The bombed-out belltower of Berlin, a jagged and bruised symbol of the city, is crumbling fast and needs urgent restoration work if it is to survive as one of the most potent European memorials of the horrors of war.

That was the verdict yesterday of an architectural survey team, which has stirred the debate over the preservation of ruins from the Second World War. “We were stunned when we read the surveyors’ report,” said Matthias Hoffmann-Tauschwitz, building supervisor of the German Protestant Church.

The bell tower, nicknamed the “hollow tooth” by Berliners, juts up like a broken molar in the middle of a busy square close to the main shopping street, the Kurförstendamm.

It is all that remains of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, built between 1891 and 1895 by Kaiser Wilhelm to honour his grandfather, the first Wilhelm. But on the night of November 22, 1943, British Lancasters began the second raid in what was billed by Arthur “Bomber” Harris as the Battle for Berlin.

The Armaments Ministry, the Schloss Charlottenburg and the embassies of Britain, France, Italy and Japan were hit. The Kaiser Wilhelm church was swallowed by flames.

Most Berliners were against full-scale restoration after the war since it would take resources away from housing — hundreds of thousands of people had been left homeless. It was decided to leave the tower intact and to build a modern church alongside. An independent belltower was built on the spot where the nave had once been. It was consecrated in 1962 on the same day as Coventry Cathedral. For West Germany the church became an act not only of remembrance but also of defiance, a way of showing the East German communists that the new democracy had not lost its memory.

A member of the Church Council told the Berlin Tages-spiegel yesterday: “The condition of the tower is so catastrophic that no one should be allowed inside.”

To save the church tower will require €3 million (£2 million). “The Church is very stretched with its many reponsibilities,” Wolfgang Kula, chairman of the Church Council, said. “The city is best positioned to save it.” The city government is reluctant to pay, sparking a debate over whether the tower should be allowed to decay naturally.

A Church Council adviser said yesterday: “This is about Berlin and Germany making a gesture to show that it remembers and abhors war. What is the alternative, to knock it down and build a shoe shop? There is already too much amnesia in this society.”

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