Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut. An Experimental Set-up
Text: Florian Heilmeyer
A trip to the south-west of Berlin today can be like a pilgrimage. All you have to do is drive down Hindenburgdamm in Steglitz. The campus of the Benjamin Franklin Hospital first comes into view on the left, built with American reconstruction funds as the university hospital of the Free University between 1959 and 1968 according to plans by Curtis and Davis from New Orleans. Directly behind it, you turn into the inconspicuous Krahmerstraße, a dead-end street that leads down a short embankment to the Bäke Canal. Surprisingly, two of the most impressive post-war buildings in West Berlin emerge from the bushes on either side of the road: the Institute of Hygiene by Hermann Fehling and Daniel Gogel (1961-1974) on the left and directly opposite on the other side of the road, the Central Animal Laboratories of the Free University of Berlin, built between 1971 and 1981 and designed by Magdalena and Gerd Hänska with Kurt Schmersow and better known by their goose bump name: Mäusebunker.
Mäusebunker, 2020, © Kay Fingerle
Stand, look, marvel
You are welcome to stand here for a while and take in this very different pair from both sides like an oven with top and bottom heat. Stand, look, marvel. Now it also becomes clear why this is a pilgrimage: You may feel the urge to kneel down and pay homage to a time when the public sector in Berlin had the money and the courage to construct such buildings for healthcare and research. Ey, madness, I say.
Hygieneinstitut, 2020, © Kay Fingerle
Diversity of post-war modernism
Both buildings represent diametrically opposed architectural styles of post-war modernism, their counterparts are powerful proof of their diversity. Whereas the Hygiene Institute, with its soft, flowing forms and deliberately interspersed areas of colour, its fine supports, air spaces, walkways and galleries, exudes a cheerful lightness, the Mouse Bunker opposite relies on the power and weight of pure mass, with its blue-painted exhaust shafts protruding from its pyramid-shaped exposed aggregate concrete body like cannon barrels and its other forms reminiscent of a battleship. Accordingly, its nicknames range from ‘Panzerkreuzer Lichterfelde’ to ‘Mäusebunker’.
Inside Hygieneinstitut, 2020, © Kay Fingerle
Renovation backlog and questionable future
The reception history of both buildings would be worth a text of its own, but in short, both manoeuvred in waters of greater obscurity and ignorance until the post-reunification period - hardly anyone knew them, hardly anyone knew anything about the names of their architects. It was not until the 2000s that the first publications appeared, followed by recognition in the 2010s. Just in time, as the Charité, the owner of both buildings, was about to give up and demolish the two icons - which was averted by a wave of protests in 2020, especially from experts. While the Hygiene Institute now has a clear future as the ‘Berlin Centre for the Biology of Health’ and thus as part of the Charité research campus around the Benjamin Franklin Hospital, the future of the mouse bunker is still open. The Berlin State Monuments Office had a ‘model procedure’ carried out, in the course of which several scenarios for a possible conversion were outlined. However, the invitation to tender for a concept award procedure is still being examined, as Charité, FU and the Benjamin Franklin Campus had kindly declined in view of the difficult premises and the considerable refurbishment backlog.
Inside Mäusebunker, 2020, © Kay Fingerle
A declaration of love
Berlin architect Ludwig Heimbach was also one of the activists against the demolition of the two incunabula of West Berlin's post-war modernism back in 2020. In 2020, he organised an exhibition at the Berlin BDA Gallery entitled ‘Mäusebunker & Hygieneinstitut: Versuchsanordnung Berlin’. Heimbach's extensive research has now resulted in a book - and what a book it is! It could just as well be seen as a declaration of love for the two houses, because 408 pages of book have perhaps never been so full and positively appraising. The stories behind the construction of both houses are laid out in a generous and enjoyable manner, with plans, model shots and photographs from the time they were built. Particularly impressive is the colour photo series by Georg Fischer from a 1984 issue of GEO, which shows the otherwise strictly sealed-off mouse bunker in research mode. But the more recent photos by Anne Herdin or the Neue Langeweile collective also excellently depict the original beauty of both buildings.
Mäusebunker, Detailblatt, Gaubenfenster, G+M Hänska, © Berlinische Galerie / Konvolut G+M Hänska
Abundance of material
In addition, there is an endless wealth of documentary material such as photographed Bauwelt articles, project descriptions from the state archives, drawings, sketches, minutes, contributions to debates by today's protagonists and speculative futures for the Panzerkreuzer. There is also a wonderful interview that Ulrich Conrads conducted with Fehling and Gogel, in which the architects remark that this building was so much work for them that their hourly wage was barely more than five marks, to which Conrad replied dryly: ‘No wonder, if, as I have seen, you still draw the formwork plans yourself!’ It is a marvellous book full of surprises. So if the Hygiene Institute and the Mouse Bunker are demolished in one of these future futures - we could easily use this book to reconstruct them in Berlin as faithfully as we once did the palace!
Ludwig Heimbach (ed.), „Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut. Two Berlin Brutalist Icons“, 17x24 cm, Softcover, 408 pages, 335 images, Jovis Publishers, Berlin 2025, ISBN 978-3-98612-030-6
