Ausstellung "Schutzraum - Kunst im Bunker"

“ […] The exhibition “Schutzraum – Art in the Bunker” is this year’s continuation of our ExhibitionAkutAnders series, through which we want to present artworks in unusual places around the city every year,” says Dr. Eve Sattler from the Düsseldorf Artists’ Association. Owner of the seven-story reinforced concrete facility from 1942 is Emscher Wohnbau GmbH on Kaiserswerther Straße. The company had purchased the building from the Federal Office for Real Estate Tasks at the beginning of the year and now makes it available to the artists for a weekend. “We are pleased to support Düsseldorf artists in this way and to give citizens their first insight into the historic architecture,” says Moritz Richter, legal counsel at Emscher.

Unlike comparable bunker facilities in the state capital, this one had not previously been accessible to the public. With its four upper floors and two basement levels, it is an impressive testament to German wartime architecture, which was hastily erected after the invasion of Nazi Germany into Poland in 1939.

During the Cold War, many of the facilities were further maintained, some even upgraded for an atomic attack, such as the one in Bilk. Only in 2007 did the Ministry of the Interior decide to abandon the remaining facilities. The maintenance of the massive concrete blocks had become too expensive, and an air raid was becoming less likely.”

(http://www.niederrhein-kult.de/de/Schutzraum-Kunst-im-Bunker-::60752.html (07.05.2013)