Bunker hotels in Stuttgart
The Bunker hotels in Stuttgart resulted - as in many towns in the war-torn Germany from 1945 - from the pragmatic consideration War bunker remodel in hostels and thus to replace the destroyed hotels, inns and guesthouses in the city. Of the former twenty large hotels in Stuttgart , only three had survived the war at all, namely the Ketterer , Graf Zeppelin hotels and the Reichsbahnhotel in the main train station . While before the war there were still 3,600 beds available for tourism in Stuttgart, there were only 300 in the aforementioned hotels after the war. This resulted in a political collision. On the one hand it was from a communal perspective to provide necessary tourist beds and shelters in the city, on the other hand the Entfestigungsbeschluss the Allies comply, after which all the bunkers were to eliminate traces. Ultimately, the pragmatism prevailed in favor of the preservation and rededication of the bunkers, and the hotel business was brisk.
The nationwide known and at the same time the largest bunker hotel, the Hotel am Marktplatz (initially it was called Bunker under the Marktplatz ), ceased operations on October 31, 1985. It was the last of the bunker hotels to go out of service after forty years of history. A planned modernization for continued use failed due to the lack of the originally awarded federal funds in 1990; The overall political situation of German reunification demanded different priorities from the federal budget.
Overview of the bunker hotels
In 1949 the Baedeker city guide described the situation as follows: “Most of the former Stuttgart hotels have been destroyed. The tourist office provides proof of accommodation […]. The number of beds given below fluctuates due to the ongoing expansion of the hotels; the prices mentioned are non-binding and refer to an overnight stay without breakfast, service and heating surcharge. "
Six bunker facilities were named:
- Bunker under the market square (100 beds / as of 1953)
- Bunker hotel at Wilhelmsplatz (40 beds)
- Hotel in Leonhardsbunker / Leonhardsplatz (30 beds)
- Underground hotel at Diakonissenplatz (40 beds)
- Turmhotel Conen (named after the footballer Edmund Conen ) in the bunker at the Rosensteinbrücke (Badstrasse 51 in Bad Cannstatt ) (41 beds)
- Hospice in the Caritas bunker on Marienplatz (180 beds plus storage)
In 1949 these hotels had 431 beds.
Bunker hotels in detail
Bunker under the market square (Hotel am Marktplatz)
The bunker hotel under the market square existed from 1945 to 1985 under the Stuttgart market square. Its history is well documented due to the large number of photos taken and its high level of awareness. The facility had the usual equipment. Initially, it offered camp beds that were gradually replaced. Instead of windows, the hotel naturally had ventilation shafts. The bunker has been preserved to this day, but it is in the process of decay. As part of the annual event Long Night of the Museums , the bunker can be visited once a year, which is very popular.
The bunker was completed in June 1941 for 1,010 people and actually provided refuge for up to 3,000 people during the air raids . The structure of the bunker was not damaged by the bombing and served as emergency accommodation for those who had been bombed out towards the end of the war. From the summer of 1945, a hotelier family rented the facility for continued use as a hotel. 80 single and 10 double rooms were set up. An overnight stay in 1949 cost between 5 and 6 DM per person . In addition to the beds, there was a restaurant and a conference room, which were equipped with a capacity of over 180 seats. From 1949 the Rotary Club turned the hotel into a meeting place for meetings. Well-known personalities from politics, business and sport came and went. In 1950 the bunker under the market square was renamed Hotel am Marktplatz . Visits by public figures made the hotel complex supraregional, and people quickly spoke of the “leading bunker hotel in Germany” (according to the Neue Zeitung published in the American occupation zone in Germany from 1945 to 1955 ).
It was parked in the market square. Until 1998 the glazed access house stood above the staircase leading to the hotel.
In 1995 the auctioneer Franz Eppli initiated an architectural competition . The motto "New Bunker Access" pursued the goal of making the bunker accessible to a broader public and redesigning the marketplace. The winning design by the architects Neugebauer + Roesch - a multifunctional glass prism as an entrance pavilion to underground shops - was ultimately not implemented, but is being discussed again. At the same time, the municipality was considering the establishment of a “House of Books” and a party-political initiative wanted the establishment to be established as a museum.
Meanwhile, Christmas market feeders use part of the bunker for out-of-season accommodation and storage of their stands. Since the building is heavily infested with mold and fungi (Aspergillus versicolor) , a warning is given against a longer stay without protective measures.
Bunker hotel on Wilhelmsplatz
Wilhelmsplatz was a place of execution for a long time and until 1811 . The Hauptstätter Straße that passes it reminds of this until today .
The bunker hotel on Wilhelmsplatz was built in 1941 from an open excavation. 1.80 meter thick reinforced concrete walls were built for the war bunker and the facility was set up as a single-storey structure with two entrances. 450 people should find protection from bomb attacks. The hotel started with 40 beds and slimmed down to 31 beds by 1953. One person could spend the night there for five marks . Central heating, garages and parking spaces were available, but there was not always running water. The Bunker Hotel, said to have been invested in to 1955, was on the task of hotel operations until 1967 as a residential care center of residence and homeless of Caritas operated. During the Cold War , the bunker was modernized (e.g. the installation of a sand filter) and incorporated into civil protection . Other uses were thus excluded for a long time. Only after it was deedicated, there were attempts to use the building for other uses, so it functioned as a pottery workshop for a social project. At the moment there are only temporary sightseeing opportunities as part of the Long Night of the Museums .
Hotel in the Leonhard bunker
Leonhardsplatz was created as a cemetery in the course of a city expansion in the 15th century (today's location between Gustav-Siegle-Haus and Leonhardskirche ).
As part of the immediate Führer program , the site was given an underground bunker at the end of March 1941, which had only been tackled four months earlier at the end of 1940. The remains of the medieval cemetery were removed during this work. The bunker had space for 600 people, which was particularly popular with families. Little is known about the bunker and its history. In any case, the hotel started operating at the end of 1946. In 1949 there were 30 beds. As early as the 1950s, there were no longer any registrations in the accommodation directories. It was known, however, that in the 1960s women from the Demimonde could be found in the premises, which is probably due to the area around Leonhardsplatz as a red light district .
Today only the two staircases give public evidence of the bunker. Nevertheless, the city still rents it out to music bands as a rehearsal room .
Underground hotel at Diakonissenplatz
This underground bunker, located under the property of the deaconess hospital, is U-shaped, divided into three wings and is not a pure civil defense structure . The wings served as a medical rescue center and auxiliary hospital and also for civil protection of the surrounding population. The facility later became the situation center for the security and emergency services, which was responsible for coordinating relief measures after bombing attacks. The bunker hotel had 40 beds and existed until 1952. After that, it served briefly as a refugee camp and from 1953 as a men's dormitory for the Salvation Army .
Turmhotel, Badstrasse Bad Cannstatt
The Turmhotel Conen (known today as the Rosensteinbunker ) was the only one outside the city center of Stuttgart and not underground, but in a high bunker . It stands at a major traffic junction on the banks of the Neckar diagonally across from the Wilhelma Theater and is used intensively as an advertising platform and ideal location for numerous radio and transmitter systems. Here too, daylight did not enter the premises. The convenient location to the Cannstatter train station , which could be operated during the entire war period, and the Rosenstein temporary bridge completed by the US Army gave the tower hotel a not inconsiderable attractiveness. In the first post-war years, it was used as a residence for the workers' welfare organization, and the hotel opened in 1949, initially with 41 beds, which were increased to 45 from 1953. Central heating, elevator, parking spaces and running water were standard here. A café-restaurant was run by Edmund Conen , the national football player at the time . No longer listed in the accommodation directory in 1955, the wooden fittings for the reception in the entrance area were still there in the 1970s.
Caritas hospice under Marienplatz
Marienplatz, laid out in 1876 as a link between the city of Stuttgart and the village of Heslach , was named "Platz der SA" under the National Socialists. A station building in Art Nouveau style marked the inner-city terminus of the rack railway to Degerloch.
There is little information about the bunker that was built under the square. With 1700 shelter sites, it is still in civil protection today and traditionally has a low standard. On the nights of 25./26. In July 1944, the bunker, which was poured in different layers of concrete ("Berlin concrete construction"), was hit in a bomb attack, so that the ceiling was penetrated and the bomb exploded between two cells. 15 dead and several injured were to be mourned. After the war, Caritas ran a hospice (in the sense of a hostel) with 180 beds and camps in the bunker to cover the basic needs of the needy population. The useful life is unknown. The system still serves as a rehearsal room for musicians today. A grid construction of the redesigned bunker access sets an accent on the edge of the 2003 redesigned Marienplatz.
literature
- Werner Skrentny, Rolf Schwenker, Sybille Weitz, Ulrich Weitz: Stuttgart on foot. 20 city district forays through history and the present . Silberburg-Verlag , 2008, ISBN 978-3-87407-813-9 .
- Jörg Esefeld (editor), Werner Lorke (editor, author): Bunkerbiotop , 1st edition, edition esefeld & traub, 2006, ISBN 978-3-9809887-2-8 .
- Oliver Kobold: Wolfgang Koeppens 'Treibhaus' and the Stuttgart Bunker Hotel . 1st edition, Deutsche Schillerges., 2008, ISBN 978-3-937384-40-5 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Research group Untertage eV, Bunkerhotels in Stuttgart
- ^ Karl Baedeker (III): Stuttgart and surroundings. A new leader . Verlag Karl Baedeker and Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung, Leipzig and Hamburg 1949
- ↑ 14 underground bunkers in Stuttgart are still preserved (use of 4)
- ↑ Skrentny, p. 35
- ↑ Marketplace bunker
- ↑ Werner Lorke: BUNKERbiotop
- ↑ Long Night of the Museums
- ^ As a child in the nights of bombing in Stuttgart . ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. In the Stuttgarter Zeitung
- ↑ A bunker not just for protection
- ↑ Bunker architecture competition at stadtanzeiger-im-netz.de ( Memento of the original from August 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Video tour ( Memento of the original from June 22, 2013 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.
- ↑ Wilhelmsplatz + pictures of the construction / as well as the bunker rooms
- ↑ History and stories, Leonhard's bunker
- ^ BW 12 - Diakonissenplatz
- ↑ Rosenstein bunker
- ^ History and Stories, Marienplatz
- ^ German Architecture Forum: Redesign of Marienplatz
