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REDINGS ESSAY

BUILD BUNKERS!

An Essay by Benjamin Reding

Y uk, what an ugly title. Who on earth wants bunkers! Those black, weathered free- informed where, “in case of danger” (hence in war), Dürer’s Praying Hands or
Menzel’s Sanssouci Flute Concerto or Goethe’s manuscript of Faust will actually be
standing constructions, always too large, too clunky, too bleak, eyesores in the
city image that stand around angular, like the suitcases of those who could not reach hidden. At the time of Kohl, in the rush of happiness of the reunification years, bun-
them in time. Silent reminders of fear-filled nights, of too heavy, unsettling concepts: kers were not in great demand. All those government bunkers, Stasi bunkers, NVA
violence, pain, death. Nobody wants bunkers! Or do they? Maybe? All the same? bunkers, headquarters became redundant, their nuclear-blast proof gates stood open.
Mother pulled us to the floor. Without any previous warning, suddenly, with surprising Young people came and held their techno-parties within the walls quickly left behind
strength. Federal Chancellor Kohl had just given one of his somewhat sweaty, care- by the state apparatus or set up exhibition and rehearsal rooms for bands in them.
free-cheerful speeches on Germany and the reunification broadcast on the screen of And the art collector Christian Boros even turned a former Reichsbahn bunker at Bahn-
our family TV set and down we went, our mother pressing us onto the freshly vacuu- hof Friedrichstraße, where the GDR used to store potatoes and the Berlin Wende scene
med short-pile carpeting. “That was … a low-flying aircraft attack.” Mother laboriously celebrated fetish parties, into an art museum and put, like a beacon of the new
pulled herself up, noticed the television set and the living room and corrected herself: peaceful time, his own house on top of the roof. This was because everyone, in the
“… like a low-flying aircraft attack ... that’s just how this was.” She stammered just as West as well as in the East, was hoping, no, was certain that nobody ever again nee-
if she herself thought it scary, what she had just claimed and what had made her pull ded bunkers. But now, sometimes, when I listen to Mister Orbán speaking, or Mister
my brother and me down onto the floor. A low-flying aircraft attack? That sounded as Kim or Mister Erdogan (the list can be complemented as one chooses), when I am rea-
credible and obvious as if she had claimed that a Zeppelin was burning above our ding the latest Corona numbers, about ever more wars and cancelled disarmament
house or that a Montgolfier had become entangled in the trees of our garden. Of treaties , I catch myself wishing for a bunker. With thick walls and heavy doors and
course, it was not an attacking low-flying aircraft, an even heavier felt blanket which, just in case, I
it was a NATO Phantom fighter jet. These were sta- could simply pull over my head and, underneath it,
tioned not far from us and their young pilots loved can forget and repress all worries.
to fly risky capers over the suburbs, sometimes “Our” bunker was less spectacular as to content
down to treetops and – it was felt – to the height but attractive visually: It stood on the city periphery
of the chimneys of the homes. “Behind Stuttgart, and resembled an XXL version of a porcelain coffee
this is where our train was fired at from an air- filter. At the bottom, one of those thick, wind-
craft.” As if apologizing for her strange “perfor- owless, rectangular concrete blocks and, at the top,
mance” but also for the self-assurance of still a 15 metres high hopper, also of concrete. Formerly
being able to differentiate between reality and a coal bunker, then, in the last war, reinforced with
suppressed memories, she told us, short of breath many tons of concrete around the base, a bunker
and with a wobbling voice, about a true attack by for people – and then the rehearsal room of our
a low-flying aircraft, experienced as a small child band. The thick walls had an advantage: On the
at the end of the last war on the way to the Black outside, one couldn’t hear what happened inside.
Forest. The train was fired at, stopped on an open Our band wanted to sound like the Red Hot Chili
stretch, she ran off, into nature, into the flowering Peppers and I wanted to sing like Anthony Kiedis,
shrub on the railway embankment. Her mother both of which, however, we didn’t quite manage to
threw herself on top of her. They both survived the do … The rehearsal room was cramped and stuffy
attack, unlike others on the train. Then, as if a Foto: Benjamin Reding and the ceiling was so low, that jumps for joy while
wall had burst, her cheeks already reddened, her singing became dangerous and regularly caused
otherwise so tidy hairdo mussed, she talked me bumps on the head. Narrow stairs led up to the
about a dream repeated during many of her nights: Again an attack, again aircraft. accessible edge around the hopper but the door into it was always locked. We thought
Bombs this time. Again she is running, now towards a bunker. The bombs are already the “brutalist” (but we didn’t know the term and said “run-down”) bunker style was
falling, she barely manages to get there, the heavy steel doors fall shut behind her. cool. Shortly after the “low-flying aircraft attack” in our living room, we had a band
She sits down on a wooden bench, hears the whistling of the falling bombs, the light- rehearsal, but I arrived too early and was alone. The door to the steep stairs stood
bulb flickers. Then the walls cave in. Soil pours into the room, the light goes out, she open, a first. Upstairs, the air smelled of leaves and soil, the tar-paper roof was co-
gets buried. “And this is always the moment when I wake up.” My brother and I vered with shrivelling autumn leaves, slippery, I proceeded carefully. “Don’t you fall
looked at our mother. Amidst the cool-modern living-room furniture, television and down now!”, I took a step back. “Or jump off. Someone once did this. What a knuck-
stereo set, the abstract art on the wall, her words sounded so distant, so strange as if lehead.” I turned around: An elderly man in a blue overall was eyeing me, critical but
someone had placed an NS-era radio in a disco. Then she composed herself, smoot- not unfriendly. “Ah, you are one of the musicians?” I nodded. “I’m also listening to
hed her hair and her clothes, went into the kitchen and prepared lunch as if nothing music, but something merry.” He knelt on the tar paper, shovelled leaves and sludge
had happened. out of the gutter. “This also has to be done once in a while, right?!” Then he got up.
Only three things earn the social privilege that bunkers are built for them: art, money “When you go down again, firmly pull the door shut.” He pushed the sludge-filled pla-
and people. For art, museums do it, for money the banks and for people the federal stic bucket over his wrist and disappeared down the staircase. The flat roof was much
office for civil protection and disaster relief or also private persons in their basement higher than expected. The view was vast. One could see the city. The stadium, the te-
or their back yard. Building bunkers was and is a discreet affair. In the design plans of levision tower and also the many streets and alleys, the houses, their front gardens,
the banks, they are readily left unmentioned or are inconspicuously called “storage the parked cars, the mowed lawns, all that building, tinkering and pottering about
room” or “depot” or, somewhat more honestly, “vault”; for security reasons, in prin- and that’s when I felt it: That the only thing that makes sense about bunkers is that,
ciple they are not marked in city maps. Only the artwork depots of the museums are from their roofs, one can watch the hustle and bustle of the people and that this hustle
fairly well-known but I know from my own experience: Not everyone is to and will be and bustle is good. And this is what I believe, despite everything, to this day.

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