Let The Right One In

In order to be safe you have to be separate. Either enclosed or excluded from the turbulent, unpredictable outside world. That’s the price. To stay exposed under earth’s vaulted sky is to risk it cracking up and falling down on your head. And in 1942, no one in Germany could deny the sky was falling. So they built a place apart. A building so sturdy that after the firebombs of WWII and many decades of the city growing up and changing around it, it stands as impervious as ever. Only the faint moonscape on its concrete shell betrays the trouble it’s seen. Most of the other bunkers from this era have been torn down, but the amount of explosives needed to level this one would take its residential neighbors down with it. Destroying its world would cause a rift in ours.

The entrance i.e. what I could see before they made me put my camera away. Still cool.

The bunker has had many names. My personal favorite being ‘Bananabunker,’ but we’ll get to that. Layers of history haunt this mammoth, 5,000 square-meter structure. Each with its own set of colorful ghosts. The haunts don’t have a way out -- the walls are two-meters thick with a three-meter ceiling. After serving its original purpose as a war bunker, the building was later converted into a prison by the Red Army and then used as a storage space for Cuban fruit. It played host to one of the most extreme gay fetish clubs of all time and, since 2008, has been transformed into a private museum. The artwork that resides there now mediates the many voices of its past and is charged by them.

When Karl Bonatz designed the building originally, it was to be a cog in the Nazi’s master machinery of Germania, the future capitol of the world as envisioned by Albert Speer. It was almost windowless, with low ceilings at 2.3 meters and 180 almost identical concrete rooms. Built to house 1,500 people in the event of air strikes, it held up to 4,000 at the height of the war. Or at least that was the figure quoted to me by my sprightly German tour guide as we wandered the space with the eleven other international voyeurs. (Tours are always twelve people at a time, scheduled weeks in advance on their website.) Inside, the walls are still stenciled with spray-painted regulations and strung with glow-in-the-dark arrows and lines to direct refugees in case of a power outage.

There are many buildings in Germany that were constructed to defend against an enemy, but are later occupied by that very group of people. The Soviets used this bunker after 1945 to house German prisoners of war. In the 1950s, it became a storage space for dried fruit, oranges and bananas because of its perma-cool climate. From 1992-1996 it gained the nickname “hardest club on earth.” Fetish, fantasy, drugs and techno music came out to play in its shadowy caves. Some rooms were painted black for that which required an even greater cover of darkness. However, the ventilation system had broken and been stripped years before and oxygen was hard to come by amid the smoke, drugs and fog machine plumes. Besides the toxic air, there were many police raids that eventually led to its closing. But no need to mourn the S&M muse, it alighted on Berghain and this club has held the torch since.

In 2003, Christian Boros and his wife bought the bunker to display their art collection and began a massive makeover. Forty of the 120 rooms and 1,800 tons of concrete were removed. Now some ceilings stretch to 13 meters and the space resembles more of a 3-D labyrinth than a prison. (You know, like if you were a giant snake you could wind in and out of its cutout walls and open ceilings.) For their first exhibition that has been on view since 2008, the Boros’ installed 80 works. Many of the art pieces were made specifically for the bunker or adapted by the artists to fit the space. The artists were able to choose which rooms they worked in and curate the show themselves.

It is a phenomenal space in which to experience art. With all of the different melodies from its history ringing in your ears, the pieces pick up on one or another tonal phrase and resonate. For instance, Anselm Reyle’s cart uses the same neon paint that clings to the walls from the 40’s and Katja Strunz’s wooden paper airplane-like sculptures play in and around old spray-painted text. Though for some, it is more about what you can’t hear. Kris Martin’s bell that swings over the foyer is clapper-less and titled “For Whom.” We weren’t allowed to take photographs inside, but there are some beautiful ones here and it’s all about walking the walk anyway.

The icing on top of this layered cake is a colossal glass penthouse. Because the Boros’ were not allowed to make changes to the façade of the bunker itself, they built their home above it. The view must be spectacular – both of the city and of the hundreds of artworks that grace their private walls, including what my guide estimates to be 40 Elizabeth Payton paintings.

Odin, king of the Norse gods, has a grand fortress too. It is also both a military establishment and a palace of wonders with spear-shafts for rafters and a roof of golden shields like shingles. It holds hundreds of rooms and is topped with the tree Lærad just as the Berlin bunker is crowned in foliage. The Valkyries choose which men die in battle and take the bravest here. Once they are residents of the great hall, the warriors’ days consist of fighting each other until they lie in a hewn pile on the lawn, being resurrected just before dinner time, dining and drinking the night away and then, if they’re lucky, getting to know one of those maidens of death a little better. The boar that they feast on is also whole again and ready for the spit come morning.

A palace of ghosts. Crowned by German art world royalty. Who wouldn’t want in? Christian sends invitations to the boldest of artists to take up residence. To our culture’s risk takers. Those that lead reckless charges against the ramparts of society’s standards or venture daringly into the unknown.