I had mixed feelings on Teufelsberg. On one hand it's been high on my to-do list for some time, but on the other hand I was expecting an adrenaline fueled stealthy escapade where I narrowly evaded security and climbed the tower to take in the view, and slipped out without anyone knowing that I was ever there.
Well, it wasn't what I was expecting. Nobody cared that I was there. Security are just letting people in at the front gate for a small entry fee, but ever the miscreant I chose instead to roam the outer fence until I found a free way in. Once inside nobody once questioned how I gained entry, simply assuming that I was one of the many people who were wandering around legitimately.
People were sat around in deck chairs with drinks, people were taking selfies with the graffiti. The security had fenced off much of the interior to prevent rooftop access, to give it some degree of safety, but otherwise leaving the place as it is, making a tourist attraction out of decay.
It had a nice chilled out atmosphere. I loved it, but the lack of rooftop access but a big old dent in my mood.
Teufelsberg is amazing. I just got here too late.
Somewhere deep beneath my feet is an old Nazi military academy but theres no trace of that now. It's still there, underground, but when the war ended and the Allies tried to blow it up, they did little more than dent it. This comes as no surprise when one considers that the architect was Albert Speer.
Albert Speer built stuff to last. He was, after all, in charge of reshaping Berlin into a giant symbol city that Hitler called Germania. Germania was perhaps a dream of lunacy if ever there was one. Berlin was to be reshaped around a giant 5km central boulevard. At one end would be a triumphal arch just like the one in Paris, except the Paris one would be able to fit inside it. At the other end of the boulevard they planned to build a colossal dome 820 feet in diameter, so vast that it would have its own internal weather. Much of Berlin was scheduled to be demolished to make way for Germania, whose size and shape made it as much a symbol as it was a city. Hitler wanted there to be no question that Germania was the global capital of his empire in the event that he won.
But he didnt win, and following the war, Berlin was divided. West Berlin, while in the hands of the Americans, British and French was marooned in East Germany which was under Soviet control, and following the war they had a lot of rubble that they couldn't clear out of the city due to these boundaries. In 1950 the solution came to just pile the rubble up over that Nazi military academy that refuses to blow up, plant a few trees to make it pretty, and Voila! We have ourselves a new hill made of some 400,000 bombed houses, and no more Nazi Military Academy!
Oddly enough the job of collecting the rubble for transport was picked up by local women, who became known as the Trümmerfrauen, or Rubble Women.
(Picture not mine, obviously)
Interestingly, the scale in which the Rubble Women worked was greatly exagerrated, making it seem like it was some kind of mass phenomenon, but its actually estimated that only 5% of the female population took part. The truth is, during the war the act of clearing rubble had been given to forced labourers, and after the war it had initially been given to Nazi prisoners of war. This was found to be insufficient, and so the general public were asked to step up and help out. Nobody was particularly keen on doing it, given that it was traditionally regarded as a punishment, so the media sneakily made a point of showcasing smiling, happy women as low-level propaganda, which is now ingrained into the peoples memory. In exchange for their hard work, and smiling for the camera, the Rubble Women recieved higher food rations.
However, these women did contribute massively to the changing attitude of gender roles, and in addition, Berlin did get a new hill, so it all had a positive outcome.
In 1961, it was discovered that the hill provided the best vantage point for listening to transmissions from Soviet-controlled East Germany, and so in 1963 the listening station formerly known as Field Station Berlin was created on top of the hill, which itself became known as Teufelsberg.
Teufelsberg literally translates to "Devils Hill" but that has nothing to do with the Nazi academy or the American listening station. No, its named after the nearby Teufelssee, or Devils Lake, which itself is so named because it was a Germanic Pagan worshiping site centuries ago. Given that Paganism isn't really about devil worship, it's likely that the term "Devil" was given to it by the early Christians, who despite being a new religion in a species that had already existed for thousands of years, decided that they were right and that all pre-existing belief systems were evil.
Today Teufelsee remains a popular place to go, and naked bathing is permitted, which sounds absolutely amazing. One wonders if the Fuhrer himself ever took a dip.
The graffiti up here is phenomenal! Just look at this! This is probably the best street art I've ever seen!
Teufelsberg wasnt all about spying on the Soviets during the Cold war. In 1955 a ski jump was established here, although the NSA had the ski lift removed due to it somehow disrupting the signal from East Berlin. In contrast, it was discovered that the ferris wheel established during the German-American Volksfest somehow boosted the signal, so they insisted that it stayed up all year round.
It all sounds rather strange to me, but then what do I know about eavesdropping on Russian military operations?
The ski jump was replaced by a larger one in 1962, which presumably didn't disrupt the signal. This was then abandoned in 1969, and as appealing as photographing abandoned ski jumps sounds, they were sadly removed in 1999.
Slipping inside was fairly easy, as loads of street artists have done so before me. But with many of the doors blocked and locked, what I accessed it just a fraction of what is here, with some who I spoke to even saying that the best graffiti is in the inaccessible parts. Some say the Golden Age of Teufelsberg is behind us, adding that it apparently has fewer visitors since the security moved in and gave everyone a means of legitimate access, at the expense of the means to see all of it. Prior to them showing up, this place was allegedly full of life, in much the same way it's impossible to go to Denbigh Mental Asylum without meeting people. Abandoned stuff just attracts people.
This bear warning me of internet privacy is "Erik Rotheim," a character named after the inventor of the spray can, who was created by the street artist Tobo. Tobo has been wall scrawling since he was a child, but his most commonly recognised tag is Erik, who can be found all over Berlin offering random chunks of wisdom. Click the links for his social media
I have no idea what this cyclopean squid creature is, or why its pointing at various symbols, some of which looks like a vagina, but nevertheles I love it.
Many rumours and myths surround this place, which is to be expected given that the NSA's activities here are shrouded in secrecy even to this day. One such rumour was that the NSA did tunnel down into the remains of the Nazi military academy, as well as having an underground submarine base and escape tunnels. Former staff here have dismissed these rumours. They were aware of the Nazi building hidden beneath their feet, but there were never any secret tunnels.
At least, so they say.
Given that I didn't explore the entire place, I can't really comment, but I do find it intriguing. And let's face it, this giant listening station on a hill in West Berlin is about as discreet as an offended teenager on social media. It's practically demanding our attention! And given that it was well within range of soviet weaponry, they'd be stupid not to put a bunker or something under there, albeit maybe not as deep as the Nazi academy.
With the Cold War in full swing, some 1,500 people worked for the NSA here. Apparently it was operated by both British and American staff, but veterans who worked here seem to indicate that it wasn't entirely harmonious, saying "Brits and Americans were both on the Teufelsberg, but they weren't there together." Apparently the British and American workers even had segregated toilets. From what I can gather, the British workers just did whatever the NSA told them to do, and that was that.
But what did the NSA tell them to do? The veterans who worked here are still bound under oath, although some say, without elaborating, that there's a great deal about the Soviet activities that would not be known about if not for those stationed here. Others describe it as more of a forewarning post to monitor for Soviet attack.
While the staff were technically part of the army, wearing the uniform and following the rules, there was a feeling of detachment from the "regular army" as they were often just left to do their thing, whatever their thing was. This seems to have led to a rather lighthearted atmosphere, joking even in a tense situation. Sometimes they'd even play pranks on each other, which I think is great. Laughter, after all, is natures anaesthetic. They gave Teufelsberg a rather tongue-in-cheek unofficial motto- "In God we trust. All others, we monitor."
While they weren't really allowed, some allegedly did mingle briefly with the East Germany guards too, trading pornography and cigarettes for Soviet memorabilia.
Personally, I love that. It reminds me of how the soldiers in the first world war stopped at Christmas to mingle with the enemy, play football and sing carols together. That right there is the triumph of the human spirit, even in the face of potential armageddon, breaking through the bullshit and red tape, and being the happy, social, creatures that we are deep down when we're not being put into stupid situations by the people at the top.
Check it out! It's Wolverine!
Each of the facilities huge globes once housed sophisticated spying equipment, enabling them to listen to radio waves, satellite signals, microwave transmissions and other means of communication.
Some say that there was also radar technology here, but that is false. Radar is used to detect objects such as planes or missiles, and West Berlin had plenty of that already. Teufelsberg was purely for listening, or as one put it, "It was a fucking big ear in front of their ass. The Soviets were pissed that the Big Ear could could pick up their farts."
And the Soviets certainly knew that this place was here. They apparently sent a few spy vehicles to get pictures, but nothing ever really came of that. The US spies stationed at Teufelsberg were simply told to make sure they weren't in any of the pictures.
The writing next to the Ghostbusters logo facetiously advertises a graffiti removal service. The website URL takes you to their instagram.
The cat is another of Tobos creations.
Here it's written "All colours are beautiful."
I really love the positivity here.
Peeking inside through the bars in the gated-off main interior, one can see even more graffiti. All of this is off limits, but from what I've seen online, there's a staircase in there that leads up to the roof and to the main tower.
Field Station Berlin stopped listening to the Soviets in 1992, and all of the equipment was removed. It was used for air traffic control for civilian flights until 1994, and then in 1996 it was purchased with plans to build apartments, a hotel and a spy museum. However those plans fell flat on their face, and the owners simply let it rot.
It was then left to the mercy of urban explorers, photographers, film makers, and street artists. If it looks familiar, perhaps you saw it on TV when they filmed an episode of Covert Affairs here, or if you like your Vampire movies you may have seen it in "We are the night."
If you're a fan of Bob Mould then you may recognise this as being the set of the music video for his song "Lost Faith." He got up onto the roof and everything, lucky bastard.
A whinier song, not really to my taste, is "A million stars" by the Faim. That songs video is also filmed here.
And then in 2007 things got a little weird when David Lynch, director of The Elephant Man and Eraserhead, tried to buy it to turn it into a meditation centre for the Maharishi World Peace Movement. Quite the spiritual chap, he planned on having thousands of students study transcendental meditation and yoga, under a "tower of invincibility."
Sadly David Lynch didn't speak German, and when he attended a press conference to explain his vision, he put a little too much faith in his guru Emanuel Schiffgens to convey his vision.
Perhaps confused by what Lynch meant by a "Tower of Invincibility," Schiffgens attended the conference wearing a flowing white robe and a gold crown, and then simply decided to chant "Invincible Germany," at the crowd, in an attempt to incite them.
Not impressed, someone shouted back "That's what Hitler wanted," to which Schiffgens then not-so-cleverly retorted "Yes but unfortunately he didn't succeed."
The crowd went a little mental, David Lynch was heard to say "I have no idea what he just said but I think it might have been something from the third reich," and suffice it to say his plans for a Happiness Institute never took off.
Oh, Emanuel Schiffgens. Hilarious, but tragic.
Some veterans who were stationed here have expressed a desire to have it become a memorial for Major Arthur D Nicholson, who was shot by a Soviet sentry in 1985 while photographing one of their tank storage facilities. Apparently this was a legitimate Military Liason mission, where small numbers of military and intelligence personel were allowed into each others territory for the sake of monitoring and improving relations, easing the tension and whatnot, so the fact that he was shot while he was in East Berlin legitimately really ruffled feathers. The US treated it as cold blooded murder, made worse by the fact that Nicholson was left to bleed to death, when he could have been saved.
Whatever the future of Teufelsberg, it remains at the moment an ever-evolving canvas, and I love it. This relic from one of the most tense eras in human history has become a work of art.
The "golden age" of exploring Teufelsberg came to an end in 2011 when a chap called Shalmon Abraham started renting the place from the neglectful owners. He put a few goons on security to charge admission and to give tours for 15 Euros, but from what I hear these were not legitimate security. In fact they were squatting on site and got pretty rough with those who tried to gain access.
In Shalmon Abrahams defence he actually invited street artists to come here to decorate it as they wanted, creating a win-win situation where he could make the facility visually interesting for those paying to visit, while the street artists would have somewhere iconic to work without scrutiny.
Hilariously, Shalmon Abraham then underestimated the power of the internet, advertised an open day and ended up with thousands attending what became a massive party. It must have been brilliant.
But for Shalmon Abraham, it was a bit of a nightmare as local authorities questioned him making money from allowing thousands of people to roam around a health and safety nightmare.
It turned out that Shalmon wasn't even paying rent on the place, nor was any of the income going towards conservation, and he was eventually evicted.
Still, the owners seemed to have seen something in Shalmon Abrahams vision, realised that money could be made out of Teufelsberg, and began plans to open it as a beer garden and art gallery. Sadly, the dangerous aspects such as the roof, and the tower, have been closed off from the public now, but the art and atmosphere make the visit worthwhile.
Alas, the tower escapes me, and that makes me sad.
Just look at this beauty. I bet the view is amazing.
Oh Teufelsberg, I'll enjoy you in your entirety someday, I promise. I will someday get onto your big phalic... um... moving on.
Nearby was this building that no longer stands, but was clearly once part of the facility. There's a toilet here, for those who don't mind doing their business surrounded by woodland and the wild boar who roam the hill. It's still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs
I'm no architectural expert but I presume these were support collumns for a floor that would have been above. Now they're canvases.
And look,Tobo strikes again!
"You can't get lost if you don't know where you are going."
"It's quite easy to reason logically and still be wrong."
"A negative mind will never give you a positive life."
"A conclusion is simply where you stopped thinking."
And with that, I need to sit down. This is too much wisdom for my tiny head.
Written on the floor it says "Tourists not welcome," but someone has crossed out "Tourists" and written "Nazis" instead.
Much better.
We get these in the UK too, those urban explorers who seem to think that they own the hobby and go on about how they've been doing it for years, how they discovered the abandoned location first and how everyone else doing it today isn't a real urban explorer, like there's an elite club of people who are the only ones allowed to do it.
So basically they're hipsters. And from what I can tell most urban explorers laugh at them.
I personally would like to be more positive, so I try to mingle with those who love the hobby for what it is, without shitting on others, and I always enjoy seeing negative graffiti corrected.
A set of stairs lead down to the carpark, similarly decorated with street art.
And here we have two marvelous relics.
Were these vehicles owned by former staff at this place? With the security fence up in an attempt to make people pay at the gate, this carpark is also now fenced off, meaning these are now part of Teufelsbergs history.
There is something interesting on the horizon for Teufelsberg. In 2020 the data archives will be revealed to the public, and we'll know for the first time exactly what went on here, what was listened to, and what role Teufelsberg played in the war that thankfully never happened.
Allegedly also the rooftop and tower will also someday be reopened to the public, and when that happens I will be back here, all over it like a rash.
In the meantime, share this blog because social medias changing algorithms are a pile of wank. It seems that simply hitting "Follow" and "Like" doesn't always mean you'll see, and sharing it when you do certainly helps with that. But if you are content to just follow and like, then check out my Facebook page, my Instagram and my Twitter.
Next, I'm checking out a cold war bunker and then I'm checking out some abandoned train stations. And soon after that, we have big plans.
Thanks for reading!
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