Berlin's 'urine police' thwart calls of nature

A SPECIAL "urine police" squad is to be launched in the German capital under plans to halt the damage being caused to historic buildings by men passing water on them.

Experts fear that Berlin’s monuments, public plazas and other landmarks are being irreparably damaged by a steady trickle of acidic human urine.

Politicians from two parties are advocating a law to form a reserve police force made up of special constables with specific powers to stamp out public urination with heavy fines and even the threat of a prison sentence.

Because there is virtually no stigma attached to German men answering the call of nature when and where they wish, the problem, according to experts, is reaching catastrophic proportions.

Gert-Christian Jakobzik of the Berlin city senate said: "The acid in human urine causes great damage. It sounds like a laughing matter but it really isn’t."

Berlin-based environmental scientist Juergen Forster in Berlin added: "Human urine is so abrasive and corrosive that, over time, it acts like a sandblaster."

The blackened husk of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church, destroyed by British bombers during the Second World War, and left as a poignant reminder of the conflict, is one of the landmarks now facing assault.

Sylvia von Kekule, pastor of the neighbouring Memorial Church , said: "Men spraying the walls of the monument are accomplishing that which the bombs failed to achieve: the final destruction of the church.

" I for one have pleaded with politicians for ages to toughen the law against these louts. "

Berlin’s central park, the Tiergarten, was flooded with an estimated 26,000 gallons of urine during last year’s annual Love Parade music festival. Thousands of shrubs and bushes died.

Two years ago impromptu urination was shown to cut across all class lines when Prince Ernst August of Hanover - a relation of the Queen - was spotted relieving himself on the Turkish pavilion at the city’s Expo fair.