Gesundbrunnen

Gesundbrunnen is a poor neighbourhood languishing next to the Wall. The dated, overcrowded apartments and cheap rent attract those of a lower socioeconomic class. Central to the neighbourhood is Humboldthain, an urban park where the Allies tried (unsuccessfully) to bury a WWII flak tower. The Berlin Wall runs along the old Nordbahn railway and the south side of Bernauer Strasse. Along the railway, the wall exists on a steep embankment due to the elevation of the railway tracks. At Bernauer Strasse, the apartment blocks across the street have bricked up windows and are all but abandoned. The residents were forcefully evacuated when the wall went up; in their desperate attempts to escape, many of them leapt from their five-storey windows to the streets below.

Gesundbrunnen is part of the administrative district of Wedding. The roads are reasonable and serviced by a network of public transport. Safety is a concern due to the prevalence of social problems, mainly vandalism, drug use, and petty crime. The people here look the other way and are reluctant to offer help as to not “cause trouble”.

## Locations

### **Bernauer Strasse**

Bernauer Strasse is the border between Gesundbrunnen and Mitte. This road is about 1.7km long; the north side of the street belongs to the French sector while the south side belongs to the Soviet sector. The apartment blocks on the south side of the street have bricked up windows and are all but abandoned. The residents were forcefully evacuated when the wall went up; in their desperate attempts to escape, many of them leapt from their five-storey windows to the streets below. At least ten people were known to have died.

The street today is home to apartment blocks that face a concrete wall and the bricked up homes of their former neighbours. The wall is coarse and weathered, covered by graffiti. The street ends at Eberswalder Strasse, where the whole landscape had been replaced by Czech hedgehogs and anti-tank fortifications.

#### **Derelict Bakery**

The bakery, if one could call it that, had been closed for years. Everything is falling apart—the oven has not seen a fresh loaf of bread since 1965. In one of the back rooms there is an opening in the ground—to a tunnel dug out from the damp, swampy earth. The passage is only large enough for one person to fit through on their hands and knees. The tunnel extends somewhere eastwards. About a hundred metres in, the tunnel comes to a stop as there seems to be a cave-in.

### **Gesundbrunnen**

Gesundbrunnen is a poor neighbourhood languishing next to the Wall. The dated, overcrowded apartments and cheap rent attract those of a lower socioeconomic class. Central to the neighbourhood is Humboldthain, an urban park where the Allies tried (unsuccessfully) to bury a WWII flak tower. The Berlin Wall runs along the old Nordbahn railway and the south side of Bernauer Strasse. Along the railway, the wall exists on a steep embankment due to the elevation of the railway tracks.

Gesundbrunnen is part of the administrative district of Wedding. The roads are reasonable and serviced by a network of public transport. Safety is a concern due to the prevalence of social problems, mainly vandalism, drug use, and petty crime. The people here look the other way and are reluctant to offer help as to not “cause trouble”.

#### **Humboldthain Park**

Rising out of a mound of dirt and rubble is the Humboldthain flak tower. The angular silhouette of the grey concrete structure breaks up the shape of the hill. A spiked iron railing wraps around the rooftop deck. The walls of the bunker are scarred and damaged from the bombs, and over the years it has collected all manner of graffiti.

The flak tower comes with a bunker with enough facilities to shelter thousands of people. It all lies buried under the dirt after the failed attempts of the Allies to demolish it. War-time razing and air raids created the hilly, craggy topography of the park. The bombs dug out ditches and craters which are now overgrown with weeds. One might come across discarded pieces of trash or scrap metal on the ground. There are a couple of playgrounds in the park, for the children, complete with swing sets and rusty benches.

***Humboldthain Flak Tower***

Rising out of a mound of dirt and rubble is the Humboldthain flak tower. The angular silhouette of the grey concrete structure breaks up the shape of the hill. A spiked iron railing wraps around the rooftop deck. The walls of the bunker are scarred and damaged from the bombs, and over the years it has collected all manner of graffiti.

The flak tower comes with a bunker with enough facilities to shelter thousands of people. It all lies buried under the dirt after the failed attempts of the Allies to demolish it. With climbing gear, picks or shovels, a dedicated urban adventurer can gain access to the bunker.

The bunker interior is damp and dark as some forgotten tomb. The hallways run in concentric circles, around and around, and because of this the deeper parts of the bunker can have about seven layers of wall between it and the outside. Flights of stairs connect between the floors. They seem to go on indefinitely—down, down, and deeper into the earth. It is likely that one will come across dead ends and passages blocked by rubble. There are walls that have partially collapsed, leaving exposed the dense net of rebar within the reinforced concrete.

#### **Rotaprint Factory**

The unique appearance of this five-storey building was due to a style called post-war Modernism. It has an asymmetrical face, composed of cubic shapes stacked on top of each other like in a game of Tetris. The cubes are not lined up; some are recessed from the rest of the building, some jut out forming metre-long overhangs.

The Rotaprint factory makes offset printing machines. It is a dying industry; the last time anyone wanted one of these was in 1959. The company is struggling and deep in debt. The exterior of the building is in poor shape. The brick walls show their age, and no one cleans the graffiti off of the ground floor walls.

#### **U-Bahnhof Pankstrasse**

A fairly large underground station with unsightly brown tiles. Rumour has it that this station houses a fallout shelter.