Destroying a legend

Berlin – May 8th in 1945

When finally the weapons were silent, the destruction was massive. Especially in the city centre. However, Berlin wasn´t dead, the infrastrucutre was still working. Only a few days after capitulation the tram was already put into service again, the city had water and, at least for some hours daily, electricity.

But the city was covered in 70-90 million cubic meters of debris. There were not many houses left standing.
Only 370.000 apartments were still habitable out of 1,5 million. 500.000 homes were completely destroyed, about 100.000 were seriously damaged. There were around 245.000 buildings in the city, 47.700 were destroyed.
The debris had to be removed.

The great tidying up

“Das große Aufräumen”, the “great tidying up”, changed Berlin essentialy. In the flat city 14 rubble mountains were built. The biggest one a little later, between 1950-72, is called “Teufelsberg”, the devil´s mountain. It holds about 26 million cubic metres of rubble.
Estimated costs: 1,45 billion Reichsmark.

On the mountaintop of the Teufelsberg, US forces built a communications intercept station in order to spy out their former ally, the Sowjets.
Today, Teufelsberg is one of the most interesting sites to visit in Berlin.

Through the whole city tracks were built to transport the huge amount of rubble and debris. The wagons, or tippers, wer filled by the legendary “Trümmerfrauen” (rubble women). They tidied up the city without recieving any pay. I say “legendary” because this is what they are. A legend, a myth.
In spring 1946 about 25.000-30.000 women were working as Trümmerfrauen.

However, there were about 500.000 women in Berlin at that time. And they didn´t do the job voluntarily. The unskilled construction workers had only registered at the employment agency to get a ration book. They were organized in work groups and of course, they were paid for their services.
There was a lot of advertisement to convince women to apply for this job because it wasn´t particularly a popular thing. More so, it was seen as convict labour.

All the rubble and debris in Berlin was finally removed by professional companies that used a lot of machines and a lot of the workers were men.
There were long, hard-working lines of hundreds of women removing the rubble with their bare hands and rebuilding Berlin stone by stone. But they weren´t doing the job alone.

A lot of this photographs were staged in order to spread the legend.

After WW2, women and men helped re-building Berlin, along with the construction companies. My grandparents were one of them. My grandma worked as a crane operator and used to make jokes about how she would have to pee in a bottle while she was working. Everyone helped where he could. But there were no „Trümmerfrauen“ who removed the rubble and re-built the city all on their own, as history books would tell until recently.

I spoke to my grandpa this morning. He inspired me to make this post.
We talked about Granny and how much we miss her. She died a few years ago.
He was crying a little, he always does when he speaks about her. But then he suddenly laughed and said „She was the only woman I know who would curse all day at work, covered in dirt and dust and pee shamelessly from a crane. But she was the most decent and warm-hearted woman I ever met. I used to get angry with her because she would give so much food away we hardly had something left for ourselves. She was a real Trümmerfrau!“
She was a badass woman, my granny.