Berlin Aquadom: Neighboring GDR museum closed for weeks – Panorama

It’s been a good month since the giant aquarium “Aquadom” exploded in a Berlin hotel lobby. A million liters of water poured onto Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse, hundreds of fish died and two people were slightly injured. Experts are still looking for a cause of the collapse, and the scene of the accident is still being cleaned up. According to its director, Quirin Graf Adelmann, 47, the neighboring GDR Museum, which was also severely damaged by the water masses, will only be able to reopen on April 1st.

SZ: Herr Adelmann, the GDR Museum was almost next door to the 15 meter high Aquadom. Have you ever felt queasy having a neighbor like that?

Quirin Graf Adelmann: The Aquadom was a nice attraction. I could never have imagined that such an explosion would happen.

Aren’t you mad? Anyway the architect once described the aquarium as indestructible. And then something like that.

no We have been here in the house since 2006. The owner of the Aquadom is also our landlord. When we had to close during Corona, the owner was very accommodating. Even now, working together is very pleasant. But the damage will be in the seven figures. Hopefully the insurance companies will pay for a lot.

Quirin Graf Adelmann, 47, has been in charge of the DDR Museum in Berlin since 2006. Raised in France, he moved to Berlin in 1993 to study law.

(Photo: Adrian Serini)

How was it when the water came?

I found out about it from the press and went straight there at half past six in the morning. The museum is one floor below the Aquadom, a little to the side of the building. Then I saw that we were partly flooded. Our WBS 70 apartment, a replica of a GDR prefab apartment with a living room, kitchen, bathroom, children’s room and parents’ bedroom, was flooded up to the ankle. The first thing I did was grab the living room table and carry it out, which has a small television set showing the television program from March 5, 1984 – fortunately the electronics were still on display so early in the morning. Then I called drying companies, who were there two hours later. We were slowly becoming confident that we would get away with a black eye.

Did fish have to be salvaged from Trabis?

Fortunately not. Most of the water ran out to the street in front, but some also flowed through elevator shafts to the third basement level, also to us. The problem is that the water has seeped under the screed. The water has a salt content of around three percent, and there is also biological material in it, fish particles, plants. And there we were worried that it could be harmful to the floor and lead to mould. There is the fine art of getting this biological material harmless. We were fast. Nevertheless, a good 600 of our 1200 square meter area were affected.

DDR devices were considered “unbreakable” by law. Many of your 300,000 exhibits were then subjected to a hardness or wetness test.

To a certain extent, the Trabant is indestructible, as are the prefabricated buildings and many other things that are in our museum. Things were then quite simple, but built for long-term use. That’s different today. A lot of things break after the two-year warranty expires. It’s a general problem that we have in consumer societies.

Aquarium in Berlin: In mid-December the Aquadom, a 15 meter high aquarium in a Berlin hotel, burst and a million liters of water spilled out.

In mid-December, the Aquadom, a 15 meter high aquarium in a Berlin hotel, burst and a million liters of water spilled out.

(Photo: Annette Riedl/dpa)

Which salvaged piece were you particularly happy about?

The Karat living room wall unit was difficult to remove from the wall. That’s when we had to react the quickest because the water got in directly underneath. In the wall unit were two televisions, East German alcoholic beverages, literature that was forbidden at the time. Typical things that you had in such a wall unit. Luckily everything is undamaged.

Improvising was part of life in the GDR. Was that after the accident?

I would say so. I only moved to East Berlin from France in 1993, so since then I’ve had some retrospective East experience. In the GDR people had to help each other. Most of our employees come from the East. I can see the attitude in them: look ahead, make the best of it. Now we are also using the time to renovate a part of the exhibition that is not affected at all. There’s a piece of the Berlin Wall coming in. We make something good out of the disaster.

Are you glad you never built an aquarium in the museum? After all, the guppy fish, popular in GDR living room aquariums, even got their own stamps in the 1970s.

We prefer not to do that. We don’t have enough daylight, and that’s what it needs. In addition, there would certainly be a lot of criticism for keeping living animals in the museum.

It is still unclear whether the Aquadom will be rebuilt. What do you think?

I think it would be good if the aquarium were rebuilt. It was just a great place for all visitors.

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