Abodes of air-shelter remnants

DPA

Martin Heimeier decided to leave the hole in the roof as it was, though it has been capped with some concrete. The cover over the 3.5-metre-wide gap gouged by the bomb — more about that later — has been painted gold and has a spotlight so that Heimeier’s tenants can light up the ceiling recess whenever they want. It is after all their living room.
Welcome to a German air-raid shelter. Architect Heimeier, who usually builds factories and office buildings, has been living with his wife in a 200-metre-square penthouse on top of the above-ground shelter in Essen, western Germany, since 2014.
His grandparents were textile traders and rented storage space in the massive hunk of reinforced concrete in 1947, five years after it was built during World War II to shelter civilians from Allied air-raids. Decades later, Heimeier decided to take over the rental contract and based his office there. In 2009 the German authorities put the unusual building up for auction. “There was a lot of interest,” says 47-year-old Heimeier. But his was the winning bid. Air-raid shelters were thrown up in great numbers all around the country during World War II and the Cold War. When communism collapsed in 1989 and the Soviet threat vanished, most were decommissioned as part of the peace dividend.
Due to their size and the thickness of their walls — Heimeier’s shelter’s are 1.1-metre thick — they are extremely expensive to demolish. There’s now a growing trend for converting them for different uses; rehearsal rooms, exhibition spaces, offices or even apartments.
Around 230 shelters have been sold since 2005 with buyers including architects, developers, private individuals, artists and clubs. And in addition around 20 shelters change hands every year, according to Thorsten Gruetzner, spokesman
for the Institute for Federal Real Estate (BImA).
These examples of “striking and special real estate” cost between 20,000 and 4 million euros (22,468 and 4.5 million dollars) apiece, according to BImA, depending on the location and condition. BImA isn’t currently selling any, but one is coming up for sale soon in Hamburg and three in the Ruhr industrial country.
A catalogue, “Bunker im Bremen” (Air-raid shelters in Bremen), gives tourists an overview of shelters in the northern city. It features one huge building with 12 floors and covering a 700-metre-square area. So why do people buy air-raid shelters?
They offer opportunities, says Gruetzner. “In a converted shelter, the exposed concrete creates a particular atmosphere. And when you’re behind walls that are metres thick, you feel quite safe.” Heimeier built three apartments in his shelter, in addition to his own penthouse, doing “almost everything” himself.
All of the apartments, two measuring 250 square metres and a smaller one measuring 95 square metres, have been rented out. A building once built to accommodate 600 cowering people is now home to just nine. There are few internal walls, meaning the apartments are made up of huge, stylish rooms.
The building work took around two years. “The neighbours had to suffer a lot,” says Heimeier. All of the windows were made significantly larger, no mean feat with such thick walls, to enable more light to come through.
The walls were also insulated and covered in perforated metal so that the unobservant might not notice that the smart apartment building was in fact originally an air-raid shelter. “We feel really comfortable. We really identify with the building,” says Heimeier, adding that for him the words “air-raid shelter” or “Bunker” in German, no longer have any negative connotations.
“We say, ‘we’re off to the bunker,’ or ‘we’ll meet at the bunker.’ It’s completely normal.” And the thick walls are great, he says. “Even at temperatures of under 20 degrees it has a certain cosiness.” Ruven Kloettschem, a 23-year-old student, also loves his air-raid shelter apartment, saying it’s cool and unusual.
“Every corner of it reminds you [that you’re in an air-raid shelter],” he says. And even the neighbours are pleased that what used to be an ugly grey blot has been transformed. “We were all pleased when it was finished,” says Sonja Kirschbaum. “Now it’s lovely.”