Elisabeth-Sanatorium
Traffic-troubled tubercolosis and skin clinic
Curtains flutter forlornly behind cobweb-covered panes, paint flakes wistfully from long-neglected walls. and doors slam in vain for attention – BANG! BANG! BANG!
Nobody’s there to hear them.
The doors keep slamming but no one fucking cares. There used to be patients but they’re all gone, all cured, or out of their misery. Staff posts are deserted. Service has gone to the dogs. Even the dogs have left, haunted out of their kennels.
What would Elisabeth make of it all? It was all for her, dear Elisabeth. Her husband, Walter Freimuth, had the Elisabeth-Sanatorium built a hundred years ago. Construction began in 1912.
There was nothing wrong with her as far as I know. He was a doctor and into all that stuff. The sanatorium was one of the many around Berlin treating patients for tuberculosis (TB), which was all the rage at the time.
Another mostly fatal infection took hold of Germany later when the Nazis rose to power. Elisabeth was Jewish and the Freimuths wisely decided that avoidance was the best cure. They fled the country, initially for England, from what I could ascertain. (Facts and details are proving hard to find for this tale.)
The sanatorium continued treating patients without them and it survived both the Nazis and the war.
Then in 1952 it was given a new purpose, when it became a clinic for skin and lymph node tuberculosis, the only facility of its kind in the DDR.
In 1967 it became a skin clinic under the umbrella of the then district hospital in nearby Potsdam. A dozen doctors and 25 nurses looked after the patients, with 90 beds available in the main building. The others were used as an administration building and for employees’ accommodation.
It was modernized in the 1980s but abandoned then in 1994, when the skin clinic was moved to the Klinikum Ernst von Bergmann in Potsdam.
I guess Mauerfall played a part in its demise, like everything else. The sanatorium was eventually handed back to the family heirs. It ended up with one Ursula Freimuth in the United States but she has done nothing with it since.
The building received “Denkmalschutz” or protected status in 2005, not that that means anything in this country. Germany’s idea of “protection” is a strange one. Everywhere you look there are “protected” buildings falling to the ground or even being dismantled to make way for more lucrative endeavors. Don’t get me started on the East Side Gallery again…
Back to the Elisabeth-Sanatorium. Apparently a French construction company wanted to turn it into a hardware store and there were plans for a craft village. But pretty much all plans are doomed to failure unless they do away with the motorways that encircle the site.
All that can be heard now is the monotonous din of traffic whizzing by on all sides by without a thought or a care for the forgotten sanatorium. Its poor ghosts must be driven demented.
I saw a man’s foot approaching when I looked down at a photo I took. AAAAAGH!! My heart shot into my mouth. I looked up from the camera and saw it was just a bag or something. The mind plays tricks in places like these. When I looked at the photo again I saw the man’s foot again. Perhaps it was a ghost after all.
They used to have a piano to play, and it was the centerpiece for many a prized photo, but it was cruelly taken away and now the ghosts can only amuse themselves by frightening intrepid explorers. Sure who could blame them?
LOCATION AND ACCESS (HOW TO FIND GUIDE)
What: Elisabeth-Sanatorium, former tuberculosis clinic that morphed into an East German skin clinic before being consumed by the fallout of Mauerfall, as indeed anything East German did. Now only haunted by traffic-tormented ghosts.
Where: Potsdamer Damm 1, 14532 Stahnsdorf, Germany.
How to get there: Maybe there are better ways, but I got the S-Bahn (S1) to Potsdam Griebnitzsee and cycled from there. It’s not far to cycle but easy to lose your way, as I did. Best to head in a southeasterly direction until you find yourself on Steinstraße. Follow that and keep going straight until you find yourself at a circle with eight paths to choose from. (Seven if you don’t include the one you just used.) Take the third one to your left and this should bring you before long through the tunnel under the motorway. Keep going. You’ll come to a busy intersection – keep going there too, until you come to a roundabout. If Friedenstraße is the road to your left you know you have the right roundabout. At the roundabout turn right, get in off the road, and follow the fence/trees until you see the burnt parts, where the fence is pulled down. Hop in. You’re in. Here’s a map in an attempt to make it a bit easier.
Getting in: See the previous instructions. Follow them and when you get there, come on in. All the doors and windows are open.
When to go: Daytime is best for photos and general snooping.
Difficulty rating: 3/10 It’s a bit awkward to get to but otherwise quite easy.
Who to bring: Boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife (or all of them) for a romantic sunset in the middle of a motorway carousel, or like-minded explorers for exploring.
What to bring: Bring some beer lest you get thirsty. Maybe some mozzie spray if you go later in the summer. (There were no mozzies when I was there, possibly because of the traffic, but it’s something to consider.) Bring a camera and a torch. And a piñata. Damn it, the world should have more piñatas.
Dangers: The roof is a little dangerous in places – rivers of rain run through – but otherwise it seems safe enough. One of the outside buildings looked like it was being used by a homeless person so I suggest you leave that alone. That was it. No security or any living beings were encountered in the making of this post.
Filed 3/7/2014