The Waterworks Museum in Berlin-Friedrichshagen 

A museum is housed in part of the disused Friedrichshagen waterworks on the banks of Müggelsee Lake, which is unique for Berlin - the Waterworks Museum of the Berliner Wasserbetriebe.

This is where documents and objects are collected, made accessible and exhibited as witnesses of the history of Berlin’s water supply and municipal drainage. An ideal combination of nature, historical architecture and engineering as well as a museum display can be experienced at an original location.

Friedrichshagen waterworks started operations in 1893 as Berlin’s third municipal waterworks. At the time, it was the largest and most modern works in Europe where Henry Gill, the English engineer and first director of the municipal waterworks, worked together with the architect and municipal master builder Richard Schultze, who created the buildings in the forms of traditional Brandenburg brick buildings.

With its six machine buildings, 34 slow sand filters, four irrigators, numerous ancillary buildings and four dwellings, the 55 ha waterworks site is today a witness of industrial history and an areal monument of European standing.

Three former water drawing machine buildings and a wet well are spread over a total area of 7,000 m². The machine hall with three water drawing machines of 1893, retained in its original condition, is unique. Another machine hall built in the 1920’s is an experience for every engineering fan.

The permanent exhibition 

The permanent exhibition shows a cross-section of the history of Berlin’s water supply and urban drainage from 1850 to 1950. Visitors can find out about the supply of the Berlin population by means of house and road wells and via wooden water pipes before the introduction of a centralised water supply. The inadequate hygienic conditions in the city and the constant recurrence of infestations and epidemics before the construction of the sewers are also depicted.
Centralised water supply began with the construction of the waterworks outside Stralauer Tor (1856), in Tegel (1877), and by Müggelsee Lake (1893) under the director of the municipal waterworks, Henry Gill. Modernisation and reorganisation of the water supply in the 1920’s as well as the altered political circumstances following the takeover of power by the National Socialists in 1933 and their reflection in the municipal works can be reconstructed by means of documents, photos and maps. The effects of the Second World War on the water industry installations and the use of forced labour during this time are also documented.

The redevelopment following the end of the war and the separation of the water supply between East and West Berlin after the division of the city in 1949 ends the first major section of the permanent exhibition in the former boiler hall.

The tour continues in the machine hall. There you can find three upright, double-action, compound piston steam engines with injection condensation dated 1893.
It wasn’t until 1979 that steam operation was discontinued and the last engines with this drive mode in the Friedrichshagen waterworks were shut down. One of them still chugs for visitors today – however it is now driven by an electric motor.

The second section of the exhibition is dedicated to Berlin’s municipal drainage. Under the title “From carts to sewage treatment works”, the development of Berlin’s wastewater disposal can be traced back over 120 years. The exhibition provides information about the construction of the sewers, the pumping stations, the irrigation fields and the first sewage treatment works. One room vividly displays a laboratory around the year 1900 while another room shows the heavy work involved in cleaning the sewers in the 1920’s.

Old pumps, pipes and valves are on display on the 5,000 m2 open-air area of the museum. Visitors are invited to stay a while, they can enjoy the view of Müggelsee Lake and at the same time allow the architecture to take its effect. It becomes clear how well the architect Richard Schultze understood his trade, skilfully designing the functional buildings with the character of the local Brandenburg architecture.

Close to the banks of the lake stands a hexagonal, chapel-like building – a wet well built in 1904. This is where siphon pipes ended, through which the groundwater flowed to the wet well and was then pumped to the treatment plant of the waterworks. Today the building contains an exhibition on the function of the wet well and the restoration works carried out on the building between 1991 and 1995.

Apart from the permanent exhibition, concerts as well as special and changing exhibitions are also regularly held, to supplement the permanent exhibition.

The historical archive of the Berliner Wasserbetriebe is connected with the museum, and can be visited by arrangement by both internal and external users for research purposes.