Swimming: Finckensteinallee swimming pool: Leibstandarte swimming pool in Berlin

The Finckensteinallee swimming pool was inaugurated in 1938 and reopened in 2014 after renovation.

Photo: imago/Uwe Steinert

On the second Sunday in March I went to Finckensteinallee in Berlin Lichterfelde. I enter the ensemble of federal archives, church and swimming pool in awe, am led into a brick building between larger-than-life figure reliefs, put my shoes on a huge shelf that also gives away books and slip into a colorful cubicle. Behind the lockers, guests are directed into the showers, separated by gender, and a door opens into the huge hall. It’s a shock. Mild afternoon light falls through meter-high, floor-to-ceiling windows, black flagpoles protrude from whitewashed walls, a suspended ceiling imitates skylights, and ten 50-meter lanes entice you into the blue water.

Finckensteinallee swimming pool

Berlin baths

At the end of the 1930s, two barracks baths were built in Berlin for the leaders of the National Socialist regime. The Hermann Göring Regiment in Tegel received an outdoor swimming pool and indoor swimming pool, and the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler received what was then the largest indoor swimming pool in Europe on the grounds of the Prussian Cadet Institute in Lichterfelde. While the Tegel bath was transferred to the Julius Leber barracks after it was used by the French army and was never available to the public, the Leibstandarte bath has been used by schools, clubs and recreational swimmers since 2014, the latter exclusively on weekends.

Above water

Photo: private

Anne Hahn is the author of novels and non-fiction books and swims the waters of the world for “nd”.

For the Nazi elite, the pool on Finckensteinallee was a purely men’s sports pool in the middle of the drill academy, as the “Taz” calls the barracks, which could be reached from Berlin with the world’s first electric tram. After the Second World War, the bath was used by the Allies, sculptures were removed and a bowling alley was installed. Her English instructions not to run or smoke are preserved on the walls. The ensemble has belonged to the city of Berlin since 1994, the swimming pool was closed in 2006 and, eight years later, after a thorough renovation, it was opened to the general public for the first time as a sports swimming pool. The 10-meter diving platform was torn down, the ceiling was lowered and the pool was raised, but a gigantic spatial impression still remains.

The water is ice cold. There are three or four of us swimming in a lane, many middle-aged women and a child. A man is wearing fins, a couple is traveling at a leisurely pace, everyone else is moving at about the same speed. Swimming friend Dirk reports that sometimes the lines are thrown sideways, which creates countless 25-meter lengths – a crazy idea. He especially loves the light in the bathroom and its enormous dimensions. I take one last look at the blue Styrofoam rectangles on the ceiling and climb out, shaking.

I’m warm again on the bus towards Krumme Lanke; a Fraktur sign in the Sundgauer Straße S-Bahn station points towards Berlin. On the S-Bahn, I leaf through the romance novel “Beyond,” which I found on the bookshelf, and think of the snarky lifeguard who didn’t know why the water was so cold. Research into the causes would be carried out on Monday. “I’m probably not the first to ask?” “No,” she grinned, “the fiftieth!”

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