When Hans-Joachim Kitzerow was a child in Schöneberg in the thirties and early forties of the last century, his everyday life was almost public: “We often heard from friends that they saw us from the subway at dinner or playing had ”, says the former engineer, who was born in 1930 at the Bülowbogen.
For him and his family, the elevated railway was an important part of their lives. “From the window I always watched the people who were on their way from the government district to Ku’damm.”
At that time he lived on the first floor of Dennewitzstraße 23 – right next to the “broken house” at Bülowstraße 70 in the northeast of Schöneberg, which was a well-known attraction in the capital until its destruction in November 1943. It stood where the Bülowstrasse entrance to Gleisdreieckpark is today.
Hans-Joachim Kitzerow, who now lives near Rüdesheimer Platz in Wilmersdorf, remembers his childhood right next to the tunnel house – that’s how it was called.
It gained fame with the construction of the elevated railway between Gleisdreieck and Nollendorfplatz around 1900. At the time of its construction, the tunnel house was an urban wonder celebrated beyond the borders of Berlin and Germany, a symbol of progress. The new sight even found its echo in the poetry – for example in Joachim Ringelnatz ‘poem “Berlin”: “The elevated train goes into a house and out on the other side.”
Instead of tearing the house down when the elevated railway line was being built, a technically more difficult solution was chosen and the first and second floors were removed so that the railway could pass through. “The route ran so close to the parallel rear buildings that the tenants on the first floor could shake hands with the route workers through the window,” remembers Kitzerow.
Which came first – the house or the train?
When he grew up, he began to do extensive research on his childhood next to the tunnel house. “As a child I always asked myself what came first? The House? The elevated railway? ”Kitzerow found answers in various archives in the city – but also in the numerous books that friends gave him. “Of course they knew that I was a curious Berlin fan.”
For Hans-Joachim Kitzerow, the tunnel house also has a special value that is related to the time of the Second World War. His father had internalized the time intervals between the trains rushing by so that he woke up when there was no train, says Kitzerow. And back then that usually meant: danger on approach.
“Before the sirens could be heard, the BVG had already received an advance warning from the air surveillance. That saved our lives several times when the air raids were raised during the war. ”Because then no more trains were allowed onto the elevated railway line, the trains from Pankow were arrested in the tunnel at the latest at Potsdamer Platz, those from Ruhleben at Wittenbergplatz.
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“My father would always startle and call out: Get dressed! No train came, there is an alarm! ”On the evening of November 22, 1943, both the house at Dennewitzstrasse 23, where Kitzerow lived, and the broken house were hit by bombs and destroyed. Today there is a gap at this point, number 70 has never been rebuilt.
A gesture to the residents
But even if the big city wonder of that time has disappeared from the cityscape, today’s urban planners can learn from their predecessors who left it behind during the construction of the elevated railway – at least that’s what Max Schmidt, architect in the Berlin office of Kadawittfeld, thinks. “Past examples of urban planning adaptation through growing infrastructure often show a less considerate approach to the existing surrounding buildings,” says the 30-year-old.
The fact that the house was not demolished for the construction of the elevated railway at the beginning of the last century, but rather a more complicated variant was chosen, seems like a gesture to the residents of the changing city. “In addition to the gutting and the opening of the two floors, the statics were also recalculated and reinforced,” estimates Schmidt.
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Ultimately, it was probably due to the pragmatism of the post-war period that the house was not rebuilt after it was destroyed in a bombing raid in World War II, although the trains quickly returned to the route. “Rebuilding the whole house around the subway would have been too time-consuming and expensive,” says Schmidt. Today only an orange information board reminds of the tunnel house through which the trains once rolled.
And how did it go on?
And what about the elevated railway on the Bülowbogen? On New Year’s Eve 1971, the subway ran for the last time on Bülowstrasse. The line was then discontinued because hardly anyone used it after the wall was built.
The Bülowstrasse station was no longer served with immediate effect and the trains coming from Dahlem that had previously run to Gleisdreieck now ended at Wittenbergplatz. The West Berliners primarily used the route of today’s U1 over the Kurfürstenstrasse station.
After the elevated railway in Schöneberg-Nord had been idle for a long time, the U2 was resumed after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1993 – not everyone’s reason to be happy. Many residents felt annoyed by the noise. Because until new trains were bought, only older wagons that were very noisy ran on this route. Quite different from the previous neighbors of the tunnel house, back in the thirties: you never felt annoyed by noise when you were a child, says Hans-Joachim Kitzerow.
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