The rollercoaster ride of East Germany's only fun park

The spirits of dead clowns had been mocking me long enough. For weeks they’d been goading me, taunting me, deriding me for not venturing in. Finally, I confronted them, stared down my fears and faced the creepy carnies.

Getting over the fence was easier than I thought. Almost as if they’d been expecting me. They wanted me to come in. I hit the ground and stopped. All eerily quiet as I surveyed the area around me. I looked around again. Nothing. Just trees and shrubs.

Cautiously, heart beating like a drum-drum-drum, I proceeded up the bank toward the overgrown path, slipping in the soft ground. I heard something. What’s that?! A snicker? A suppressed laugh from a tree perhaps. Or one of the evil clowns. I looked back again but saw nothing was there. All quiet.“Calm down!” I told myself. “There’s no one here, nothing here. You have the whole park to yourself!”

I’d finally made it into Spreepark, the old East German amusement park flanked by the River Spree, abandoned to the elements on the edge of Berlin’s Treptower Park. And what a place it is!

After opening as the VEB Kulturpark Plänterwald for the GDR’s 20th birthday on October 4, 1969, it was hugely popular, not least because of its 40-meter Riesenrad (Ferris wheel) with 36 cabins. This was upgraded twenty years later to coincide with GDR’s 40th birthday celebrations to a 45-meter model with 40 cabins. Germans take their birthdays very seriously.

East Germany’s only permanent fun park, the 29.5-hectare Kulturpark Plänterwald was host to some 1.7 million visitors a year at its peak.

But its big wheel wasn’t the only one in motion in 1989. A little over a month after the new Riesenrad began turning, the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the beginning of the end for VEB Kulturpark Plänterwald.

The GDR was no longer around to pick up the tab and in 1991 it was sold to Norbert Witte, with the lease on the land made out to his wife Pia.

Bureaucracy meant the details were only finalized six years later.

Witte already had a colorful past, to say the least. The carnival operator was responsible for the deaths of seven people when he crashed a crane into a carousel while attempting to repair the “Katapult” rollercoaster in Hamburg in 1981. Fifteen people were also injured, some seriously, in what is Germany’s worst carnival disaster to date.

“It was the worst thing I’ve experienced in my life,” Witte says in Peter Dörfler’s excellent ‘Achterbahn’ (Rollercoaster) documentary. And he’s had plenty of ups and downs as the film shows.

The Wittes opened the renamed Spreepark in 1992 and put a lot of effort into bringing it up to Western European standards. They were confident of attracting 1.8 million visitors a year and invested 40 million Deutschmark by 1997, with half of that on credit.

New attractions were added – canals, a lake, the “Grand Canyon” water ride, giant rotating cups, a circus tent, pirate ship, rollercoaster, and even a Wild West town where stuntmen used to perform, complete with saloon, bank and play halls.

Despite attracting some 1.5 million visitors in 1993, however, it was as good as it got. The numbers dwindled thereafter. Only 400,000 visitors graced the park with their presence in 2001 before Spreepark finally closed its doors for the last time on Nov. 4 that year.

A lack of parking, escalating prices, disputes and dodgy dealings all contributed to its demise. The city’s decision to declare Plänterwald a nature reserve certainly didn’t help, as Witte was prevented from building the parking spaces Spreepark needed. Bankruptcy was the result. Debts of €11 million were reported.

Witte fled to Peru in 2002, along with his family and six of Spreepark’s attractions, hopeful of opening another fun park in Lima. A friend of friend told him it would be a good idea. There were problems from the outset, however, and Witte was suffering from heart problems. The debts kept mounting.

In 2003, Norbert Witte was jailed for eight years for attempting to smuggle 181 kilos of cocaine worth some €15 million back to Germany in the masts of the “Flying Carpet” ride. He was released after four years while his son was left languishing in Lima’s Sarita Colonia prison for 13 years before he secured a transfer to Moabit in 2016. Norbert had the fortune to be caught in Germany, Marcel the misfortune to be caught in Peru.

“I’m responsible for it. My son would have had nothing to do with such people or at all with such a thing. I have to live with that for the rest of my life,” Witte said.

Pia said she would never forgive him. The couple’s relationship ended in Peru.

Spreepark, meanwhile, was left to rot among the trees and foliage of Plänterwald, its rollercoasters rusty and neglected, the water-slide’s boats covered in leaves and dirt, buildings boarded up, and fun-rides left only for the birds and rats to enjoy.

Witte never gave up on his dream to revive Spreepark.

“Once a showman, always a showman,” he said.

But the fun park’s strange tale took an unexpected turn in March 2014 when the city bought it back through the state-owned Liegenschaftsfonds Berlin in a murky deal for just over €2 million after agreeing with creditors to let their losses go. It had been for sale on eBay before that. Not a word of a lie.

A Berlin concert promoter previously bid nearly €2.5 million at an auction for Spreepark in July 2013, well above the Finanzamt Treptow-Köpenick’s asking price of €1.62 million. It was abruptly withdrawn from auction after the promoter’s bid. The other bidder had been the Liegenschaftsfonds Berlin so you’d wonder why it was up for auction at all.

The lease given to Pia Witte stipulated that the land must remain in use as an amusement or recreational park until 2061, so this had scared many potential investors away, and it prohibits the city from flogging off the land for apartments.

Or so it should, anyway. These are Berlin’s politicians we’re talking about. If anyone can find a way to turn Spreepark into apartments, they can.

The city officially took over on April 30, 2014, when the Wittes and their entourage moved out. Norbert had moved back into a caravan on the site, and his daughter Sabrina was doing tours at weekends. Pia had given an undertaking to remove all the caravans.

The fence was replaced with a sturdier one and the new owners provided security. Both fence and the security were beefed up after some idiots burned down the 5,000-square meter “Old England” themed area in August 2014.

The mammoth and a couple of dinosaurs were already gone by then, following the example set by their once living brethren. The last I saw of the poor mammoth was on April 22, 2014. He was gone when I went back on May 9. Perhaps the May Day festivities took their toll.

Grün Berlin, the same crowd running Tempelhof, took over Spreepark in December 2015 via the state-run property management company Berliner Immobilienmanagement GmbH (BIM).

They want to reopen the fun park as a watered-down version of what it was before – a fun park without the fun.

“There won’t be a classic amusement park there anymore,” finance senator Matthias Kollatz-Ahnen said in November 2015, when he envisaged “a minimalist concept” for Spreepark. Minimal thought and minimal effort.

It was due to reopen in 2016, but Berlin snorts due dates for breakfast. Nothing is ever built or done here on time.

Now the plan is for Spreepark’s reopening (if you can call it that) to be done in stages. The almost-refurbished Eierhäuschen beside Spreepark was down for opening in autumn 2022. Surprise! It didn't happen. The Eierhäuschen was no doubt given priority over the actual fun park because of the 540 paying customers it would be able to gather money from in the pub and Biergarten. Spreepark itself was penciled in for reopening in 2024 with the final works completed by 2026.

Grün Berlin has basically cleared Spreepark of almost everything that was great about it. The famous Ferris wheel that used to loom over the park, with cabins begging for someone to climb in, has been dismantled amid promises it will return after refurbishment. We’ll see.

The Ferris wheel – if it returns (they need to find an operator) – will be the only moving attraction in the new Spreepark. There are no plans for any rollercoasters or any other fun rides. All the fun will have to take place in your head instead as you take in all the less financially risky “art and culture” Spreepark will supposedly offer.

“You’ll be able to go over art, sit on art and ride in the Ferris wheel with art,” Grün Berlin’s artistic director Katja Aßmann said in September 2021.

Art is cheaper than dinosaurs. Only three of the original dinosaurs that used to roam the park will return, apparently. Two of them were headless, but their heads were returned by anonymous donors.

For a city that can waste billions on malfunctioning airports and pointless Prussian palaces, you’d imagine it could also spend a few extra euros on some more plastic dinosaurs. But no, the dinosaurs evidently failed to endear themselves to the right people.

No expense has been spared on the fence keeping people out. Security is also on site 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But yet it couldn't stop people kidnapping the dinosaurs. There were none at all left by the summer of 2022.

In 2013, a 90-year-old woman broke into Spreepark and had to be rescued from the Ferris wheel after the wind carried her up but not back down again.

“It used to be so nice here,” she said. “I simply wanted another go.”

Sneaking into Spreepark was always accompanied by a thumping heartbeat, tension bordering on terror, and waves of adrenaline sending heightened senses off the chart. The eerie silence would be broken at times by weird industrial noises, creaking, groaning, wailing and screaming.

Spraoí, coincidentally pronounced Spree, means fun in Irish, and there’s probably more spraoí to be had sneaking in than there ever was in its days as an operational fun park.

Strange wildlife called Spreepark home, and they did their best to frighten the bejaysus out of intrepid explorers. Rustling in the grass, shuffling in the trees and so on.

Near where the Ferris wheel used to turn, angry-looking swan-boats flanked an abandoned Viking ship with a dragon’s head. That too was decapitated.

The sad remains of the dinosaurs floundered nearby. They took to drink in the later years. The poor old Tyrannosaurus rex lay on his side, stocious, cursing his puny little useless arms. He was accompanied by a headless elasmosaurus, trapped by a surrounding fence. Grün Berlin didn’t want any more escaping. Not that it made any difference.

The rollercoaster cars are still lined up, raring to go, eager to plunge into the gaping jaws of the fearsome-looking psychedelic cat, my favorite cat in the world. It has firmly established itself as the Spreepark’s friendly face. But red and white barricade tape warns away anyone who thinks of getting too close. And Grün Berlin says the carts will never roll again, leaving the psychedelic cat to cry in despair.

Perhaps nowhere in Berlin has provided as many thrills and spills as this old abandoned East German fairground. Its story is one hell of a rollercoaster. But it looks like it’s finally ground to a halt.

LOCATION AND ACCESS (HOW TO FIND GUIDE)

What: Spreepark Berlin. Abandoned amusement park.
Where: Kiehnwerderallee 1-3, 12437, Berlin.
How to get there: Get the S-Bahn to Plänterwald or Treptower Park and walk from there. Map can be accessed here.
Getting in: The fence is ridiculously study and hard to climb. There are warning signs in several languages making it clear to people that they’re not very welcome. It’s a difficult climb.
Otherwise, Grün Berlin offer tours of the little that’s left to see for €5 during the summer months. You need to book well in advance. Here’s the link: https://spreeparkfuehrung.reservix.de/events
When to go: Daytime is definitely easier to get in, explore, see things and take photographs. You are more likely to be seen yourself then too, however. Nighttime is definitely spookier, albeit more dangerous – there’s a watch dog on site at night.
Difficulty rating: 9/10 if you go on your own, 1/10 if you take a tour.
Who to bring: Friends. Do NOT go alone!
What to bring: Camera. Beer. A bottle of tequila is also good, preferably with oranges and cinnamon. Can be drunk either beforehand for courage, while sitting beside the River Spree, or while straddling any unfortunate remaining dinosaurs.
Dangers: Security is there all day and all night, with the aforementioned dog joining them at night. The guards are bored and have nothing better to do than look for intrepid explorers. You’ll likely need to stay alert, very quiet, and off the main paths to evade detection. Stay vigilant. Try not to jump out of your skin every time a dog barks. If it’s daytime it’s most likely just a pooch going for a stroll beside the river. If it’s nighttime, RUUUUNNN!!!! Also watch out for nosy passers-by who may feel it’s their duty to report people having fun, you know, the old bitter types. And watch out for the dead clowns.