Karl: The interesting thing about the design is that the sphere looks as if it’s impaled. But in reality it is hanging from the concrete pillar.
Anna: The glazed dome is the first building in the world to be suspended from a tower. My favourite part is the café inside. It has 200 seats and offers the best panoramic view of the city. Especially because it moves. It’s on a rotating floor ring and it takes about half an hour to get round.
(from the audio walk Mitte-Schritte, an audio walk through the historic centre of the city)
It took three attempts before the Berlin television tower as we know it today could be built. Originally, it was to be built on the large Müggelberg hill. With its 114 metres, the highest natural elevation in Berlin seemed to be the ideal location. Or was it? The fact that the tower could disrupt flight operations in the direct flight path to the nearby airport in Schönefeld prompted Karl Maron, the GDR Minister of the Interior at the time, to stop construction in December 1955. By then, the tower was already an impressive 31 metres high. And this little television tower still stands today and is used by Deutsche Telekom.
The 31 metres high first little tv tower is still to be found on the hill Großer Müggelberg.
Five years later, permission was granted for the second attempt: The Berlin TV Tower was to be built on the grounds of Volkspark Friedrichshain by 1964. In August 1961, however, other construction work began: the resources required for the anti-fascist protective wall were immense – in addition, there was a severe economic crisis, in short: the second attempt stalled before it had really begun.
But broadcasting to the population was very important to the GDR leaders, as was the symbolic power of a representative central building. So the tv tower moved a little further into the centre, right next to Alexanderplatz station, and Walter Ulbricht – First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany – shouted in the summer of 1964 at the city model of the German Building Academy: ‘Well, comrades, there you can see it clearly: that’s where it belongs’. But there was already something there: almost 30,000 square metres of residential and commercial space had to be demolished, land purchased and compensation paid. Before the ground-breaking ceremony began, 38 million marks had been spent, more than the total estimated cost of the tower.
From August 1965, work began first on the foundations and then rapidly went upwards. The Berlin TV Tower grew by an average of 36 cm per day and the shaft was completed in the summer of 1967. In the following year and a half, the sphere was hung on the shaft and the steel spike was placed on top. The months until completion were used for the interior work. When Walter Ulbricht inaugurated the tower on 3 October 1969, he also gave the starting signal for colour television in the GDR. The Berlin television tower was opened to visitors on the 20th birthday of the GDR.
The opening day of the Berlin TV Tower was also the beginning of color television in East Germany.
In the 1990s, there were many voices that wanted to bring down the GDR’s most representative building. Instead the Palace of the Republic was hit. The television tower was given a new antenna and was allowed to grow another three metres. And now it stands here and we join the choir of young pioneers in serenading Germany’s tallest building:
To all those who built the tower that now looks into our cooking pot,
we cheerfully say: Thank you!, well built for Spree-Athens
The Berlin TV Tower is the starting point for the audio walk Mitte-Schritte, a guided tour through Berlin’s historic centre. Walter Ulbricht, the Young Pioneers and GDR star architect Hermann Henselmann take part in this acoustic city tour through the centuries.
