page_title: Fichte-Bunker
section_title: Construction and technical data
hierarchical_section_title: Fichte-Bunker / Construction and technical data
caption_attribution_description: English: Berlin - gasometer Fichtestrasse, section Deutsch: Berlin - Gasometer Fichtestraße, Schnitt
context_page_description: The Fichte-Bunker is a nineteenth-century gasometer in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, Germany that was made into an air-raid shelter in World War II and subsequently was used as a shelter for the homeless and for refugees, in particular for those fleeing East Berlin for the West. It is the last remaining brick gasometer in Berlin.
  The Fichte-Bunker is located between Fichtestraße and Körtestraße in an area of Jugendstil apartment houses, many of which are now under historic protection. The gasometer itself is protected, but in September 2006 the State of Berlin's Real Property Fund sold it to private investors and residences have now been constructed on the roof.
context_section_description: The Fichte-Bunker was constructed in 1874 for the Municipal Gasholder Authority to the design of Johann Wilhelm Schwedler. It was the second of four gasometers he designed for Berlin's street lighting; the first was in Friedrichshain and has since been destroyed. Both were topped with the "Schwedler cupola", an engineering innovation of his that used an unsupported curved steel vault to span diameters of up to 45 metres (148 ft).
  The gasometer is a cylinder 56 metres (184 ft) in diameter, 21 metres (69 ft) high exclusive of the cupola and 27 metres (89 ft) high in total. Its form was based on an 1827 design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel for a circular church. The capacity of the telescoping gas container was 30,000 cubic metres.
caption: Fichte-Bunker section, published 1876
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