Poznań Fortress Days - Arthur Greiser’s bunker under Radio Merkury villa
During this year’s edition of Poznań Fortress Days, the bunker of Arthur Greiser, the Kraj Warty (Land of Warta) gauleiter, will be available to the public for the very first time.
Shortly after Germany’s aggression of Poland in 1939, Arthur Greiser became the deputy of the Third Reich in Warthegau (Poland’s territory acquired by Germany). He personally lead the brutal and criminal germanisation of the Poles in the Greater Poland area. Until 1942, he lived and worked at the villa at no. 5 Berwińskiego - today the premises of Radio Merkury, the Poznań broadcasting station of the Polish Radio (Polskie Radio).
Greiser’s occupation of the villa began in 1939 with the expelling of its Polish owners. At the ground floor, which now houses the recording studios, there was Greiser’s study and dining room. The upstairs was allocated to Greiser’s family. It is not known which rooms exactly were his.
The basements of the radio villa entails the Warthegau deputy’s small family bunker. It had been built after an accidental bombing of Poznań by an RAF airplane in 1941. The British bomber was lost during a mission over Germany. It dropped only one bomb, but its tonnage was immense. It hit a townhouse at Śniadeckich St., inhabited by Germans; a number of other buildings had been destroyed and in the nearby Łazarz district, all windows fell out from their frames. Over a dozen people had lost their lives. Panic ensued among the Poznań German residents - they no longer felt safe. Soon they began to build smaller and larger scale bomb raid shelters.
Not many of the original elements of Greiser’s bunker have remained intact. Among them are the gas proof window hatches and the armoured doors leading to the emergency exit which is now buried. In the event of the building being bombed, the cellar was reinforced with steel girders, still showing producer markings by a German factory.
Nowadays, the former Arthur Greiser bunker is a storage facility for unused radio equipment. It is also there that the popular “Wywiad z chuliganem” broadcast is recorded.
Note: The bunker is very small and can fit up to five people at a time. A tour of the bunker takes about 15 minutes; including a short walk around the radio, the whole tour takes about 30 minutes.
Also note: The stairs are quite spiral and it may take some agility to walk up and down them.
ul. Berwińskiego 5
Poznań
radiopoznan.fm