1933 in Berlin. Early Nazi terror at the heart of society.

An accordion, fragmented, playing broken sound pieces through a grid. People are missing. The sound of boots stomping. Harbingers of the destruction industry.

From September 29 to October 11, 2024, the exhibition NACHHALL by Berlin-based sound artist Tobias Euler took place at the Wasserspeicher in Prenzlauer Berg. The focus of this project, centered on memory culture, was to commemorate the victims of Nazi terror, which began immediately after the end of the Weimar Republic, even within the heart of Berlin's urban society. One of the first concentration camps was located in 1933 in a now non-existent building on the grounds of the water tower in Prenzlauer Berg.

As the generation of witnesses disappears, the forms of expression in memorial culture are changing. With his interdisciplinary approach, Tobias Euler aimed to expand traditional ways of remembering. To this end, he transferred the forms of sound art into a historical context. In the vaults of the former water reservoir, Euler created a sound space that invited an associative engagement with a chapter of Berlin's city history that is at risk of being forgotten. The artist developed an installation of digitally controlled sound objects made from fragments of accordions, an instrument that played a significant role in the traditional music of various groups persecuted by the Nazis. The composition included a collage of historical sound material, everyday noises from the 1930s, and the sounds of the accordion machines. The reverberation times in the vaulted architecture became part of the composition. The contextualization was provided through texts on the historical background, which were placed in the entrance and exit areas of the exhibition, before entering the sound space with the installation. The exhibition was open daily, except Mondays, from 3-8 pm, with free admission.

As planned, the accompanying program took place in cooperation with historian Niko Rollmann and the association unter-berlin e.V. It included a lecture on the beginnings of Nazi terror in Berlin and a guided tour of the historical traces through Prenzlauer Berg.

Program:

Exhibition from September 29 to October 11, 2024

Kleiner Wasserspeicher | Diedenhofer Str. 20, 10405 Berlin

Open daily from 3:00 PM to 9:00 PM (except Mondays)

September 29, 2024    4:00 PM Opening of the walk-in 

                                           sound installation, free entry

October 5, 2024            2:00 PM Guided tour with             

                                           historian Niko Rollmann through 

                                           Prenzlauer Berg to the traces of 

                                           Nazi terror, starting point: 

                                           corner of Schönhauser Allee / 

                                           Saarbrücker Strasse, ends 

                                           around 3:00 PM at the exhibition 

                                           in the Kleiner Wasserspeicher.

                                           Tickets at www.unter-berlin.de

October 6, 2024           5:00 PM Lecture by historian 

                                          Niko Rollmann on the beginnings 

                                          of Nazi terror in Berlin,

October 11, 2024        7:00 PM Finissage with live 

                                          performance 

                                                        

historical background

The water reservoirs on Belforter Straße in Prenzlauer Berg were built in 1853 as Berlin's first modern water supply system. They are a historically and architecturally significant testimony to the efforts to improve the city's hygiene. The facility at the water tower was shut down in 1914 and used for various purposes over the following decades. Today it serves as a cultural venue. This industrial complex also included the so-called "Maschinenhaus I", which has become sadly famous on site.

At the beginning of 1933, Hitler's NSDAP came to power in Germany. It destroyed the democratic system with enormous speed within just a few months. From February/March of that year, numerous "wild" concentration camps were set up in German cities - although this often-used term should not obscure the fact that this was systematic terror. Its primary aim was to crush the political opposition against National Socialism in the truest sense of the word. At the same time, this terror was also intended to have a deterrent effect and demonstrate the omnipotence of the new regime.

Who were the prisoners of these early concentration camps? Most of them were communists, socialists, social democrats, anarchists, trade unionists, homosexuals and people of Jewish faith. There were also unpopular journalists and lawyers as well as other people who were "blacklisted" by the local Nazis. In addition, some SA members also used this opportunity to settle personal scores or to extort money from people.

Floor plan 

of small water reservoir

 (source: Förderband e.V.)

In this context, the aforementioned "Maschinenhaus I" at the water tower was seized by the SA in February 1933 and, from the following month, used to imprison and abuse people. The prisoners were tortured with whips, batons, and truncheons, among other methods. Neighbors reported hearing the victims' screams of pain, as well as gunshots. It was also audible that the detainees were forced to sing Nazi songs. The exact number of people abused and killed there remains unknown.

After a few months, most of these early camps were disbanded. By that time, the terror had already achieved its first goal: the opposing political forces had been largely destroyed, and the new regime was firmly in place. Subsequently, the terror was expanded and institutionalized in line with the racist ideology. Large concentration camps were now established outside the cities, their names today symbolizing the horrors of National Socialism.

The early sites of Nazi terror, the first-generation concentration camps, largely faded into oblivion afterward. This "forgetting" served a kind of psychological function for those living nearby. The mere existence of these detention and torture sites suggests that a significant portion of the urban population was aware that the Nazi regime was a brutally oppressive dictatorship from the very beginning. This was a reality that German society likely did not want to confront for a long time. It is perhaps for this reason that historical research turned its attention to this early Nazi terror relatively late.

The concentration camp in the "Maschinenhaus I" at the water tower in Prenzlauer Berg was just one of many sites of early Nazi terror in Berlin; more than 220 such detention and torture sites have been documented. After the camp on the water tower grounds was closed in June 1933, the building continued to be used by the SA for some time before being demolished in 1935. Local authorities erected the first memorial stone there in 1950, followed by a memorial wall in 1981, dedicated in typical GDR language to the resistance struggle. In 2005, an additional plaque with more detailed information was added. Over the years, this plaque has been repeatedly damaged—most recently in February 2024, when it was so severely vandalized that it had to be temporarily removed.

During National Socialism, over six million people of Jewish faith lost their lives between 1933 and 1945. Numerous other victims included Sinti and Roma, homosexual and other queer individuals, forced laborers, people from Eastern Europe, homeless citizens, people with physical or mental disabilities, the sick, members of religious groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses, political dissidents, and many more.

Niko Rollmann, Historian

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