 5, 2009, last accessed on October 23, 2017
  2. ↑ a b c Hans Werner Dannowski : Hanover - far from near: In city districts on the move , Schlütersche GmbH & Co. KG publishing house and printer, 2002, ISBN 978-3877066539 , p. 42f .; Preview over google books
  3. ↑ a b o. V .: Bats get new quarters in the bunker on Welfenplatz. Association for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) opens bat center on city bunker , press release from Bat Center Hanover [undated, 2012]; Downloadable as a PDF document from hannover.de
  4. ↑ a b c Helmut Knocke : Bunker. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 99; Preview over google books
  5. ↑ Michael Foedrowitz: Limits of Feasibility , in ders .: Bunkerworlds. Air raid systems in Northern Germany , 1st edition, Berlin: Links, 1998, ISBN 978-3-86153-155-5 and ISBN 3-86153-155-0 , pp. 18ff .; here: subtitles for the illustration on p. 20; Preview over google books
  6. ↑ Compare the photography ( Memento of the original from October 23, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the page of the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung , last accessed on October 23, 2017 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.haz.de
  7. ^ Günter Wallraff: From the brave new world. Expeditions into the interior of the country , extended new edition, 1st edition, Cologne: eBook by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2012, ISBN 978-3-462-30657-6 , [without page number]; Preview over google books
  8. ↑ Veronika Thomas: Emergency accommodation / bunker on Welfenplatz has had its day for the homeless ... on the HAZ website from January 11, 2011, last accessed on October 23, 2017

Coordinates: 52 ° 23 ′ 3.7 "  N , 9 ° 44 ′ 29.8"  E