The remains of the demolished bunker in Tiergarten are not easily accessible. You have to push through bushes, scrub, and nettles before you find the remains of the World War II bunker.

But once you’ve broken through, there’s no doubt about what you’re seeing.

There are several smaller and larger pieces of concrete in the area, some of which look like pieces from walls, while others look like pieces from the ceiling.

It is worth noting that the concrete is not steel reinforced. It’s ordinary concrete, which means that the bunker was not bombproof.

The missing rebar suggests that the bunker was not a military bunker, but what kind of bunker was it?

There is not much documentation about the bunker, but there is something that can give some clues as to what it is. Among other things, an old aerial photograph.

See these two rings? It’s hard to see what it is on this old aerial photo from 1945, so I consulted some old maps of Tiergarten.

These two maps are from 1947 and 1951.

The first maps tell us that the red circle is the old forester’s house, which was demolished before 1951. And the green circle is where you can find the remains of the bunker today.

“War-Buildings are Being Blown Up in Berlin”

This is a headline from an unknown English newspaper dated January 21, 1947, with photos of a column of smoke in Tiergarten. It comes from a short note from Reuters, which cannot be reproduced here for copyright reasons.

A record from the Groß Berlin magistrate’s office also mentions a 12 x 12 meter underground bunker with a concrete floor along the Tiergarten-Ufer, which was blown up on January 20th, 1947, with 150 kg of explosives.

Furthermore, there is no real documentation about who used the now demolished bunker in Tiergarten. The rest is therefore speculation.

To sum up…

The bunker in Tiergarten wasn’t very big, so there couldn’t have been room for many people. It’s not steel reinforced, so it’s probably not a military bunker.

And the bunker is less than a stone’s throw from the forester’s house.

One guess could be that the bunker was the forester’s private air raid shelter. Some public officials under the Nazi regime who also had official residences had a bunker as part of their housing complex.

And since the forester did not belong to the top of the Nazi regime – like Hitler, Goebbels and Göring – he was not equipped with a real bunker, but instead with a simple air raid shelter for himself and his crew.

But this is just a guess, If you have a better guess, or have pictures or documentation, I’d love to hear from you in the comments or by email. Until then, the bunker fragments in Tiergarten remain a mystery.

---