Places
Sporthotel Hohenschönhausen
The Sporthotel und Kongresszentrum des Sportforums Hohenschönhausen is in a sorry state, beyond salvation, thrashed and abused. Not even drugs can help.
Hohenschönhausen refugee homes
Hohenschönhausen’s refugee homes, formerly living quarters for “guest workers” who helped build the DDR, don’t welcome anyone anymore.
Haus der Statistik
Haus der Statistik looms over Berlin’s Alexanderplatz with STOP WARS across its bow in big red letters. The DDR’s former statistics HQ is right to be angry.
Blub
Blub was a swimming and leisure center with pools, slides and crazy stuff that was very popular before the rats noticed it too. Then it was a blubbering mess.
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.
Spreepark 2022
Spreepark is but a shell of what it once was. The city’s plans to refurbish the old fun park involve removing anything that might be fun.
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.
SS Bakery
The SS Bakery only went bust when the Nazis did. They forced prisoners from nearby Sachsenhausen to make bread to keep other concentration camps going.
Siemensbahn
No trains have trundled the Siemensbahn railway line since 1980, not since it was abandoned due to a strike, dwindling passengers and an upstart U-Bahn.
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.
Liesenbrücken
The Liesenbrücken, fine industrial iron bridges built by the Prussian state railway operator, have been abandoned for almost 70 years.
Hygiene Institute
The Hygiene Institute is a brutalist architectural marvel. Its twisted forms allude to the work carried out inside the research facility.
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.
Garbáty Zigarettenfabrik
Garbáty’s Zigarettenfabrik was brought to its knees by Nazi persecution. East Germany appropriated the cigarette factory till that ended too.