Poppelsdorf high bunker

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The built-up bunker in 2016

The bunker in the Bonn district Poppelsdorf was built 1,941th It served as an air raid shelter during the Second World War , was used as a student residence after the war, was maintained during the Cold War and has been the foundation for a residential building since 2006. The bunker is located on the Triererstraße 24 and is since 1995 as a monument under monument protection .

history

When the bunker was planned in 1940, Bonn was included in the list of 61 "air raid shelter 1st class" of the Führer emergency program for the construction of special air defense structures. In Bonn and Beuel , 14 large protective structures were financed by the Reich . This should mean that the population should have at least 12,000 places in the highest protection category. After the reclassification from reclining to seating in 1944, the number rose to 15,000. Five bunkers were completed in mid-1941, the rest by the end of the year. The construction time was about 6 months each. One third of the construction workers deployed were French prisoners of war from Stalag VI G in Bonn-Duisdorf .

The bunker on Trierer Strasse is a three-storey high - rise bunker that was built into the slope of the Kreuzberg . It is 20 meters deep; On the rear side, two 44 meter long tunnels were also driven into the slope. Air-raid tunnels created more cost-effective shelter than concrete bunkers; the layer of earth above had to be between 6 and 15 meters; In addition to the bunker in Poppelsdorf, such slope tunnels were also dug at the Dransdorfer hospital bunker . The Poppelsdorf tunnels are 3.50 meters wide and have 60 cm thick brick walls. The tunnels were divided into cells that no longer exist today. The bunker itself has reinforced concrete walls up to 4.70 meters thick and 1.40 meters thick ceilings. It had a total of 105 beds and 724 seats. The bunker remained intact during the Allied air war .

Dormitory

After the war, the bunker was not blown up, as the Bonn city administration was to be housed here in the event of a renewed military conflict. Shortly after Bonn University resumed operations, the bunker was converted into a student residence. From 1948 at the latest, male students lived in the “Wohngemeinschaft Poppelsdorf e. V. “There were hardly any student residences back then. In Bonn, three bunkers were used as dormitories for students; in addition to the Poppelsdorfer, these were the bunkers in Beuel (Auf der Schleide) and on Bonn's Theaterstrasse . In terms of cultural history, they represented a curiosity from Bonn; only in Münster and Mannheim there were other “student bunkers”. The bunkers were administered by the residents themselves.

The students lived in one or two-bed cells in the Poppelsdorf bunker; exam candidates were assigned the more popular single cells. There was a washroom for all residents. The rent in the windowless bunker was low, it was between 8 and 15 DM per month (converted to today's conditions around 21 to 39 euros). The natural temperature in the building was eight to ten degrees Celsius, regardless of the season, which is why warm air was regularly blown through the ventilation pipes and many students operated electric stoves all year round. The residents had to put their own electricity from the main lines in the corridors into their rooms. According to the house rules, visiting women was not permitted between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m. In summer there were sometimes dance events on the bunker roof.

In the early 1950s, the city of Bonn and the student union began to criticize the use of the bunker as a dormitory; As a result, there were several protests against the announced evictions. The Poppelsdorf bunker community also opposed efforts to clear the bunker and turned to the AStA with a request for support. The representative in negotiations with the city was Arno Müller. A "Bunker Commission" founded by the Studentenwerk and the AStA in 1952 found that many residents wanted to continue living in the bunker, as they could not afford an apartment on the free housing market. In October 1952, 270 students lived in the three Bonn bunkers.

House foundation

Until the 2000s, the technical relief organization then used the bunker to store operational resources and for disaster control exercises. The sanitary, heating and ventilation systems were maintained during the period.

In 2006, the real estate developer Rheinvest GmbH & Co KG received permission to build on the bunker roof. The decision was preceded by years of discussions in Bonn's citizens about the future use of the building. A design submitted by Rheininvest by the Bonn architects Scherfarchitekten (architect: Raimund Restle) for the simultaneous construction of the bunker roof and a gap to the right of the bunker with a six-storey (five storeys plus stacked storey ) house with ten condominiums (size: 40 to 100 square meters) was Building regulations office and accepted by the monument office. Two matching, exclusive, two-story semi-detached houses, each with 180 square meters of living space, were to be built on the bunker roof. When the contract was signed, the city reserved the right to use the shelters; the civil defense function must be retained by the new owners.

The apartment house and the bunker development were built from Trierer Straße . The civil engineering company S + H from Neustadt-Wied reinforced the slope before construction began using the Berlin sheeting method with reinforcements up to eight meters deep. Access to the halves of the house standing on the bunker is via the pilgrimage path located directly behind the bunker on the slope . The front doors of the flat roof building are on the upper floor, which is on the larger basement. In the outer facade of the low-energy building there are cast glass elements. Four meters of the bunker roof remain on the street side, which were used to create a terrace. The garden faces the pilgrimage route . The bunker was painted sand-colored. After selling and moving into the semi-detached houses on the bunker roof, the new owners also received the rights to use the interior of the bunker.

In 2016 it became known that the flat roof of the duplex on the bunker was in danger of collapsing. Contrary to what was originally planned, the developer had built a wooden roof instead of a concrete roof. According to an expert, the wooden formwork had rotted away, causing water damage to the walls. The 165 square meter roof area cannot be renovated, but has to be completely rebuilt. The damage led to a dispute between owners and developers. Proceedings to preserve evidence were initiated before the regional court . In addition, the owners filed criminal charges of fraud against the developer. He referred to the load-bearing capacity of the bunker roof, which was unknown during construction, which is why a lighter wooden structure was chosen to be on the safe side.

See also

Web links

Commons : Hochbunker Poppelsdorf  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c contemporary witnesses in the bunker (May 2006) , Kolpingsfamilie Bonn-Poppelsdorf eV, photos and reports from the club life, via: www.poppelsdorf.de , February 27, 2007
  2. ↑ List of monuments of the city of Bonn (as of March 15, 2019), p. 56, number A 3186
  3. ↑ a b c Bonn in the bombing war 1939-1945 , Portal Rheinische Geschichte, Landschaftsverband Rheinland
  4. ^ A b c Rolf Kleinfeld, Survival in the Poppelsdorf Student Bunker , March 25, 2011, Bonner General-Anzeiger
  5. ↑ a b c Dimitri Soibel, family dormitory with a large basement: Ms. Storck has a bunker for rent , February 14, 2011, Express (Bonn edition)
  6. ↑ a b c d Those who live in the bunker ...: Student glory in dull shine - Missed the connection? , May 4, 1962, Die Zeit
  7. ↑ Waldemar Krönig and Klaus-Dieter Müller, post-war semester: Studies in the war and post-war period , publication by HIS Hochschul-Informations-System GmbH, ISBN 978-3-51505-5-970 , Franz Steiner Verlag , 1990, p. 184
  8. ^ A b Christian George, Studying in ruins: The students of the University of Bonn in the post-war period (1945–1955) , Volume 1 of: Bonner Schriften zur Universitäts- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte , ISBN 978-3-86234-1-115 , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , 2010, pp. 204f.
  9. ^ A look at almost 200 years of studying in Bonn , press release of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn from April 12, 2011
  10. ^ A b c d Richard Bongartz, A double house is growing on the bunker , March 31, 2006, Bonner General-Anzeiger
  11. ↑ Living on the bunker , website of the Bonn architects Scherfarchitekten.
  12. ↑ Holger Willcke, World War Bunker : Secret doors not yet found , June 24, 2010, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger
  13. ↑ site of Rheinvest GmbH & Co. KG
  14. ↑ Rolf Kleinfeld, Poppelsdorfer Bunker: House on the Roof a Redevelopment Case , April 14, 2016, Bonner General-Anzeiger
  15. ↑ a b Christian George, The New Beginning of the University of Bonn after 1945 , pp. 13/14

Coordinates: 50 ° 43 ′ 7.7 ″  N , 7 ° 5 ′ 7.4 ″  E