Hochbunker Friedrich-Karl-Straße, M500 type bunker in Tempelhof, Berlin, Germany

The Hochbunker Friedrich-Karl-Straße is a three-storey M 500-type high bunker with a rectangular footprint of about 15 by 32 metres, aligned north-south. Its plastered outer walls are battered at 2.75 degrees, so the wall thickness decreases from ground floor to roof, while the inner walls stand vertical. Two round-arched entrances with artificial-stone surrounds open on the narrow sides, and a walkable attic sits beneath the hipped roof.

After the first Royal Air Force raids on Berlin on 25 August 1940, the Reich leadership decided in September 1940 on a bunker construction programme for the capital. The Friedrich-Karl-Straße bunker is an example of type M 500, named for its capacity of 500 people. It was conceived as a sleeping bunker, with 2 × 3 m chambers for families, and its classical-style forms were meant to suggest an impregnable fortress.

Today the building houses soundproof rehearsal spaces where local musicians practice and create their work in a repurposed setting. This use by artists has given the structure a new cultural purpose that reaches far beyond its original design.

The bunker stands at Friedrich-Karl-Straße 24, mid-block between Burgemeisterstraße to the north, Werderstraße to the east and Friedrich-Franz-Straße to the west; Hafen Tempelhof lies just east along Friedrich-Karl-Straße. The two round-arched entrances face the narrow south and north sides. The rooftop storey under the hipped roof is walkable, but the rehearsal rooms inside are private and were closed in April 2019 for fire-safety defects, reopening in autumn 2021.

The M500 type is named for its capacity of 500 people. Four other identical M500 bunkers survive in Berlin and are also listed: at the Pionierkaserne in Karlshorst, at the Flakregiment 12 barracks in Lankwitz, and two neighbouring bunkers on Wittenauer Straße in Wittenau.