Heavy load body

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The heavy load body in Berlin-Tempelhof

The heavy load body (also large load body , popularly also Nazi block ) is a large cylinder made of unreinforced concrete and reinforced concrete , built between 1941 and 1942 , with which the load on the subsoil through a gigantic triumphal arch planned by the National Socialists was to be simulated. The listed building is located in the northwest of the Berlin district of Tempelhof on the corner of General-Pape-Strasse and Loewenhardtdamm near the Kolonnenbrücke on the border with the “ Red Island ”.

Establishment and function

North-South axis plan
Entrance area of ​​the heavy load body
Base of the heavy load body

The heavy load body was erected as part of the redesign plans of the General Building Inspector (GBI) Albert Speer to transform Berlin into the " World Capital Germania ".

The core project of this redesign of Berlin was to be the construction of a north-south axis that would shape the city's architecture between two central train stations in Moabit and Tempelhof. At the height of today's Kolonnenstrasse and Dudenstrasse, a dual carriageway was planned which, as a second ring, should also touch Tempelhof Airport to the east . On the square that was to be created at the intersection of the two streets, Speer planned a 117-meter-high and 170-meter-wide triumphal arch based on a sketch by Adolf Hitler from the 1920s, which was to bear the names of the German soldiers who fell in World War I. The drafts for this were completed in 1939.

Speer commissioned a load test for this structure T to investigate the subsidence behavior of the soil . A heavy load body should simulate its high pressure on the ground. The German Society for Soil Mechanics (Degebo) was responsible for the soil investigations. The company Dyckerhoff & Widmann took over the building in 1941 for 400,000  marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency around 1.67 million euros). French prisoners of war , among others , had a cylinder with a diameter of around eleven meters that reached 18.2 meters deep into a layer of marl. A five-meter cantilevered loading cylinder with a total height of 14 meters and a diameter of 21 meters was placed on top of this. With 12,650  tons, it loads the ground with 12.65 kg per cm² on an area of ​​100 m². Measuring devices were placed in chambers inside the cylinder.

The Degebo measurements began during the concreting process and continued until June 1, 1944. Due to the consequences of the Second World War and the post-war years , the results were not evaluated until 1948. It turned out that, under the conditions set by Speer, the triumphal arch could only have been built with prior consolidation of the ground. In the two and a half years from 1941 the cylinder had sunk by 19.3 cm, and it had got a 3.5 cm overhang as a result of the inclination during the concreting process. The long-term subsidence can be traced back to the consolidation in the 5.2-meter- thick glacial till layer.

Another story

Information point with observation tower

Since the heavy load body is close to a residential area, it was not blown up after the war. As a building that, like some of the preserved buildings in the “workers 'town' Great Hall” in the Spandau district, reminds of Albert Speer's plans for the north-south axis “Germanias”, it has been a listed building since 1995 . Until 1977, further measurement tests were carried out on it by Degebo - today affiliated to the Technical University of Berlin , Department of Foundation Engineering. This is where Degebo's well-known ground failure experiments were carried out.

In 2007, the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district office began renovating the outer shell and redesigning the area. There is now an information pavilion and a tower with a viewing platform next to the heavy load structure. On September 12, 2009, the Heavy Duty Bodies Information Center was opened as part of the Open Monument Day . The costs for the entire project amounted to 913,750 euros. Since the funding amount is almost six times the originally planned cost estimate, the Berlin Court of Auditors subjected the project to an audit. It turned out that, in the opinion of the Court of Auditors, unnecessary and particularly expensive measures had been taken.

Reception and literature

  • The Spiegel TV documentary Brutality in Stone - The Buildings of the Nazis from 2002 shows the heavy load body in Berlin and offers insights into its history.
  • District Office Tempelhof-Schöneberg of Berlin (ed.): The heavy load body. The mysterious legacy of the imperial capital. Edition Berliner Unterwelten, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-9809641-1-6 .
  • Matthias Donath, Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Ed.): Architecture in Berlin 1933–1945: a city guide. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936872-26-0 , pp. 174-176.
  • Heinz Muhs : Implementation and result of a large test load. Treatise on soil mechanics and foundation. Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1948.
  • Klaus Weiß : 50 years of Degebo. Mitteilungen der Degebo, Heft 33, 1978 (the settlement curves are shown on p. 40).

Web links

Commons : Schwerbelastungskörper (Berlin-Tempelhof)  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In 50 Years of Degebo (p. 40), Weiss states that the settlement was 20 cm until 1951 (of which 12 cm took place in the boulder clay) and in the years thereafter up to 1969 another 2.2 cm
  2. ^ Workers' city "Great Hall", Obj.-Dok.-Nr .: 09085814. Monument database Berlin; the settlement is on the site of the Evangelical Forest Hospital Spandau .
  3. ↑ Heavy load body is handed over to the public. Press release on Berlin.de, September 10, 2009.
  4. ↑ The weight of the city. Der Tagesspiegel , January 8, 2012.
  5. ↑ Berlin Court of Auditors: Annual Report 2011. pp. 101-104 (PDF; 953 kB).

Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 2.5 ″  N , 13 ° 22 ′ 17.9 ″  E