Stories
Banana Bunker
A former air-raid shelter built by forced laborers became the Banana Bunker during DDR days. Now it’s an exclusive art gallery – still monkey business.
Kraftwerk Vogelsang
Kraftwerk Vogelsang is a powerless power plant. People gave their lives building it and fighting over it. Now that they’re gone, nobody wants it at all.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Flugzeughallen
Brash airplanes used to roar in and out of Fliegerstation Berlin-Friedrichsfelde's Flugzeughallen in days after the land had been used for testing airships.
Luna-Lager bunker
A wartime bunker is all that’s left of the former Luna-Lager labor camp at Schönholzer Heide, now a grassy, pretty wild and pleasant 35-hectare park.
Olympic village
The Olympic Games used to be the toast of the world. Berlin’s Olympics in 1936 were the most captivating games of all, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
Flugplatz Rangsdorf
Flugplatz Rangsdorf was the airfield from which Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg flew off with a bomb for Hitler as part of the unsuccessful July 20 plot.