Teufelsberg Spy Station, Berlin

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I don't why I've always been attracted by abandoned places — broken windows, rusty walls, old wooden furniture. May be because they hide mysterious stories I'd like to unveil. I call them lost places.
In 2013, I took a day trip to visit one of these lost places called Teufelsberg — the former graffiti-sprayed Cold War listening post located on the top of a steep hill in the heart of the Grunewald forest of Western Berlin.Nowadays, the term Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain) refers both to the hill and to the former spy station atop overlooking the surrounding landscape with its white domed towers. Many layers of history lie beneath this spot that street artists from all over the world have transformed into one of the largest street art galleries in Europe.





In 1915, the German government designed this part of Western Berlin as a nature reserve. In the 1937, Hitler, ignoring its protected status, chose this site to build the Faculty of Defense Technology, a prestigious military-technical college within Berlin Technical University. During WWII, the Allies tried hopelessly to destroy its buildings which were so sturdy that they could not be demolished. So after the end of the war, they decided to create a man-made hill of rubble to be later planted with trees. The topsoil that covered Teufelsberg's rubble was hauled by trains and trucks from the surrounding countryside of Bremen and from destroyed Berlin. The importation of ground from Berlin gave rise on one hand to dangerous wastelands in the city center, leading its inhabitants to escape, and on the other hand to the birth of a forest, which blended with Teufelsberg so as to make it invisible.

Some years later, the spot become a popular ski recreation area for West Germans. In 1961, when the deteriorating relations between the west and the east lead to the construction of the Berlin Wall, US and British governments decide to transform the vacation spot into a secret listening station that remained in use until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. After the Americans's withdrawal from West Berlin, the radar unit has been in use for civil air traffic control until 1999, when it was ultimately closed. A lockdown of many years followed. In the meanwhile, many explorers and street artists from all over the world secretly gained access to the fenced-off area, turning the gray concrete walls into a huge graffiti gallery. Nowadays, the station is open again to visitors.

Directions: from S Bhf Grunewald about 30 minutes to the Ökowerk; from there, another 30 minutes steep climb to the Teufelsberg.
More info: On Saturdays and Sundays there’s also a 90 minutes guided historical tour at 1 pm. Admission is 7€; historical tour is 15€.
Website: www.teufelsberg-berlin.eu
Location: Teufelsseechaussee 10, 14193 Berlin, Germania

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