Bombproof

To Leipzig's famed Trade Fair last week went Reich Air Minister Goering and trainloads of important Army officers, not to gape at sample booths but to pay homage to a small young woman with curly hair and a timid voice. Though women in business are anathema to orthodox Nazis, Fraulein Martha Burger is one they cannot do without. An engineer and steel technician, she has designed a line of bombproof steel houses, and bombproof and gasproof cellars for houses already up, that have withstood dozens of tests from Germany's air force. At Leipzig last week Army officers and town mayors hustled around to talk prices.

In essence, the Burger bombproof cellar is a boilerlike contraption of heavy steel slightly larger than an automobile trailer. Buried in the ground, it is fitted with bunks and provision shelves for householders. A special pump keeps gas from seeping in by increasing the interior pressure. As in a submarine, the air is kept fresh by passing it through coils of chemicals.

Daughter of a bridge builder, Engineer Buerger inherited her father's interest in steel, graduated from the Munich Institute of Technology. Said she last week:

"I was still a school girl during the War, but not too young to remember what happens when enemy planes ride over a town. I knew then that what I wanted more than anything else in the world was to do something to lessen this horror. When I was in the university laying bricks, mixing cement and learning how to erect steel girders, I began to figure out a way to perfect something which would conserve not only human life but materials. These bombproof houses are the result."

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