Berlin TV Tower: The Steel Ball That Throws a Cross

East Berlin built the TV Tower on cleared ground as the emblem of a modern state, and the most famous thing about it is something nobody designed. The ball at the top, the tower's operator says, was meant to recall the Soviet Sputnik satellites. Its skin of stainless steel was ground into small pyramids. And when the sun strikes those facets directly, they throw a cross of light onto the ball. Berliners called it the Pope's revenge. The East German secret police looked into it as possible sabotage and, according to the archive of their files, found no sign of any.

How it stands

The engineering is simple to read from below. A reinforced concrete shaft about 250 meters tall carries an antenna mast. Around the shaft, starting 200 meters above the ground, sits the ball, 32 meters across. Berlin's heritage office gives the height as built as 365 meters; the owner, Deutsche Funkturm, gives 368 meters today. Either way it is more than 360 meters, and from almost anywhere in the center you can see it. The tower was built between 1965 and 1969 and opened in October 1969, for the twentieth anniversary of East Germany.

Inside the ball, the operator says, the viewing floor is at 203 meters. It stays still; only the restaurant above it turns, once every half hour. The lift climbs at six meters a second and gets there in about forty seconds. There are 986 steps, for emergencies and staff only.

It was not first meant to stand here. The operator says the tower was planned for the Müggelberge hills at the edge of the city, and that the site was given up because it lay in the flight path of Schönefeld airport. Moving it to the middle of the city turned a broadcast mast into a monument.

The skin

Look up at the ball. The heritage office describes its cladding as stainless steel sheets, ground and formed into pyramids on a trapezoid plan. That faceting is what catches the light. Seen from the right angle with the sun behind you, the reflections line up into a bright cross on the sphere. A state that had little use for churches found a Christian symbol shining from the top of its showpiece, every sunny day. The operator's own history adds that the ball was meant to glow red, the color of socialism. What it actually does is reflect the sky, and sometimes a cross.

Who designed it

Here the record is honest about a fight. The heritage office names Fritz Dieter and Günter Franke as the designers and Hermann Henselmann as artistic adviser, notes that Henselmann always claimed the whole design and that Gerhard Kosel has claimed it since 1989, and declines to settle a dispute that has reached professional bodies and the courts. The tower has several fathers on paper and one undisputed outline in the sky.

What it replaced

Turn round at the foot of the tower and look at the open ground. The archive of the East German secret police files records that about 30,000 square meters of homes, shops and offices were demolished to build it. The low pavilions at the base follow a six-sided plan, and the gardens and cascades, about six hectares, were laid out from 1970 to 1973 along the tower's line. The heritage office notes that their geometry was set at an angle that allows for the slanted position of the medieval Marienkirche, the one old building left standing on the lawn. In the old town a few minutes away the past was repaired, kept as a shell or rebuilt. Here the state started from cleared ground and built its own picture of the future.

The best view of the whole tower, base to mast tip, comes a stop earlier, from beside the Red Town Hall. Take it at your own pace, and come back on a sunny afternoon if the cross is what you want to see.

The tower is stop 8 of Nikolaiviertel and Alexanderplatz: Four Churches, One War, which runs from the medieval town wall to the Haus des Lehrers. For the whole walk, read the tour companion. See every route on the Berlin page.

Sources

• Berliner Fernsehturm, history of the tower: the Müggelberge site, the ball meant to recall Sputnik and glow red, the cross of light and its nickname.
• Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Denkmaldatenbank: Fernsehturm (09065023): construction 1965 to 1969, shaft, ball and mast dimensions, 365 meters as built, the stainless-steel pyramids, the hexagonal pavilions, the gardens of 1970 to 1973 and their angle, the authorship dispute.
• Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv, Stasi-Mediathek: the "Rache des Papstes" nickname, the investigation, and the demolitions for the tower.
• Deutsche Funkturm, 50 years of the TV Tower timeline (PDF): the owner's height of 368 meters and the opening dates of October 1969.