Research into the architectural history of F1 in Peenemünde as a contribution to the archaeological investigation of material remains at contaminated cultural heritage sites.
Production Hall 1 in Peenemünde is a three-aisled reinforced concrete skeleton structure, whose large production hall was covered by round shed roofs above a low base storey. Dywidag was commissioned with the design and construction by the Army Weapons Office, which had been working on the development of the Aggregate 4, also known under the propaganda name V2 rocket, at the Army Research Institute since 1936 and was pursuing the serial production of the war weapon from 1939.
Planned and constructed between 1939 and 1943, the building was blown up by the Red Army after the end of the Second World War. Today, the monumental building lies in ruins, covered in rubble and increasingly overgrown with trees. The establishment of the Karlshagen II concentration camp in the summer of 1943 cannot be separated from the building and the site.
In order to solve the problem of a lack of manpower, 600 prisoners were housed in the basement. In the close spatial connection between the highest striving for technical progress in the modern age, which was also reflected in the construction and design of the building, and the inhumane subjugation of human labor, which is only seemingly paradoxical atavism, production hall 1 has a special symbolic value.
An appropriate appreciation of the technical and architectural achievement seems doubtful without a reflection on its conditional framework. With regard to an appropriate appreciation, the specific situation of the building’s survival also fundamentally requires a building research and reconstruction approach based on an archaeological clarification of the findings.
However, if the aim is to correctly address the specific modernity of a building in the archaeological findings of the structural remains, then an examination of the methods of a history of building technology for the 20th century is also required here.
