HBM156: Heavy Load-Bearing Body

Here Be Monsters

Here Be Monsters Podcast

Science, Society & Culture, Social Sciences, Personal Journals, Documentary

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2022

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Berlin’s Schwerbelastungskörper is a massive concrete structure that, today, is hidden in plain sight between a railroad and an apartment building. It’s one of just a dozen remaining pieces of Nazi Architecture in Berlin. And it’s not much to look at. It was built in 1941 as a test structure for a triumphal arch that Hitler wanted to build in that spot.

The Schwerbelastungskörper (“heavy load-bearing body”) is the arch’s test structure. It weighs about 12,650 metric tonnes, or about 28 million pounds, and it’s the equivalent weight of one of the four massive legs of the never-built arch.

This plan was abandoned as World War 2 accelerated. And the structure remained, slowly sinking into Berlin’s marshy soil, providing proof of the arch’s impossibility.

In this episode, HBM host Jeff Emtman visits the Schwerbelastungskorper, records some impulse responses in the structure’s single room and reflects on his discomfort in finding beauty in another Nazi structure nearby, Tempelhof Airport (now a public park and refugee camp).

Also mentioned on this episode: The Berlin Airlift, Austrian Tyrol, The Little Mermaid (1989), and Der Herr Der Ringe (Lord of the Rings movies dubbed in German).

Here Be Monsters is an independent podcast supported by listener donations. If you’d like to make a small monthly contribution, visit patreon.com/HBMpodcast.

Registration for the Here Be Monsters Art Exchange is open until November 10th, 2022. Sign up: https://HBMpodcast.com/art/

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot

Transcript

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0:00.0	From a sinkhole, this is Hereby Monsters.
0:11.0	Hereby Monsters, the podcast about the podcast about the unknown.
0:30.0	It's mid-September and I'm in Brightland.
0:37.0	And every day, the wind is getting stronger.
0:42.0	I'm standing next to a rail road in the southern part of the city.
0:46.0	I'm on the border between two neighborhoods.
0:49.0	There's a big busy road here too, and some apartment buildings nearby.
0:53.0	But I'm a bit hidden from the road by some trees and a big fence.
1:00.0	And in front of me, there's this colossal cylinder of concrete.
1:04.0	It's been slowly sinking into the ground here for the past eight years.
1:08.0	It's the Schwerbelastung's Corp. or the heavy load bearing body.
1:14.0	The Schwerbelastung's Corp. is about 70 feet across, about 50 high.
1:20.0	And it is indeed very heavy.
1:22.0	This pile of concrete weighs something in the neighborhood of 25 million pounds.
1:29.0	The Schwerbelastung's Corp. is one of the very few pieces of Nazi architecture left in the city of Brightland.
1:36.0	And what's strange about it is it was never supposed to be permanent.
1:40.0	It was always supposed to be taken down.
1:42.0	But here it is, 80 years later.
1:45.0	The concrete looks weathered.
1:47.0	It seems like it might be crumbling a little bit.
1:50.0	I can't quite tell.
1:58.0	At the base of the structure, there's an open door.
	...

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