In the heart of Berlin Tempelhof, you can find a huge 12 THOUSAND ton concrete building called the “Schwerbelastungskörper” (heavy load-bearing body).
The Schwerbelastungskörper was constructed by French prisoners of war in 1941, and it was built in order to test the suitability of the area’s marshy ground for the future construction of a Triumphal Arch, which would’ve served as one of the centerpieces of “Germania” – the new capital of the thousand-year Reich.
The new Triumphal Arch was intended to be three times as large as the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, so it made sense to test whether the ground could hold such an enormous amount of concrete…
If the concrete block had only sunk by less than 6 cm, then this would’ve meant the ground was stable enough for further development. However, it was found that after only a few years, the building had in fact sunk by a whopping 19cm, meaning that unless substantial stabilisation of the ground had taken place, Berlin’s soft ground would never have been able to host the concrete monstrosities of “Germania”…
The Berliner Unterwelten e.V. has a fascinating exhibition on the “Myth of Germania”. More info available here: Berliner Unterwelten e.V.
(This is a repost from Instagram from September 28th, 2024)
