Lew McDaniel of West Virginia worked as a linguist at Teufelsberg, Field Station Berlin, from 1968-71. He tells Abandoned Berlin of life at the spy station.
Teufelsberg Tale
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Niederlehme TSL 44
Niederlehme’s Treib- und Schmierstofflager 44, aka TSL 44, was a former oil and fuel storage facility used by Nazi Germany, then East Germany’s armed forces.
Vogelsang
Vogelsang still clings to its nuclear secrets. One sneaky deployment of bad weapons was so damned secret it was even kept from the Soviet soldiers involved.
Tempelhof
West Berlin’s lifeline during the Soviet Blockade, Tempelhof Airport has since become the city’s biggest park. Berliners will fight to keep it that way.
Flugplatz Schönwalde
Germany’s Luftwaffe used Flugplatz Schönwalde for the war. The Soviets took over afterward and left their traces after abandoning the airfield in 1992.
Teufelsberg
The abandoned NSA Field Station from the frontline of the Cold War, used to spy on Soviet-controlled East Germany on the other side of the Berlin Wall.
Flugplatz Brand
Flugplatz Brand was strategically important for the Soviet Air Force. Thankfully its battalions of flying fighters remained on ice for the duration of the Cold War.
Stasi Hotel
East Germany checked out right before the Stasi could check in. Their hotel was never completed. Now it’s just a great hulking ruin between the trees.
Jüterbog
Jüterbog and its military camps played host to soldiers’ charades, men playing with guns, for around 130 years before the last ones left in 1994.
Flugplatz Oranienburg
Flugplatz Oranienburg served in the summer of 1944 as a test center for the legendary Horten Ho IX, the world’s first “stealth” bomber.
Tegel Airport
Tegel Airport (TXL), was formerly Germany’s fourth busiest airport with more than 24 million passengers in 2019. Abandoned Nov. 8, 2020.
Stasi spy station
The Stasi spy station Quelle 1 in Rhinow tapped fiber cable going from West Berlin 250km across the DDR to enemy state West Germany. Sneaky.
Flugplatz Johannisthal
One of the world’s first motor airfields when it opened in 1909. People used to flock to Flugplatz Johannisthal to see marvelous metal machines with wings actually fly.
West Berlin’s Lenin
Lenin can’t have imagined he’d be spending his 150th birthday alone in a parking lot in West Berlin. But that’s where he is, outside Zapf Umzüge removals.
Submarine bunker Lager Koralle
Lager Koralle was the forest bunker that controlled Germany’s feared U-boat fleet during World War II, central command for its marauding submarines.