The new & the old Tower
At the times of the Olympic Games, the many floors of the tower housed the observation stands of the Games administrators, the police, the medical services, and the radio and film reporters. The 75-metre (82 yard) long central portion of the Mayfield grandstand to the right and left of the tower was not raised up into an embankment, but built as a three-story structure. It was here that during the war the film-archives of the Reich were stored, among other things. After the Russian troops had entered the city, these caught fire, possibly through the carelessness of a soldier, and the ensuing heat was conducted through the Bell Tower as through a chimney. Load-bearing elements of the steel framework were so twisted by the heat, that the stability of the tower was threatened. In 1947 it was blown up by British engineers and then the rubble removed.
The Olympic Bell fell and was cracked vertically by the blast. It was then buried under the square in front of the Bell Tower. After laborious searching using Geiger counters it was rediscovered and removed in December 1956. Soon after, it was placed on a platform near the south gate of the Olympic Stadium. It is not known who wanted to test his prowess by shooting with an anti-tank gun at the defenceless Olympic Bell and thus caused the nowadays all too visible shot-hole. But the bell must have been hanging at that point of time, as it was holed through from the inside out. As a result of the damage, the old bell could not be rung anymore.
In the years 1960 to 1962, the Federal Minister for government ownership reconstructed the Bell Tower, according to Werner March's plan, the architect of the old tower. A concrete and steel frame, faced with shell-limestone, was put up on the old foundations and is supported on the ground floor by six reinforced concrete pillars, each one square metre (39 inches). The cross-section of the tower decreases from 11.2 by 6.53 metres (37 x 21 feet) at the base to 9.46 by 6.53 metres (31 x 21 feet) at the top. Material used in the construction comprised 720 cubic metres (25,427 cu. ft.) of concrete, 130 metric tons of round steel, and 5,000 plates of natural shell-lime-stone. The weight of the Tower is 2,500 metric tons. The weight of the steel bell, which rings the note F sharp and was cast by the Bochum Association for cast-steel, conforms to the structural specifications of the new building and is 4.5 tons as opposed to the 9.6 tons of the old bell, which was cast by the same firm.