Dienststelle Marienthal (ONLY 75 COPIES WITH PRINT AND OBJECTS)

Andreas Magdanz
Dienststelle Marienthal (ONLY 75 COPIES WITH PRINT AND OBJECTS)

Photographs: Andreas Magdanz

Text: Christoph Schaden

Publisher: Self-published

160 pages

Pictures: 96

Year: 2000

Comments: Hardcover with dustjacket, in a box. First edition, 2000. Text in English and in German. Included in The Photobook by Parr & Badger, vol.2, p. 282/283. Special edition limited to 75 copies, including a print and a light blue ceramic ashtray from the Marienthal facility as well as a bunker salt & pepper set. The book is also stamped, signed, titled and numbered in black ink on the title page by Magdanz. Very scarce.

The Dienstelle Marienthal (or Marienthal Office) is among the most ambitious but least-known monuments to "thinking the unthinkable" ever conceived. This vast underground tunnel complex, built from 1960 to 1972 outside Bonn, was once so secret that to acknowledge its existence could bring charges of treason in West Germany. Designed to house 3,000 of that government's essential personnel in case of nuclear attack, it represented one of the most exclusive fraternities in the world... [Magdanz] was the first person authorized to photograph there... With a precise and clinical eye, Mr. Magdanz shows the 25-ton doors, the miles of cable and the air ducts that connected the underground denizens, through a series of filters, with the upper atmosphere. The décor is spare, the furniture uniformly modern. There are no gymnasiums or libraries. Fluorescent light and gray airlessness are pervasive.