On a Sunday at the Cylinder #2: History falling on our heads

When I arrived at the cylinder this time, I saw the proleptic pile of helmets in the entrance hall and the red and white tape around the site signalizing: » Don’t come closer, or…«. Once more, the unstoppable mechanics of decay that had taken control over the ruinous ferroconcrete giant were threatening the visitor with potentially fatal consequences. Big chunks of debris were breaking out of the once-solid armor of the cylinder: history was literally threatening to fall on top of our heads. While I did not witness this myself, I imagined big pieces landing on the ground that was shaken by the consequences of gravity. The violent sound made me think of the blows to the head that the prisoners of the nearby concentration camp SA Gefängnis Papestraße had to endure. I had just taken a tour through the premises immediately before I had arrived at the cylinder and the impressions were still fresh. The narrative of the tour guide, an acquaintance of mine, and the first-hand reports of the victims exhibited on the walls alongside photographs that showed the signs of mistreatment, created quite a vivid image of these violent days of the first half of the 20th century. I had invited a fellow soil scientist whom I met at the Max Planck Institute the same week and who was also interested in obscure architecture to the tour. We were both from Munich originally but had spent most of the last decade in the US. Together, we ruminated about the translation of soil scientist into German, arriving at the translation Bodenkundler, which has quite an archaic tone to it. Unlike the Bodenmechaniker, soil mechanists, who had done research on the cylinder from the 1940s-1980s and were interested in soil solely for its mechanical properties, not caring too much if it was dead or alive, but how it reacts to pressure, the soil scientist looks at soil as a living organism. Somewhere, a spider was lurking through its web spanning over a crack in the concrete. In the background, the lively noise of a beehive someone had installed on the greenery at the cylinder that was being taken over by the forces of nature, slowly, but surely, unlike humanity a never-ending story….