Berlin Radio Tower

Stand at the foot of the tower and tilt your head back. Above you, a lattice of riveted steel climbs into the sky, thin and open, like a drawing of a tower rather than a solid one. You can see straight through it to the clouds. On a windy day, cables hum somewhere overhead, and traffic rushes past on the roads below. This is the Berlin Radio Tower, the Funkturm, and it has stood on this corner of western Berlin for a century.

Berliners have a nickname for it. They call it the Langer Lulatsch, which means something like the long beanpole, or the lanky fellow. It fits. The tower is narrow and a little awkward, all legs and elbows. It does not try to look grand. It looks useful, and that is exactly what it was built to be. The nickname also says something about this city. Berliners like to tease the things they love.

The tower rose in the mid-1920s, during the years of the Weimar Republic, Germany's first democracy. Radio was new then. Families gathered around crackling sets to hear voices travel through the air, and that still felt close to magic. Berlin hosted a large radio exhibition on these grounds, and the tower was built for that event. It opened in 1926. Its job was simple: hold antennas high above the city so signals could carry far across the flat land.

The design came from the architect Heinrich Straumer. He worked with steel, the material of the modern age, and he left the structure honest and exposed. Many people compare it to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and the comparison makes sense. Both are iron and steel lattices, and both began as engineering statements. But the Berlin tower is far smaller and much slimmer. Including its antenna, it reaches roughly one hundred and fifty metres into the sky.

Here is a detail that most visitors walk straight past. Look closely at where the tower meets the ground. The structure was designed to stand on insulators, made of porcelain, rather than bolted directly into the earth. That was a radio engineer's decision, not an architect's. The tower itself was part of the broadcasting system, so it needed to be separated electrically from the ground. A huge steel structure, standing on porcelain... it sounds fragile, but it has held for a hundred years.

The second surprise comes from television. In the mid-1930s, this tower played a part in some of the earliest regular television broadcasts in the world. The pictures were tiny, grainy, and seen by very few people. Most Berliners never owned a set. The broadcasts also served the propaganda of the Nazi regime, which ruled Germany at that time. Still, the signal that left this tower was a first step toward the screens that now sit in almost every pocket.

The Second World War reached the tower directly. During the fighting, a shell struck the structure and damaged part of its frame. Many buildings around Berlin fell completely. This one bent, but it did not collapse. After the war, engineers repaired it, and the tower went back to work. For people in the western half of a divided city, its familiar outline became a quiet sign that some things had survived.

About one third of the way up, there is a restaurant set inside the steel frame. Near the top, there is an open observation deck. For generations, people rode the lift up to eat, to watch the city lights, or simply to feel the wind. Access to these upper levels has changed over the years, including long periods of renovation. So check the current situation before you plan your visit around the view from the top.

If you do get up there, the view explains the neighbourhood. To one side, you look down on the exhibition halls of the Berlin trade fair grounds, which grew up around the tower. Not far away sits the long, metallic shape of the International Congress Centre. Beyond them, the city spreads out to the east, low and green, with the television tower of Alexanderplatz far in the distance. Berlin, from here, looks wide and calm.

Look down again and you may notice a strange curve of road nearby. This area was connected to the AVUS, one of the earliest motor racing tracks built in Germany. Drivers once tore around steep banked bends close to this spot. Today the route carries ordinary traffic, but the shape of the land still holds a memory of engines and speed. It is fitting. The whole district was built around the excitement of new machines.

Across the main road stands another building connected to radio: the Haus des Rundfunks, Berlin's broadcasting house. It was designed by the architect Hans Poelzig and completed around 1930. Its long, dark brick front looks heavy and serious next to the open steel of the tower. Together they make a pair. One sent the signal into the sky. The other filled it with voices, music, and news.

Today the tower is a protected monument. Its antennas still serve for modern communications, so in a sense it never retired. Trade fair visitors pass beneath it in their thousands, often without looking up. Children point at it from the windows of buses and trains. For many Berliners, it is simply part of the furniture of the west of the city. It is always there, a little shabby, a little proud.

Before you leave, take one more look up through the lattice. Notice how the light breaks into small squares between the beams, and how the steel changes colour as the sun moves. Listen for the wind in the frame and the traffic below. A hundred years ago, people stood here and wondered at invisible voices in the air. As you walk away, your phone is still catching signals from towers like this one.