BERLIN'S TEMPODROM
Berlin's Tempodrom, a popular concert and event venue in Berlin-Kreuzberg, built in 1999-2001 where the railway tracks of Anhalter Bahnhof, one of Berlin’s vanished terminal station, once connected the city with far away places (like the French Riviera or Naples).
The venue’s characteristic circus-tent-like roof, reminding strongly of Oscar Niemeyer’s Cathedral of Brasilia with its hyperboloid structure, is not a coincidence. It was, indeed, inspired by circus tent.
One bought in 1980 by Irene Moessinger - daughter of Margarete Gräfin (Countess) von Lynar - who lived and worked as a nurse in West Berlin’s hospital Am Urban. Moessinger was also an active member of Kreuzberg’s squatter-scene. After the death of her father, Wilhelm Moessinger, Irene inherited nearly one million German mark and invested that money in a circus tent, which she then had installed on the site where Potsdamer Platz once used to be.
After five years the tent was relocated to a new, until then rather unfrequented, location in Berlin-Tiergarten. However, another half a decade passed and they had to strike their tent again: the site it stood on was needed for... the new Bundeskanzleramt, or German Chancellor’s Office (the building once fondly dubbed “An Elephant-Washing Machine”). In fact, there was, indeed, an elephant in that room: a rumour that Helmut Kohl did not wish to have a circus full of leftists and environmentalists as his closest neighbours.
After a short sojourn next to the former Postbahnhof (Mail Railway Station next to today’s Ostbahnhof), Tempodrom’s last camp was to be the former site of Anhalter Bahnhof, a station whose ruins had long been blown up and removed (mostly to Teufelsberg).
In 2001 the new, solid Tempodrom opened but its construction caused one of the municipal scandals in Berlin at the time: after the costs doubled in the process (from 16 to 32 million marks), Berlin’s Building and Urban Development Senator had to bid farewell and Irene Moessinger and her business partner faced legal charges (of which they were subsequently cleared).
Today Tempodrom is more popular than ever, offering venue for all sorts of events, from business congress, through concert to circus. What many do not know, however, is that you can also enjoy a swim there: the flat building adjacent to Tempodrom along Möckerstraße houses Liquidrom, a spa with a large basin filled with warm saltwater and placed under a concrete dome with an oculus - a round opening letting daylight in - in the middle.
Both Tempodrom and Liquidrom are a long way from the old Tempodrom but, then again, so is Berlin in 2025 from the city it was in 1980 or 1995.