Christoph Büch has made a name for himself as a truck photographer. His main profession was initially as a cab driver in West Berlin, then for decades as a bus driver for the Berlin transport company BVG. In his spare time, he began to express his passion for trucks with his camera at an early age. It is not enough for him to simply photograph a truck; he attaches great importance to the ambience and surroundings. Christoph is particularly well known on Facebook for his photos of trucks in the rain, roaring along the road in a cloud of swirling drops. This article, however, is about the beginnings, when he captured the Berlin feeling of the 80s in black and white.
In the winter of 1979, at the age of 21, I left my hometown of Arnsberg in North Rhine-Westphalia to study in West Berlin. Over the years, I took photos of my surroundings from time to time and also of the trucks that were still allowed to park all over the city back then. Most of the photos were taken in the early 80s. First I found a cheap place to live in Berlin-Lichterfelde, then I lived in Wedding and finally I moved to Kreuzberg, where I still live today.
When I got to know West Berlin in the early 80s, it was still largely a working-class city with cheap apartments and lots of pubs. I got my passenger transport license in 1980 and worked as a cab driver. I often drove workers to the pubs and picked them up again. And there was hardly ever any trouble. I learned to love the people of Berlin. They had a direct tone, there was the occasional rant, but it didn't matter, you just ranted back and everything was fine. At the bakery in Wedding, the sales clerks laughed their heads off when I wanted to buy “Teilchen”. You just had to laugh along with them. That's what they call various baked goods in the Rhineland.
You could really feel at home in Wedding. Apartments were cheap and people could make a good living from their work. Of course, the air quality wasn't exactly healthy at the time, but you didn't really notice that. What you did notice, however, were the freezing winters, often with biting easterly winds. But the important thing for me was that there were trucks everywhere. Today, you can look for them in the city center with a magnifying glass.
The photos in this article are from the 80s. Back then, I photographed in black and white, sometimes the film material was a little grainy and in the dark season, the gloomy atmosphere of the wintry city was also noticeable in the photos. But I think these somewhat melancholy images capture the atmosphere of the divided city of West Berlin before the fall of the Wall quite well.
This MAN type 26.256 tipper was parked in Oslo Street in Berlin-Wedding around 1981. It had the V8 diesel from the cooperation with Mercedes under the hood. 200 meters to the left was the Bornholm Bridge border crossing to East Berlin.The trucking company Josef Wiechers from Bochum had a small site in Grüntal Street in Berlin-Wedding. The area on Oslo Street was in the immediate vicinity of the Bornholm Bridge border crossing. In the 1980s, there were similar branches of West German trucking companies in many places in the city. Many more photos should have been taken back then.View of the site of the Anhalt goods station at Gleisdreieck. At the back you can see a Mercedes NG belonging to the Konrad Zippel trucking company.A cold winter's day at Anhalt goods station. You can almost feel sorry for the worn-out Büssing on the left. At the back right you can see a silver MAN from trucking company Wrobbel, at the back left a Mercedes NG from Samko. It was a foggy day with the usual bad air. Cars without catalytic converters, coal-fired heating systems everywhere and the sulphurous smell of brown coal from the east made the air thick across the city. It was also regularly really cold.A winter's day on Bautzen Street in Gleisdreieck. This was the site of a coal merchant that was supplied with this MAN 16.240 HK. The MAN was certainly often on the road during the cold season. In addition to coal merchants, there were also several trucking companies and a used truck dealer called Nufa on the site near the Yorck bridges.Loading ramp at the Anhalt goods station, on the left the Samko trucking company, which used Mercedes short hood models and Ford D trucks for local transport. Mercedes NG 1632s were used for long-distance transport in the early 1980s. On the right, the Haco trucking company with blue Magirus trucks.This MAN-Büssing 22.320 belonging to Binnen-Container-Transport was also parked at Anhalt goods station. The signs of the Barthel and Haco trucking companies can be seen on the building on the right.This photo was also taken at Anhalt goods station: Next to a pile of coal a decommissioned Magirus with round hood was sleeping, which must have been used in local transportation for many years. MAN with roll-off body from the Klaus Metschurat company in the entrance area of Anhalt goods station around 1981.There were many warehouses on Heide Street in Berlin-Moabit until around the turn of the millennium. The photo shows a Büssing from the Godejohann trucking company at a loading ramp.There was also a cement works on Heide Street. This photo of a MAN tipper with trailer was taken here in 1982.A Büssing Burglöwe from Union-Transport at one of the numerous loading ramps on Heide Street.We are still on Heide Street, now a little further east. A Büssing with trailer was waiting to be loaded or unloaded at the ramp.This classic Büssing truck was also parked on Heide Street. In the background you can see the Hamburg railroad station building, which today houses the National Gallery of Contemporary Art. The Invaliden street border crossing was in the immediate vicinity. The Büssing had the sticker “On behalf of the DB”, so it was driving for the German Railroad System. A short hood Mercedes belonging to the Rieck trucking company can also be seen.There were extensive industrial estates with numerous trucking companies on Heide Street. The area was right on the border with East Berlin and thus on the Berlin Wall. One of the companies based there was Rieck trucking company, which operated this Büssing. Fortunately, Rieck trucking company is still active. It has retained the traditional blue and yellow livery to this day. However, the Heide Street site is now history.At the time this photo was taken, a MAN-Büssing 22.320 belonging to the Paul Gatz company was parked on the unpaved forwarding site of Union-Transport on Heide Street. On the left of the roof you can see the sign of “Solex”, a company that produced carburetors here.At Lützow Square, in the heart of downtown West Berlin, not far from the Zoological Garden and Kurfürstendamm, you could buy used trucks from the Auto-Jäger company. There was also a scrap yard on the company premises. This was possible because even in the 1980s, there were still large areas of undeveloped land in West Berlin, or rather areas that had been bombed out. The consequences of the war could still be seen everywhere. On the other side of Lützow Square there was another open space where fairgrounds had been held for years. The photo shows two impressive Magirus Uranus with air-cooled V-12 engines at Auto-Jäger. They may have served with the British occupation forces in Berlin.At Auto-Jäger in the early 1980s, this series of disused commercial vehicles was hoping for a new lease of life. The Mercedes bus in the foreground could be a former vehicle of the US troops in Berlin. Incidentally, there were two other used commercial vehicle dealers nearby at the time.This classic Henschel tipper was parked around 1981 in the industrial estate on Naumann Street in Berlin-Schöneberg, which was also home to a number of trucking companies.A classic Büssing truck from the Heublein trucking company stood on the extensive grounds of the Western Port around 1982. The fuel depot can be seen in the background.Two Büssing trucks from the Heublein trucking company framed a MAN 13.230 HK at the Western Port.A Magirus tipper from the Gildemeister construction company passed the coal depot of the municipal fuel supply (SBV) at Western Port.All West Berlin building rubble was taken by barge to a landfill site in the GDR at the time. The loading point was on the site of Western Port. It was very busy here on a hot summer's day. The SBV site is also interesting, with the huge pile of coal at the back right. It seemed to be rather quiet here, an employee was cleaning a Unimog with a water hose. Because of the discounts, thrifty citizens ordered their coal in summer, as fuel was more expensive during the heating season.In the summer of 1982, a MAN 16.240 was loaded with coal at Western Port. Impressive mountains of coal all around. In winter, the same tipper appeared on the premises of a coal merchant at Gleisdreieck. It supplied the numerous coal merchants in the city. At that time, most of Berlin's inhabitants still heated their homes with coal.A MAN Büssing belonging to the Godejohann trucking company at the eastern entrance to the Western Port. The granary is in the background on the right.A good-looking MAN conventional truck leaving the Western Port site after dumping a load of building rubble there. The Mercedes sticker “V 10” is interesting. The colleague must have exaggerated a little.In front of the granary on the Western Port site around 1982: classic Mercedes tipper truck type 1624 with trailer.Mercedes LP 1624 belonging to Schiffahrts-Kontor Gustav Lücke Successors in the summer of 1982 in front of the Western Port administration building.Fortunately, the site of the Western Port has hardly changed over the years. In this photo, the sun has just set over the administration building. Year the photo was taken: around 1983There were goods stations in many Berlin districts, a relic from the era of industrialization when railroads handled almost all freight traffic. In the 1990s, this classic Mercedes with a large-capacity driver's cab stood on the site of the goods station on Siemens Street in Berlin-Moabit.Behrens cement mixer semitrailer truck on Köpenick Street on the premises of BEHALA (Berliner Hafen- und Lagergesellschaft) in the 1990sThis Mercedes NG 2628 from Zemtrans also stood in Köpenick Street. The hammering sound of the V8 engine is unforgettable. The Berlin Wall was now history, as you can see from the ZS license plate for Zossen. The town of Zossen is located in East Germany, where the license plates followed a different nomenclature in GDR times.The photo of this Iveco semi-trailer with its impressive wheelbase was also taken in the 1990s on Köpenick Steet. It was certainly not particularly maneuverable. It is quite possible that an air-cooled Magirus-Deutz diesel was still at work here.Definitely not a show truck: Magirus with roll-off body around 1994 in Berlin-Neukölln.The Berlin fairground operator Peter Müller was still using this MAN 13.230 in the 1990s. In the photo, it was on the grounds of the Neukölln May Days on Hasenheide.
