The weather gods have been kind to us this year — it’s been a supremely gorgeous summer. Barely returned from trips to the Adriatic and Baltic Sea, I’ll be spending the last sunny days at Berlin’s lakes and lidos — none as well-known or iconic as Strandbad Wannsee. Located in the Wannsee Bay within the Grunewald forest, with its sandy beach and architectural backdrop, it’s my go-to Berlin lido. (Although, unfortunately, swimming is currently prohibited due to blue-green algae.) While up to 10,000 bathers enjoy the 1.3-kilometer-long, 80-meter-wide sandy beach every summer, a unique architectural monument is falling into disrepair just a few meters behind it. When the town took over the lido exactly one hundred years ago, lido director Hermann Clajus had a vision to create a place of recreation where all social classes were welcome. He opened the lido to everyone. From 1929 to 1931, city planning officer Martin Wagner and municipal planning officer Richard Ermisch designed an iconic building in the New Objectivity style — a spacious “Weltstadtbad” for the modern physical culture of the Weimar Republic, with light, air and sun for everyone. Clajus, who was threatened with dismissal and persecution after the National Socialists came to power, took his own life in March 1933.
Today, stores, kiosks, snack bars and a café, as well as a rescue station, changing rooms and showers, line the lido’s 500-meter-long promenade. At the end of the promenade stands the weathered Lido Beach restaurant. Its curved dining room, with a bar and terrace, is embedded in a large traffic circle with a circular walkway and was once the focal point of the lido. Its capacity of 2,500 seats was heavily utilized year-round as a beer garden, excursion restaurant and ice rink. Now, students from Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences are proposing to save the monument in the spirit of continued construction. Drawing on the former workshops used for lido maintenance, a “construction hut” could be built at Wannsee, providing young people with training in various construction trades, catering, gardening, lifeguarding, fitness coaching and park ranging. From 31.08 to 15.09.2024, the “Wanna See Wannsee?” exhibition will showcase how architecture and history can be combined with sustainable reuse to save the monument and continue the social mission of the lido and its founder, Hermann Clajus.
Text: Milena Kalojanov / Photos: Clemens Poloczek
Strandbad Wannsee, Wannseebadweg 25, 14129 Berlin–Nikolassee; map
Wanna See Wannsee? 31.08.–15.09.2024
