Where do the crawlways under the University Main Building lead to? What lies beneath the walls of the old Electoral Palace? A death row or jail cell? A film club? Bike parking? Where were the Elector’s stables located? Where did they gather to drink their wine? University Archivist Dr. Thomas Becker knows the building and what all lies beneath it better than anybody else. With the big renovation coming up, we went with Dr. Becker on a tour of the University Archive and the Main Building to explore their secrets.
The old Film Club
Students watched movies in Lecture Hall I up until the 1980s, but then the 16mm film projector broke down at the same time as a renovation project kicked off for the two lecture halls that would take ten years. It took until 1996 for the film club to acquire a new projector and restart their activities. In the years in between however, the relatively luxurious Cineplex cinemas had emerged and become popular.
Disinclined to watch movies sitting on hard wooden benches, students defected and the film club dissolved. Traces of those days can still be recognized above the basement level too, like the projector chamber in Lecture Hall I, and the old cinema box office opposite the entrance.
Vaulted ceilings above 4.5 kilometers of archived materials
One thousand square meters, 4.5 kilometers of files. HR staff have reason to come down here from time to time, but mostly it’s only Archive staff down there keeping an eye on things like how the dehumidifiers are running, or to process files for preservation in gray archive boxes as perhaps needed in generations to come.
“Unfortunately however, the guided tours and all the flair of this place ... it will all be going away. So much charm will be lost,” observes Becker, ruefully.
“I have always felt connection with the University of Bonn,” he relates, “there’s a special atmosphere here.”
The University Main Building has been a fascination for him ever since his student days, thus he views it as one of his major accomplishments having spearheaded the opening of the University Museum in 2013, with dedicated entrance on the Kaiserplatz.
Flood-proof bomb shelter
The ceilings were reinforced in the 1930s or 1940s, for as he relates, “the space was maintained as an air raid shelter accommodating several hundred people.”
In the devastating British air raid of October 18, 1944, University staff found effective shelter there. The Rector had canceled planned ceremonies and the semester opening on the date of the University’s founding in precaution, but administrative staff were at work when the sirens started wailing at 11 am. They fled into the bunker and remained safe, even as the nearby east wing at the Blue Grotto was totally destroyed.
“We are bomb-proof and flood-proof,” says Becker, but climate change is a source of concern for archive staff.
What’s more, Archival materials were damaged even in internal areas of the building as water moved through old, unused pipe systems. It took a while before this damage was even noticed.
The ‘death row’ cell
The room bearing this joke name is a repository for files scheduled to be destroyed.
“When it rains, a finger-width of water seeps through these walls, so it’s impossible to store anything here for long in here,”
Dr. Becker tells us.
Tower defense against the people
No, says Becker, that wall is located a good 200 meters away: “An old engraving from 1598 suggests that a defense tower used to stand here, long ago.”
These colossal ruins were integrated during building of the new Electoral Palace.
Instead of being part of the city wall, this tower at the main entrance was built within its periphery, as our Archivist explains, the significance being that its defensive purpose was to direct against the citizenry, rather than protecting against enemies outside.
Pink for women, green for men
Women were first allowed to matriculate at the University of Bonn in the winter semester of 1896, either as ‘visiting student’ or enrolled for a teaching degree. They were allowed to take classes in the humanities, and were disqualified from sitting for exams. Things were generally difficult for women back then.
“If a student were to even scuff her feet in protest at something, she could get barred from the classroom. Things were like that in Berlin, but the Rhinelanders were more gallant, offering women a place to sit down,” Becker relates. Then in 1908 women were allowed to matriculate with full-fledged student status, and many threw themselves into the natural sciences, inspired by Marie Curie as a role model.
The graduation student transcripts from that time are interesting, like one issued to a Johann Georg Abels from Neuss, which Becker shows us.
Then there was Karl Marx, as a famous example, who was put in jail for drunkenness and disturbing the peace. “He had it planned out of course,” Becker reveals, for the prospect of being incarcerated in the cell up on top of Koblenz Gate was not much of a deterrent. Students would often get themselves jail time there on purpose, because the cell door had no lock, and the guard, or “beadle”, had a day job at the University, so while serving time the inmate would go hang out at the Rhine, play cards and go for walks.
The „escape tunnels“
His key fits, and we proceed into a small chamber. Inside is a ladder extending three meters, amid thick utility lines.
“This corridor runs 140 meters from the Palace Chapel to somewhere under the cafeteria, where it stops,” Becker informs us. Its historical use is not known with certainty, and there is no cellar beneath.
“It may have been made to balance pressure—but no one really knows for sure.”
Lots of building documents were destroyed in the fire of 1777, which went on for several days.
Could this then be the escape tunnel to Poppelsdorf one hears about?
Becker believes this conjecture is probably incorrect. “Bonn is a very hilly place. As you move toward the Rhine and Poppelsdorf Palace, the land slopes downward. And between lies the Gumme, the old arm of the Rhine.” So if a tunnel to the palace existed, to use it the Elector would have had wade through groundwater. Furthermore, it would not be very logical having an escape route to Poppelsdorfer Palace, which was unprotected and would be the first place captured by an enemy. “The safer flight route is across the Rhine, but the wings of the original palace structure already extended nearly that far. So you wouldn’t need a special tunnel,” Becker contends.
A crawlspace by the side of the road
A similar corridor exists beneath the stairwell of the auditorium. A ladder at the side of a vault leads up to a wooden door. Behind is a crawlspace with a centimeter-thick layer of dirt; you can see the street through slits and people strolling by.
“The vault here is part of this section Ferdinand had built,” Becker elucidates, parts of which in fact stemmed from an even older public building, as indicated by newer reinforcements implemented. But the crawlspace is located outside the thick walls. So what are its origins?
Ferdinand’s structure was destroyed in the siege of 1689. Joseph Clemens of Bavaria (1671–1723), Archbishop of Cologne and Elector, and his successor Clemens August (1700–1761) built a magnificent four-wing palace complex—which was destroyed by fire in 1777. The modest successor building consisted of two towers and a connecting structure on the side of the Hofgarten.
The Palace building proved too small not long after founding of the University in 1818. The University expanded the building in 1926 in a design with four sides and towers, inspired by plans from the Elector era. The Palace was widened by two meters on the street side, and during this work this rammed earth crawlway was created that was likely utilized for utility lines.
Stables and tasting room
A hall-sized area now opens up before us with broad arches—a space whose purpose long remained a mystery. But Becker knows the real story: “This is the only remaining section of the basement of the first residential palace from the 16th century. The arches mark the entrance, and the horse stables were once down here, opening out onto the Etscheidhof.”
The had their wine cellars in the Palace, whereas today in the old basement stables one finds pallets full of toilet paper in storage.
Cows out to pasture on the Hofgarten?
Becker is able to dispel another campus myth: Bonn has had an agricultural college since 1847, around which a legend arose that every professor had the right to graze a goat out along the boulevard Poppelsdorfer Allee. The college turned into a faculty of the University in 1934, and the legend evolved along with it, as a goat became a cow, with grazing rights in the Hofgarten. “Completely made up,” Becker says, We were founded in the 19th century, and benefits of that sort were not usually offered at modern universities.” There was, however, a cow in the Hofgarten, one which students presented the Rector with at the summer festival of 1960.
The old bike cellar
The entrance to the University’s old bike cellar lies a bit off the beaten track.
This was an air raid shelter during the war, as indicated by phosphorescent light strips on the walls.
Around the corner lies the old dance hall. They say prominent Journalist Ulrich Wickert once performed ballet here. Despite scant clues of the former parquet flooring, old posters on the wall bear witness to the space’s purpose in bygone days.
Story: Sebastian Eckert
Photos: Gregor Hübl
Credits:
Photos: Gregor Hübl / University of Bonn