When I appeared in front of the smashed front door of Berlin’s five-star hotel Radisson on Friday morning, the fire brigade had already removed the dead fish from the cold street.
Just hours earlier, the hotel’s massive AquaDom — billed as the world’s largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium — had suddenly exploded, causing a flood of more than a quarter-million gallons of saltwater along with about 1,500 fish to pour through the hotel’s lobby and up the street.
Much of the immediate area — a bustling, tourist-packed center with wide communist-era boulevards shadowed by the red-brick tower of Berlin City Hall — was temporarily closed. Amused tourists and locals gaped from the sidewalk.
Berlin’s Mayor Franziska Giffey, who described the sudden bursting of the aquarium as “a veritable tsunami”, first explained that none of the marine life survived the disaster.
A diver cleans the glass of the AquaDom in 2010. Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
But that turned out to not be entirely true: Firefighters spotted a handful of survivors wriggling helplessly in puddles between the debris of the elevator and in the lower support ring of the massive aquarium, which, when it didn’t explode, had measured about 55 feet tall and 38 feet wide. Survivors were taken to safety in plastic tubs. Hundreds more fish were rescued from separate tanks elsewhere in the complex and sent to Berlin Zoo, private fish farmers and a nearby aquarium for safekeeping.
Still, the aquatic carnage was extensive – and the reaction from press and citizens alike was one of shock, coupled with a dose of lamentation and self-reproach. “The WATER BOOM” screamed the front page of BZ, the city’s leading tabloid, beneath a photo of mutilated remains in the ruined lobby. (Many local newspapers carried photos of a giant dead fish.) The local evening news carried footage of pigeons pecking at chunks on the road.
That the explosion took place in Berlin, which is often seen as the dysfunctional and mismanaged stepchild of a nation otherwise known for high-quality engineering, seemed fitting to many. Several online pundits were quick to draw parallels between the aquarium’s spectacular failure and the city’s glittering embarrassment of a new international airport that was billions of dollars over budget, opened a decade late, and remains mostly a nightmare for travelers.
Der Spiegel ran a column in which he described the aquarium explosion as “the perfect symbol for 2022” and a powerful metaphor for the last year in German public life. Germany had seemed like a marvel of stability in recent years, until a rift appeared – caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and everything collapsed at once.
“The whole structure, apparently so meticulously constructed, collapsed,” wrote Tobias Rapp, editor of the magazine, of both the huge hotel aquarium and the social fabric of the nation. “Energy shortages, inflation, geopolitical danger: all the scourges that the Germans had mistakenly thought they were safe from had suddenly returned.”
How, you might ask, did this isolated fish fiasco become (for some pundits at least) a metaphor for German failure?
It was a troubled year. The country that seemed to slide through crisis after crisis unscathed during the Merkel years has finally faced some big reckonings: a winter without cheap Russian gasoline, an economy sputtering amid inflation, a major war on the EU border.
Oh, and the powerhouses of the German national soccer team were at the World Cup – again! – dismissed early.
Something about those poor fish thrown out of their tropical tank seemed to be all of a piece. Sandra Weeser, a German member of the Bundestag, who happened to be staying at the hotel, told the story a local newspaper reporter that she woke up to the shock wave of the explosion and the building shaking, but fell asleep again, thinking it must have been a dream. When she woke up an hour later, on her way out, she passed a large, already frozen parrotfish.
The cool weather, which killed the tropical fish almost immediately, didn’t help. Temperatures had dropped to about 15 degrees Fahrenheit overnight, the coldest of the season so far in Berlin (and about 60 degrees colder than the tank’s heated salt water).
The aquarium, located directly opposite the Berlin Cathedral in the heart of the city, was a real attraction for the German capital. A bar encircled the pedestal of the aquarium in the hotel’s lobby, making it a popular and quite spectacular spot for sipping cocktails in a particularly kitschy and touristy part of town. Visitors could pay to ride a glass elevator slowly right through the center of the tank.
In many ways, the timing of the explosion likely limited the scope of the tragedy. Two people – a guest and a hotel employee – were injured by broken glass. Giffey, the mayor, said the city was lucky that the aquarium burst so early in the morning while guests were sleeping, the lobby was largely empty and nearby businesses were still closed.
Rescue workers in front of the five-star Radisson hotel in Berlin after an aquarium exploded inside. Portal
Hours later, a fire department spokesman told me the debris from the blast was too thick for firefighters to work through the debris in the lobby. Instead, Red Cross search and rescue dogs were deployed to ensure no one was trapped inside.
As of Monday morning, the immediate cleanup was mostly complete, although the building itself remained a fenced-off disaster area. Shops in the building, including a Lindt chocolate shop and a gift shop selling tchotchkes adorned with Berlin’s iconic Ampelmännchen traffic light figures, remained closed indefinitely. The DDR Museum located below the hotel was also closed and was dedicated to depicting everyday life in the defunct communist German Democratic Republic.
Will the big AquaDom be rebuilt? Not clear. A spokesman for the property owner Union Investment told local media that they were still examining what should happen to the areas after the renovation was completed.
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Some voices in Berlin are already calling for his return. Ephraim Gothe, a Berlin city councilor representing the area, told the Berliner Morgenpost that the AquaDom is an attraction of world renown and importance. Not surprisingly, PETA had already spoken out against reconstruction. The organization has threatened legal action and has called for a memorial to be erected to commemorate the dead fish.
But could it ever be the same? A key part of the novelty and appeal of sitting under the aquarium was staring open-mouthed that the entire monstrosity hadn’t exploded, that the Plexiglas walls managed to withstand the weight and pressure of all that water – and wondering , which exactly could happen if even the tiniest crack appears and starts to grow.
Back then, before it all suddenly erupted in a spectacular mess, you could sip your drink and know that a whole team of highly qualified experts had created this marvel of modern engineering. And this technique was German.