Oh What A Time... - #186 Recycled Berlin Buildings & The Invention of Vaseline (Part 2)

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!This week we’re taking a look at buildings which have had an interesting second life in Germany’s capital; East Germany’s Palast der Republik, what became of Albert Speer’s New Reich Chancellery and lastly the Museumsinsel or Museum Island.Elsewhere, there’s lots of chat about chapped lips and final poses (Oh What A Pose?) for archaeologists this week. If you want to add to the conversation: [e-mail] from now on Part 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Wednesday - but if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, What a Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, ad free, plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets, and access to the Oh, What a Time group chat. Plus, if you become an Oh Water Time All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash oh, what a time. Hello and welcome to part two of All A Time. We're discussing recycled buildings in this episode. Let's get on with the show. Right then, back in the early 90s, Berlin preparing itself for Chris Skull's arrival. And the German authorities began to reconsider

the long-term survival of buildings from the former East Germany. And it's interesting one, this, isn't it? It's a bit like when you're the new boyfriend or girlfriend of someone and the previous relationship ended acrimoniously. The first couple of months, you're on easy street, aren't you? You just don't have to be the previous guy. I loved it.

And it's a bit like that with East Germany and liberal democracy. They're like, okay, as long as we don't become a sort of an authoritarian, totalitarian regime, we're doing all right. But what do you do with the buildings? Now, top of the list was Berlin's iconic but historically complex. Palace of the Republic. So whilst the Volkshammer or former Parliament of the German Democratic Republic, the GDR, there's imposing building symbolised decades of division and the opposed forces of capitalism and communism. Years after the triumph of capitalism during the period between 1989 and 1990, which the Germans call, but euphemistically, divender, the change or the

Friedlich revolution, the peaceful revolution, it was now thought by this point that these relics of the past no longer had any purpose. Now, getting rid of them was one thing, but on earth should be done with the material left from any potential demolition. That was the big question. Jenny Urbanbeck, the novelist, who herself was a child of East Berlin,

she says, well, she records this in one of her essays on things that disappear. The palace was not just a political symbol. So as a building, it housed theatres, 13 restaurants. Wow. So if that was a modern British building, you've got a Nando's.

You've got a Wicamama. I actually saw it. I'm trying to see... Did you? I must think... It was getting knocked down while I was there, but I saw it and it was imposing. Oh, wow. Stick a pizza hut in there?

Yeah, stick a pizza hut. A giraffe for the kids? A giraffe, yeah. It had a post office, an art gallery, an ice cream shop, even a bowling alley and a discotheque. The disco called the Young and Treff, the Youth Club, was found on the four floor, and it had a hydraulic lift mechanism

to give the dance floor an extra bounce. What? Baring in mind that... Like Snoop Dog's car? Yeah, but you had sprung dance floors in lots of nightclubs. How am I not aware of this? How sprung? Like a trampoline?

Not like a trampoline. It just gave it a little bit of, you know, give you dancing a bit of extra jorge. Who needs that? I've never been in a nightclub and thought, I wish my knees had a bit more bounce. I just dance. You just shuffle a bit, don't you?

Then go get another pint. What's he's required? What does his need? This is why you're dancing is so sub-power. Yeah, yeah. This is why, even though he's one of your best friends, Josh Whitaker will not be able to get you on strictly. Now, the palace was a place of family meals,

cultural edification, birthday parties and first dates, a bit like, this is an incredibly London-specific reference, Pearly Way and Croydon, which is oxygen, if you like, trampolines, kid space, which, if you like, sort of soft play, Pizza Hut, Costa. And it's got everything,

you need. Absolutely everything you need. So there are even jokes about it. So, you know, there's like a, the foyer had a nickname and all of its many light bulbs, a thousand and one, thousand and one light bulbs. That was Eric's Lampen, or Eric's Lampen laden after the East German leader, Eric Honker. Now, the palace itself was labelled the Palazzo pretentious. Was it Errik Honka or is it Erichonika? You need to make that. You need to choose one of those, because one of those is the most ridiculous name I've ever heard. Sorry, it was Eric Honica. Eric Honker had a residency in Blackpool, didn't he?

A ginormous nose. Yeah. Now, the palace itself was labelled the Palazzo Pretentius or the Tarts Handbag. So it was in this way an emblem of East German ambition and culture and identity, humour in history. So a former employee recalled there was always full, it was always full of people, something was always going on, whether it was somebody in a corner reading poetry aloud or small group playing music.

There was also a ton of small shops with things were being sold that you couldn't otherwise get. So to lose it, and this is the difficult decision they had to make, was tantamount to Eurasia. So not surprisingly, there was a grassroots campaign. Retened the palace, save the palace, which sounds like when Crystal Palace got chucked out of the European League. Led by Mark Bright.

Yeah. Launched by those keen to preserve the building. So construction work on the Palace to Republic, to give us German name began in 1973, was completed and inaugurated in April, 1976, crucially, ahead of the German Democratic Republic's 30th anniversary in October 79.

So in all, it was to be used for just 11 years before the Berlin Wall fell and the GDR itself ceased to exist. Oh, wow. For the next 13 years, between 19, 19, 2003, the palace stood empty, spestos ridden,

so it was declared out of bounds, and it was this crumbling relic of a very different time. So Eric Honker walking around it like Mr. Habershire. Eric Honaka, slightly different approach. So in a United Germany, it felt unused and unloved. So for time between 2004, 2005, following a costly cleanup of the asbestos, the building was used as a free art space, but this couldn't stave off the inevitable.

So when what redevelopers really wanted was a new building, a revived Berlin Palace or Stad Schloss, City Palace, which would bring back life to the palace, which has stood on the site since the days of the Kaiser, which these Germans had themselves demolished with dynamite in 1950, with help from Allied bombs, obviously. Now, history and memory, so often in conflict in Germany,

were even historians at slang in matches, which they called the Historic Ostrite, or Historians dispute, were on especially fraught terms here, but West German capitalism had won. So in February 2006, down went socialism's palace of the republic and it went a new version of the old imperial idea

so the reconstruction was completed in 2020 and the new Berlin Palace houses a landmark museum the Humboldt Forum but the next question was what do with all the material recovered from the demolition work so it could hardly be recycled for local use because that would be too controversial so in the green age

Berlin looked for other partners to take the stuff off their hands one such partner was to be found in the most likely places, the United Arab Emirates. Right. So Dubai's iconic Birch Khalifa, that mega tall skyscrapers. I think that's the tallest building in the world, I think. Yeah, the world's tallest structure. I've been up that.

Have you? Yeah. You are so Dubai. Yeah. Which for me usually is a red flag, but I like you. There is part, I would consider myself an Essex man. And I'd say It is a trait of Essex men

to have been to Dubai. What's it like at the top? You're so high up, it's really weird. Yeah. And also, you're quite near the sea. So you've got such an incredible vista of the sun setting. I'll tell you what, my elder's daughter was potty training at the time. And so we had to bring a potty up.

And when we got to the top, she was like, I really need the potty. That's hilarious. So my daughter has used the potty overlooking. there's a chance your daughter has done the world's highest way it's got to be up there because it's not a toilet on the top floor wherever you were I imagine it's just a viewing

deck and she used the potty she's done the world's highest bit she's part of the conversation she's in there you can't leave her out I mean it would have been amazing if you just chucked it off the top just thrown it over the side

it's so hot though it would evaporate by the time it reaches rounds it'll be alright So, Bersh Khalifa, the mega-tall skyscraper, World's Tollis Structure, it was partly constructed using 35,000 tonnes of structural steel recovered from the former East German Parliament. How interesting?

This is crazy! Has got such a mad afterlife. That's amazing. That's so interesting. One which none of the original architects and construction workers could have ever imagined. That's mad. So in some respects, the Berge Kalifer echoes its ancestor.

There are restaurants, hotels, offices, sightseeing observation deck and it's all to build tourist appeal but in all other ways the projects are very different so the steel was shipped from Berlin via Turkey and arrived in tranches between 2006-2008 after processing

at a smelting plant to the south of the German capital not all of the steel ended up in the Middle East some was recycled in a different way melted down and reused in the manufacture of motor cars so who knows you might be driving around in the cousin of the sort of of the Watberg or the Triband

Now, perhaps the greatest irony was that the Palace of the Republic disappeared from the Berlin skyline during the early years of Angela Merkel's chancellorship. So she was first elected in 2005. Because obviously she was East German by birth. She'd grown up in the old East Germany. But Merkel wanted to create this, you know, she wanted to cement a single Germany and move forward and not backward. So even though you had nostalgia,

which is the East German nostalgia for the, the East Germany of the GDR. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you're encouraged by enthusiasm for symbols like the, you know, ample manchanan traffic lights or the animated Sandman character and by films just goodbye Lenin. There was no official equivalent. So the official attitude to the fall of the

German Democratic Republic was far less romantic. The past should stay there and let's recycle it rubbish. That's really interesting. Amazing that it's ended up in Dubai. That's such a long journey as well. Modern Dubai, the home of turbo-capitalism. Yeah. Go to Up the Birchcleaver and see where my daughter once had a wee.

So to finish this episode on Recycle Buildings, I'm going to tell you lovely boys about another location in the heart of Berlin. It's a rather unusual museum complex called the Museum Sinsel or Museum Island. Now, are you guys aware of this? Have you heard of this place? I've not heard of this at all. Yeah, I've been there, have you, Chris? Okay, well, tell me what you remember of it.

What was it to you? I think the museum island is right in the centre of Berlin. Yeah, it is. There's an island. It's near Mitter. It's like right. It's where the Berlin dome is. It's near like, it's right in the heart of the city.

That is correct. It was conceived in the early 1800s, okay. It's basically a kind of cultural necropolis. It's like a site of memory. The idea being that they gather. have a stuff together symbols of what Germany was and what Germany might be in the future. That's what the idea of this place was. And the first part of the complex, a place called the Altz Museum was built in 1825,

finished in 1830. The next element, the newest museum was finished by 1855. The Ulter National Gallery was completed by 1876. And then finally, the Bergamon Museum was finished in 1930. And that was in the final years, the Weimar Republic. The section of this museum that was most badly damaged was the Noyce Museum, and that was bombed heavily by the Allies between 1943 and 45, and the building was basically left as a relic for half a century after that. But in the 1990s, reconstruction work begins at this site, with the aim being to preserve the age and look of the building, once again using recycled materials, is the real theme in Berlin. using reclaimed bricks, all of this stuff in the renewal of the building.

And given all the physical recycling of Berlin's history elsewhere, it's kind of a golden opportunity to do it all in reverse, really, and one that reflected a compelling story in Berlin's history. And this story that I'm going to sort of tell you about today, because it kind of blew my mind, okay? At the time, there were new histories of the Second World War being written, and they would talk about its aftermath. And one thing that was discussed a lot was phenomenon of the Truma-Frawan,

or the rubble women. Now, are you aware of the rubble women in Berlin? Have you heard about these people? Not at all. I've never heard that. Because the city was destroyed. They went from street to street collecting rubble, right? And just piling it up. Exactly. And it's a staggering effort. This will blow your mind some of this stuff. Okay. These were women who took on the task of clearing away the rubble left behind after the Second World War, reclaiming what could be reclaimed, beginning the process of physical reconstruction. Okay. In Berlin alone, tens of thousands of women were mobilized in this way, going from street to street, picking up the rubble. And the figures varied a bit across the four zones of occupation. The highest rate was in the Soviet zone. The lowest rate was in the British zone.

In the British zone, uptake was less than a third of a percent. But thousands of women did this. And as they worked to clear this rubble, photographs of take of them to show women taking the lead and rebuilding their homeland. Statues were erected two, one in the West in 1954, another in the East in 1958. The East German one, okay, it depicts a pioneer, somebody ready and willing to build a new country. The West German statue, on the other hand, presents a figure at rest, her work completed. And although it wasn't like a mass movement, the work they achieved was incredible. Now, these are the stats that just blew my mind about this, okay? After 1945,

Berlin contained 15% of all the debris cleared in the entirety of Germany from the war. So one city, 15% alone. It's estimated that overall they cleared away some 500,000 cubic metres of rubble. If piled up, that would produce a structure which is as tall as Montblanc, the mountain. Wow. Okay. Another way of picturing it, this is the same volume of over 150 great pyramids of Giza, piled up that much rubble. You imagine that, 150

great pyramids of Egypt, just rubble. It's remarkable, isn't it? Did they, am I remembering this right? But didn't they just create like new hills in Berlin with the rubble? This is exactly right. What could not be reused was dumped at specifically designated locations and then landscapes. And these are these hills you're talking about, okay? These became the Trumbergen or the Schuterberg.

I wouldn't want to live at the top. And these hills, okay, were rubble hills, such as the Tufelsberg in Berlin, the Olympiaburg in Munich. So across the country, these huge hills of rubble are built, okay, and they're being incorporated into that city's geography, essentially, in the case of Munich, the Olympic Park is what one of those rubble hills became a part of. Reusable materials, particularly bricks were clean, salvaged, stacked, and then turned over repairs to infrastructure. that could be repaired or used in construction or new housing schemes, stuff like that. So basically, the humble brick became a symbol of renewal. And this same active recovery would then be replicated at the aforementioned museum and museum island. It's like, imagine facing that level of, I mean, when our house gets messy, I sort of stare at the front room thinking, I don't know.

Where do I start with this? Do what it reminds me of. when Wales won the 2005 Grand Slam over quarter of a million people went to Cardiff to watch the game in Cardiff this is not just people with tickets

that some people watching outside city what is you know where City Hall is so obviously it's Henman Hill in at Wimbledon so it was called Henson Hill because Gavin Henson was in that team so I was there they put massive screens up for the game it was incredible like that sort of Cardiff had

run out of beer by about 10 a.m. I've never seen anything like it. But I remember driving to my mate's house on Sunday morning and driving past it. And when you've had a quarter a million people on the piss, celebrating a grand slam that I'd have for 27 years and it was a very, very heavy affair.

I remember driving quite early on Sunday morning to pick up my mate. And it was just a guy in high viz with his hands on his hips looking at like 150,000 cans of beer as it to go, I haven't got enough bags. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I haven't got enough bags and we need another thousand members of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The cleanup after Glastonbury, just must think, how does it? Glastory has that real feeling. When you're walking across it, I'm always thinking, well, this is going to take a billion people to sort this out. It's insane. It doesn't feel like a working farm.

With a plastic pint glass sort of somehow wrapped around both of my feet. Yeah, yeah. As I'm walking along, it's just like, yeah, completely. And that's how it must have felt. Like, Germany itself was just a sea of rubble, and these groups of women in Berlin and in other cities went from street to street. You can see the images picking up all this rubble and it was recycled. So much of it was then reused. As you say, with new buildings in a spirit of renewal and moving on, so much of this kind of this wreckage was used in a positive way.

When you think of the horrors of war, you tend to think of the loss of loved ones. Yeah. But you don't tend to think of what it's like living in a world. ruined city for years afterwards. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, when I went in whatever it was, 2007 or something,

there was still so much rubble, like, and damaged buildings. Even then there was, yeah, it was a, I was so surprised by how much destruction there clearly was. And you left a really scathing trip advisor of you afterwards. Yeah. Tidy it up. Exactly. I paid good money.

So this starts. This kind of, this. This spirit of renewal and recycling, as we've seen, has happened in Berlin ever since World War II in different ways. Others caught the spirit of recycling or recovery in a sort of different way. Helmut Cole, who was a chance of a unified Germany in the 90s, said in 2005, that a generation of women made the country great again. However, not all of those efforts turned out to be good. I'll close by telling you about this thing.

This is really quite unfortunate. In the Nazi propaganda city of Nuremberg, which is home to their parade grounds, Efforts at dealing with this rubble led to the creation of a Schutterberg, in this case called Silber Buck, which is another one of one of these great mounds of rubble. This is located near the Silver Sea and took over parts of those former parade grounds. But somehow it kind of all went wrong, basically. The more rubble and waste from the Nazi regime that was poured into this hill, the more it seemed to sort of seep out into the lakes around, meaning that water is now so toxic.

it cannot be used for anything. And some have taken their chances to go swimming in these lakes. But in the years since 1945, 50 people have died from water poisoning, from toxic poisoning from this lake because of wartime rubble from the Nazi regime. Belated victims of an idea people hoped was long since buried. So that's kind of the story of the renewal and the use of rubble in Berlin backed by these women. Most of which has been positive, unfortunately, some attempts have worked out. I've got one story on renewal and one story on rubble.

I'll start with a renewal. This is personal. I'm having a really great 2026. In 2023, West Ham got to the final of the UAE for Europa Conference League. Bear with me. That was in Prague. Yours truly got called up to host the West Ham fan zone in Prague. the overspill for fans who couldn't get tickets for the game,

but were in Prague, West Ham fans. That was held on a rally ground. So, all the West Ham fans were there, there was, I think, like 20,000 West Ham fans. I was comparing it. I found out later that Hitler himself had used those parade grounds following the annexation of what was then Czechoslovakia. Wow.

Okay. Done the same gig. He did the same gig. That's unbelievable. There's a lot of stories of you coincidentally visiting where Hitler once stood, Chris. Slightly concerned now. Ellis and I can have a chat after this record and see. That's unbelievable.

Yeah, and what's your rubble story? The rubble story is, have you ever left London on the A40 heading west? And around Northall, if you look to your left, you'll see these strange hills. Oh, yes, what are they? I'm trying to think of it. Northala fields, they're called. So it's like, it's a strange kind of white. path circular turret

almost. Yeah. I know the ones. Do you know what? That was made from the rubble of a famous building in London. For a long time I would say, certainly for me, one of the most famous buildings in London, if not the world. It was obviously Upton Park then in that case? Close. Oh, is it not Upton Park?

Oh. The Old Wembley. The old Wembley. Oh. That construction, that weird turret in Northall, as you pass it out on the 840, is made from the rubble of the old Wembley. They're like green, they're like Hills, green hills, the sort of circular path. That's it.

I'm pretty confident I've told my children are about 4,000 years old. Which are not. They were built in about 1999. When was Wembley knocked down? 2,000, 2, 3? So my job now is to apologise to my children. That's a good rubble pile, isn't it? I'm interested what other rubble piles are there that would catch our attention.

Yeah, there you go. That's a great question. Well, really interesting episode. Thank you once again to Dr. Darrell Leeworthy for his fantastic research. If you have any suggestions for episodes you would like us to cover in the future and you're at All-Oh, What's a Time, a Full-Timer, then do get in contact with those because we're going to try and do a number of subscriber-suggestive episodes in the future. If not, we will see you very, very soon for yet more history.

Thank you guys. Bye-bye. Bye. Goodbye. Oh, What's Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone. else, ad free, plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the Oh What a Time group chat.

Plus if you become an Oh What a Time All-Timer, myself Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash oh what a time.