The »Tunnelhaus« at Dennewitzplatz
April 6, 2025»Dass die Tassen im Schrank wackeln und der Tisch wegspringt« …sei »alles gesponnen!«
– Kreuzberger Chronik, April 2016 –
One of the most curious and eye-catching pictures from old Berlin is the one that shows an elevated train running through a “hole” in the middle of a residential building. This image was taken in the early 1900s at Dennewitztraße in Berlin-Schöneberg district, in the western side of the city. Sadly, as other Berlin important and unique landmarks it didn’t escape destruction during Second World War, being hit by the heavy RAF bombings in fall 1943 and never rebuilt.
The Dennewitztraße tunnel was part of the ‘Berliner Hochbahn’ comprising parts of today’s lines U1 and U2 and rans west-east from Warschauer Brücke through Gleisdreieck and along Landwehrkanal towards Stralauer Tor. This was the first elevated and underground railway of the city of Berlin and it was inaugurated in February 1902. At first built by Hochbahngesellschaft under a Siemens and Halske design, it was a quite simple steel viaducts structure through main avenues with elaborately designed stations, but soon started to have a negative impact on the cityscape, and on the residents of the first floors too (but that’s another story…)
No other section would affect its residents as much as the ‘Tunnelhaus’. The elevated railway line ran from Bhf Bülowstr towards the Gleisdreieck (“triangle of tracks”) train junction but there was a “small” problem: a building at Dennewitzstr blocked the way. Two floors of the building had to be demolished to build the tunnel pass, so the railway company (BVG) had no choice but to buy the building and so was born the so called ‘Durchbrochenes Haus’ which soon became one of the unusual sights and attractions of the city and achieved international fame, being visited by locals and tourist alike.
Chronics say that it became so famous that the subway company asked the new tenants for a very high payment meanwhile for the old ones’ original prices were maintained, so as not lose them and not give a poor image of the company. It’s hard to believe but newspapers back then that the train ran through the house completely “shock-free” and without disturbing the residents. More incredible, located on the ground floor beneath the tracks there was a brewery, the Akademischen Bierhallen, which served some Viktoria-Brauerei beers to clients there.
There is another tunnel-house bridge at Dennewitzstraße further north, this one was built in 1924-26 to solve the U1’s railway traffic chaos crossing U-Bhf Gleisdreieck to Nollendorfplatz following several tragic train accidents. It wasn’t so famous as the ‘Tunnelhaus’ but survived the bombing war and can be seen today with trains running through.
This 1938-39 Berlin’s street map allows us to locate the specific area showing the elevated tunnel location (marked in red), to see how it was during our research period and how far has changed during the past eighty years following the war and the reconstruction and division of the city.
[Interestingly, a quick image search results in a high number of vintage postcards both black and white and coloured showing the place (at least twenty of them), which tells us that the building quickly became a popular site for curious tourists and locals alike, most of them show a printed scene taken in or about 1900-1905.]
[Three views of construction work of the U-Bahn tunnel through the Dennewitzstraße building, circa 1900. Two floors of the apartments building had to be demolished to allow room for the train pass.]
[A nice view of the so-called ‘Pastorenkurve’ looking west at the location where the elevated U-Bahn railway passes Dennewitzplatz running westerly to Nollendorfplatz. U-Bhf Bülowstraße can be discerned in the background.]
[Another view of the elevated train pass at Dennewitzstraße/Bülowstr. seen from Dennewitzplatz looking northwards, circa 1900.]
The location became so popular that it appeared on a 1927 cinema movie too, with several shots of trains passing through the building pass: “Berlin. Die Sinfonie der Großstadt”, directed by Walther Ruttmann (1887-1941). Ruttmann’s Berlin experimental silent film transports its audience to the Berlin of the 1920s, the metropolis and its daily life, the machines and the urban architecture. You can watch the film here (Dennewitzstr can be seen from minute 37 of the footage).
A few metres next to the elevated U-Bahn tunnel pass, Dennewitzstraße goes into a more open space known as Dennewitzplatz. There stands the Lutherkirche, a brick building built from 1891 to 1894 and designed by Johannes Otzen in Gothic style (“modern Gothic”) and intended to accommodate the further increase in population and Luther believers in the area. To go around the church, the viaduct was forced to make a small curve continuing its way towards Bülowstr, known as the ‘Pastorenkurve.’ Today, the church is home of the English-spoken Amerikanische Kirche in Berlin, an ecumenical congregation originally based at Nollendorfplatz, which moved here in November 2002. Hence the popular name of this church as ‘the American Church.’
[View of Bülowstr with the Lutherkirche and Dennewitzplatz at right behind the elevated railway, Berlin-Schöneberg, 1902.]
[The Protestant church Lutherkirche seen from the east, note at left Dennewitzstraße and the ‘Tunnelhaus’ bridge as view in 1905, Berlin-Schöneberg district.]
Bomberkrieg 1940-45
Both Dennewitzstraße and Bülowstr were located in one of the western districts most heavily affected by bombs but, sadly, we have been unable to find any picture of the exact location during the war years or the immediate 1930s. Just a few blocks away of this area were located two notable Berlin ‘Bomberkrieg’ landmarks: the famous Sportpalast (destroyed in January 1944) and the huge air-raid shelter at Pallasstraße, which survived the war and can be found there today.
Curiously, this spot —Dennewitzstr 69— does not appear in any of the records listed on the city’s bomb damage archives, neither the November 22/23, 1943 date, which appeared on every website or text as loss date for both the Tunnelhaus and the Lutherkirche. That doesn’t mean that is not correct, but we can’t confirm which sources used those authors to affirm that it was destroyed on that night during one of the most destructive RAF raids of the entire war, which affected specially Schöneberg and Tiergarten districts. Just in one occasion the tunnel-bridge was mentioned: it was on the damage report about the 28/29 January 1944 RAF’s raid which recorded ”U-Bahn: …der Dennewitzstraße, wo die Brücke durch eine Sprengbombe getroffen wurde”, but most likely this refers to the other tunnel pass further north (Dennewitzstr Nummer 2) as not marked it as destroyed, something corroborated by aerial pictures from 1945.
[An aerial view of this Berlin area taken by an RAF reconnaissance aircraft in 1943 before the British bombing campaign with Bülowstraße and part of Schöneberg at left. The two “tunnel houses” at Dennewitzstr are marked with red dots. The Yorckstr and Gleisdreieck marshalling yards are clearly spotted from the air (usually attacked on every Allied raid together with the Tempelhof yards south from there —at right).]
In the case of the Lutherkirche at Dennewitzplatz, it had already been hit by British incendiary bombs on March 1, 1943; bomb damage was reported at Dennewitzstr. 28-36 and in Bülowstr further west during that attack also. The church would be destroyed when fire bombs hit the building again in November 1943. Records don’t show an exact date, as listed it in the joint report covering the Bomber Command heavy attacks of the 23rd (the fiercest), 24th and 27th of that month, being declared as ‘total loss’ following the raids. The building would be rebuilt between 1959 and 1960.
Further notable damage was received in early 1945 there, when on 24/25 February a British nuisance raid hit the elevated railway at Bülowstr. 97 with aerial mines (already hit on July 1944), and also in March 1945, when RAF Mosquitoes raided all area and left heavily damaged the adjacent streets and the Bülowstr railway bridges.
[Seen here in July 25, 1944, the Bülowstraße railway viaduct was heavily damaged when an aerial mine fell close a few days before. It would be finally destroyed following a direct hit by another RAF ‘Cookie’ in February 1945.]
April 1945 - the Soviet advance
[A column of Soviet T34/85 tanks of the 9th Mechanized Corps/3rd Guards Tank Army posing at Bülowstraße with the slender tower of the American Church (Lutherkirche) at Dennewitzplatz in the background.]
During the last week of April 1945, further damage was done to adjacent buildings at this area, especially along the Bülowstraße elevated railway axis of advance.
Soviet forces reached this area on April 29th, following the German withdrawal from the Landwehr Canal at Potsdamer Str, with the powerful 3rd Guards Tank Army led by Rybalko attacking from the eastern part of the urban area of Schöneberg in the direction of Wilmersdorf and Charlottenburg. The area was defended by elements from the Panzer-Division ‘Müncheberg’ and several groups of Volkssturm battalions, which remained at Nollendorfplatz at several strong points. Units of the 9th Mechanized Corps attacked into Schöneberg district from the east (Yorckstraße) and from the south (Hauptstr.) The 70th Mechanized Brigade led an offensive advancing from today’s Gleisdreieck parks starting 9:00 hrs in the morning with heavy artillery support along the Bülowstr route, meanwhile the 91 Tank Brigade advanced in a parallel southern route. The armoured elements get the Pallasstraße-Goltzstr intersection by early morning hours and finally reached the Wittenbergplatz line in the early evening of that day after fierce battle with small defensive points, overcoming enemy resistance by the end of the day. German resistance ceased on May 2nd finally.
[May 1945: Dennewitzstraße seen from below the railway bridge, a few days following the end of the battle. The other elevated railway bridge is discern in the far background of the picture. The entire block of buildings seen at left have gone, demolished years after the war, now part of today’s Nelly-Sachs Park.]
Postwar reconstruction?
At the end of the war in May 1945, the capital appeared chaotic and ruined. The area in question, like the rest of the district, was in bad shape, with both tunnels heavily damaged by Allied bombs and the final street-battle with the Red Army.
This image is part of a series of scale maps commissioned by the BezirksamtTempelhof-Schöneberg as well as the Hauptamtes für Vermessung der Stadt Berlin detailing every building and its degree of destruction that were destroyed, damaged, and capable of reconstruction at the district after World War 2. The condition of the buildings was divided into four categories and colour-coded on the damage maps. Note that our tunnel-building located at Dennewitzstraße 69 and the adjacent house (Nr 22) are marked in red as ‘Total beschädigt’ (Totally damaged) meanwhile surrounding ones were in better condition (blue and green).
[This is an oblique view taken in 1945 by US forces with camera facing southwestern Berlin, months after the end of the war. Bomb damage on this part of the city is clearly seen (detailed in the map shown above), as well as both railway elevated house-tunnels at Dennewitzstraße with the American church seen next to them at left. Out of picture in this detail view are Anhalter Bhf, Askanischer Platz and the SS HQ at Prinz-Albrecht-Str. seen in the original picture.]
[An unusual view of the battle-damaged Lutherkirche’s tower at Dennewitzplatz, seen from the train tracks through the ruined houses that once formed the tunnel, taken in September 1946 by Fritz Eschen.]
[This photograph shows Bülowstraße 70-Dennewitzstr 21 corner, located next to the former railway tunnel already demolished seen from the churh. It was taken by Herwarth Staudt in June 1951, on behalf of the Baulenkungsamtes Schöneberg.]
[In this aerial picture of post-war Berlin taken in 1953, the former tunnel railway can be seen now surrounded by empty space following the postwar demolishing work to clear the damaged houses there (bottom of the image), with Hochbahn Bülowstraße seen at left. The other elevated train pass (top) is clearly spotted also, now repaired. Compare this aerial shot with the one taken in 1943 seen above.]
Despite this famous spot ‘fell’ inside the Western sectors, the division of the city during the Cold War and the post-war economy also led to a disruption in the reconstruction programs: the ‘Tunnelhaus’ was never rebuilt. Adjacent buildings 67-68 with minor survived meanwhile at Bülowstraße numbers 72 and 73 were the only ones remaining today; the damaged houses at Bülowstraße 70-Dennewitzstr 21 are seen in the aerials gutted by fire both and were demolished during the 1950s. For their part, the northern part of Dennewitzstr had the entire block of buildings gone during the 80s (minus 24A building, which survived), now part of the Nelly-Sachs Park with new modern houses being built further east in the 2000s.
The division of Berlin also had an impact on the subway route: from 1972 to the 1990s, train service here was interrupted as a result of the discontinued connection to the eastern part of the city.
Today, the elevated railway line passes runs undisturbed towards Bülowstraße, through Gleisdreieck’s Westpark (opened in 2011-14), one of the three public green areas of the Park am Gleisdreieck, an approx 31.5-hectare park located on the wasteland of the former Anhalter and Potsdam Güterbahnhof at Gleisdreieck and stretches from the Landwehr Canal across Yorckstraße to the east.
Since 2011, at the corner where the railway tunnel-house used to be, there is a post with an information sign and a couple of vintage pictures. This is an initiative of the Initiiert Quartiersmanagement Schöneberger Norden with support from the city council, marking important historical and cultural points in the district.
[There is another house passing at Dennewitzstraße further north, this one was built in 1926 to solve the U1’s railway traffic chaos crossing at U-Bhf Gleisdreieck. It wasn’t so famous as the ‘Tunnelhaus’ but survived the bombing war and can be seen today with trains running through.]
Pablo López Ruiz.
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