This was, to be honest, my primary motivation for coming to Germany. The airfield, the Nazi base, the tank barracks, and the train stations were all just icing on the cake. This was what I was after! Spreepark! Finally after all these years!
I'd heard about it years ago and filed it away in a distant part of my mind called "I would, but..."
Until finally one day I said to myself "But what?"
None of us were born miserable, the government doesn't make us boring, and lack of a sizeable income doesn't mean we can't afford some good old fashioned derring-do!
We build our own prisons and we set our own boundaries, and my derring-do is not yet derring done!
Welcome to Spree Park!
Judging by the photos and videos by urban explorers in years gone by, there is tragically only a fraction of SpreePark left to see. I got here a little too late. More recently security have began cutting back some of the jungle to deny trespassers of their precious hiding places. Rumours of a strong security presence are not unfounded, although the rumours that they have dogs may be. I saw no dogs, but I did see plenty of beefy men patroling the area. It was really only a matter of time before I was escorted out. The question was, how much could I see before then?
(All vintage photos are not mine, obviously)
SpreePark originally opened in 1969 under the title "Kulterpark Planterwald." As this was East Berlin, it was nicknamed the "Disney Land of Communism," famous for being the first theme park to open in East Berlin, and the only communist theme park to have rides imported from non-communist countries.
The Ferris Wheel, better known as Das Riesenrad, was a propaganda piece in itself, unveiled on the 20th birthday of the German Demographic Republic, which is basically the official term for East Germany back when it was run by the Soviets. It was basically their way of saying "Check us out! 20 years, baby! Woooo!!!!"
In 1989, to celebrate the fortieth birthday of the German Demographic Republic, the ferris wheel was upgraded to a larger one with forty cabins instead of the 36 that the previous one had.
It was another show of dominance, really. "40 years, baby! Woooo!!!!"
Ironically the Berlin Wall fell about a month later and Germany was reunified. "East Germany" was no more.
Following the reunification, Kulterpark Planterwald was renamed "SpreePark," its name coming from the River Spree that it sits alongside. As a fun, but fitting coincidence, "Spree" also means "fun" in Irish Gaelic, although it's spelled "Spraoi" because, you know, Gaelicness.
In 1991, SpreePark fell into the hands of a chap called Norbert Witte and his wife Pia, purchased under Pia's name due to Norberts troubled past. Luckily for them, his references weren't properly checked. Had they been, it would have surfaced that in 1981 Norbert Witte had accidentally killed seven people and injured fifteen more when he crashed a crane into a carousel while attempting to repair a rollercoaster in Hamburg. It was, in his own words, the worst experience of his life.
At first, the story of Pia and Norbert is quite romantic. She was the daughter of a man who owned a bumper car ride, and he was the son of a carnival performer. They met at the ages of fourteen and sixteen, and were married five years later. Dreaming of opening their own carnival, they purchased a ride called the Katapult, quickly collected eight others, employed forty people and went on the run. Times were great until the unfortunate event of 1980. Being responsible for multiple horrific deaths has a habit of pissing all over ones dreams of bringing joy into peoples lives. They went their separate ways for a bit. Pia took six carnival rides and thirty employees and went to tour Yugoslavia.
They eventually reunited and decided to give their dream another go, with SpreePark.
Today, Spreepark consists of multiple empty, rotting attractions protruding from a jungle. Nature has started claiming it all back. Evidently their dream came crashing down again.
Some of the more sturdier buildings still stand and are accessible, no doubt serving for storage and utility back in the parks glory days.
Norbert Wittes family history is also pretty amazing. His grandfather, carnival performer Otto Witte, once made headlines with claims that he'd somehow bamboozled his way into becoming King of Albania in 1913. The story goes that he was found to be having an affair with an Abyssinian princess, and was due to be hanged. He was saved when he noticed his resemblance to the King-in-waiting of Albania, Halim Eddine. Albanian leadership was a little up in the air at the time, having only just achieved independance from the Ottoman Empire. Otto Witte decided to rent a King-like outfit and then simply showed up at the Albanian capital while the real Halim Eddine was on holiday. Otto claimed to have ruled Albania for five days, during which he enjoyed a harem and declared war on Montenegro, as you do. He was then found out and had to make a cunning getaway.
The media ran with the story, and Otto's legal ID was even allowed to be changed to say "former King of Albania" on it. He refused to answer any mail that didn't address him as such, and it was put on his tombstone and everything!
It took a while before anyone realised one crucial detail.
There was no Sultan named Halim Eddine! Otto had made the whole thing up and the newspapers and magazines treated it as fact! Even Time Magazine ran the story in 1958, and many still believe it to be fact to this day!
As much as I'd love the story to be true, it's still cool that it isn't. Otto may or may not have fooled Albania, but he sure fooled the world into thinking he did. He died at the age of 87, with newspapers running headlines like "former king of Albania found dead in shabby trailer." He got away with it even in death. What a legend.
It seems Otto had a history of making crazy stories about his misadventures, claiming to have been a candidate for German presidency in 1925, and also being made an honorary chief of a pygmy tribe in Africa. How the worlds media fell for his tale is anyones guess. His daughter Elfriede referred to him as the greatest adventurer of all time. He certainly sounds like a hilarious character! Why did Hugh Jackman prance around as P T Barnum? I want to see a musical about Otto Fucking Witte!
At its peak, Spreepark had 1.5 million visitors per year. Norbert Witte set about making various changes, taking the once-communist Kulterpark and remaking it in a way that appealed to Western culture. Gone was the asphalt flooring, replaced with nature, ponds and canals. Most of the Kulterpark-era attractions were removed, the ferris wheel and Fresswurfel restaurant being the only two to remain as Norbert filled it with new attractions, including those that he purchased from a closed park in France. There was also a Wild West themed area, and an "Old English" area, as well as an amphitheatre that displayed regular stunt shows.
Norbert also did away with the Kulterpark policy of having visitors pay an individual fee for each attraction. Instead there was now a singular entry fee to the park, of 29DM for adults, and 27DM for kids.
The Ferris wheel was accessed via a bridge over a lake, complete with viking ship that now sits grounded on the lake bed. Every now and again the wind will still takes the ferris wheel for a spin, and when that happens it lets out an eerie screech as rusty metal grinds against rusty metal and it springs back to life with a painful exclamation that fate isn't done with it just yet.
Hilariously in the summer of 2013, just over a decade after the parks closure, a ninety year old woman snuck into the park and sat in the ferris wheel, remembering it fondly from back when it was operational, later telling authorities that she just had to see it one last time. She did more than just see it, as the wind suddenly seized the ferris wheel and took her straight up into the air, but not back down again! She could do nothing but scream for security, who then called the fire brigade to get her down. A fun story. Imagine sneaking into an abandoned theme park at the age of ninety! She's my idol!
But she wasn't the first to ride the ferris wheel after the park had closed. In 2012 an urban explorer posted a video on Youtube where he sat in the cabin of the ferris wheel while eight other urban explorers, almost all of which he'd met that day in the Spreepark, turned the ferris wheel manually by pushing the cabins on ground level. It's a crazy idea, but it does put a bit of positivity into urban exploring, which isn't without its fair share of toxic folks, as with any group. But when eight people just happen to meet at an abandoned theme park, and have fun doing stuff like this, one can't help but smile. I probably would have wanted a spin myself!
One also can't help but feel jealous when one looks at the photos and videos of past explorations of SpreePark. I got here too late.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
The Viking boat, long sadly marooned, once had a mighty dragons head on the front, but it has since been stolen. The boat itself wasn't "functional" as a boat attraction. Instead it was more ornamental, but served a practical purpose of supporting a walkway across to the ferris wheel. That walkway has now also gone, removed to stop any other mishaps with the ferris wheel.
There's a small railway line that sprawls out arounf SpreePark, that used to offer train rides to guests. In its decay, someone once graffitied on the train, saying that they wished to purchase it, and even adding their phone number. Whether the purchase went ahead, I don't know, but the train is long gone, nonetheless.
There's a thatched roof train station up ahead, where people no doubt boarded the train and went on their little ride.
It has a decorative clock on it, which is a nice touch. It's only right twice a day though.
SpreeParks decline began in 1999 as it began falling into debt. They raised the entry fee to 30DM, but the real issue was the inadequate parking facilities, which they found they weren't allowed to expand due to the surrounded area being a conservation area. This infuriated Norbert, who said that nobody had told him, and that he'd never have invested in the site if he had known. He basically felt like he'd been set up to fail.
Here we have the old Swan Boat routes, better known as the Schwanenbootes. I actually fell in love with the German language while I was over here. In England we hear this angry ranty stereotype that makes all German speech sound monstrous, but it's a huge myth. When one is actually there among the German people, one realises that their language is actually quite soft and really quite nice to speak and listen to.
Numerous schwanenbootes lurk beneath the murky water, but luckily a few have been retrieved, and can be found dotted around the park.
Lurking across a lake protruded the water ride, best known as the Wildwasser Bahn. I've actually found a photo of this ride back in the parks glory days.
(Photo not mine)
The cars of numerous other rides litter the park, as if they're in a queue to be repurposed and put back to use.
The cup carousel is also still here, although it's seen better days. The cups even still rotate if one pushes them.
Only 400,000 visitors entered SpreePark throughout the entirety of 2001, and in 2002 Norbert and Pia closed the park for good, with debts of around 11,000,000 Euros. Their dream had failed. However, if they thought they were at rock bottom, they were in for a shock.
Norbert sent Pia and their five children to Peru, with the plan of opening up a new park over there, called Luna Park. He reassured Pia that he would follow after them but needed to stay in Germany to pack up the rides and ship them over. The media were quick to notice as various SpreePark rides vanished, and ran headlines pondering if SpreePark was secretly moving elsewhere. Norbert had promised Pia that he'd managed to get them a house in Peru, but when she got there, she found that the man she loved was a bit of a fibber. He'd not got a house for them at all. In fact, he'd not prepared anything. She was suddenly stuck in a country she'd never been to before with her five children and no home. Fortunately she bounced back and found herself a villa. Norbert soon joined her. However their dreams of opening Luna Park were crushed- Numerous rides had been disassembled to get through customs, and many were damaged. Others were damaged further by the moist climate of Peru. With repair costs added to their debts, Pia was struggling to feed her kids and eventually dropped the whole Luna Park dream to return to Germany.
Only Norbert and his son, Marcel, remained in Peru. There, Norbert made one desperate but horrendous attempt to get out of his debts. He got involved with a massive drug smuggling operation. Rides were being shipped from SpreePark to Peru with the excuse that he was repairing them, but he was sending them back with cocaine hidden in their masts. One of his accomplices turned out to be an undercover investigator, and the whole thing came crashing down. 180kg of cocaine was found in one ride, and both Norbert and his son Marcel were arrested.
Norbert was arrested in Germany, and sentenced to eight years, of which he served four. Marcel had the misfortune to be arrested in Peru, and was sentenced to twenty years. He's still there to this day, feeling pretty betrayed. Allegedly he didn't even know about the cocaine smuggling.
Norbert blames himself, saying that his son would never have gotten involved in all this by himself, and that he'd ruined his sons life and destroyed their family.
Pia blamed him too, and ended their marriage.
So today, Marcel lives in one of Peru's most notorious prisons, built with a maximum capacity of 500, but somehow housing over 3000 crammed in like sardines. It's also incredibly understaffed, and life inside is pretty terrible. The food is pretty shit, sometimes literally. The staff, also corrupt, will rent out cells for about $250 a month to any prisoner who wants a good nights sleep.
For actual criminals it sounds pretty cool. I'd have absolutely no issue knowing that murderers and rapists were living in such conditions, but similarly, one can't help feel sorry for Marcel, who phones his mother every day to let her know that he's still alive.
Back to SpreePark, we have here the sad sight of a tyrannosaurus rex lying on its back, fenced off. There was a security guard just around the corner so I couldn't risk getting too close. This former king of the Dinosaurs is the last surviving remnant of SpreeParks prehistoric section. There used to be others, such as the sauropods and the triceratops, and even some post-cretacious creatures like Sabretooth Cats and a colossal mammoth. Around the lakes of the SpreePark, Plesiosaurs could be seen emerging from the water too. Over the years, entire prehistoric creatures, or just bits of them, have gone missing. By the time anyone decided "Lets put a fence around the T-Rex," it was too late to save them.
Since closing, SpreePark has had its uses. In 2011 it was used to film the final scene in Hanna, which I'll add below. I think the video is slightly sped up, but thats the uploader, not me.
Alas, Hanna shows the SpreePark in a much more complete, but run down condition to what it is today. I imagine that was fun to scurry around.
The park was also the set for a music video by a band called Sizarr. It's actually a really surreal video that I can't help but love. They got to see SpreePark in the snow, and it looks amazing! Even if the music isn't in everyones taste, people might be interested to know that the screaching sound at the start of the song is a recording of the Ferris Wheel turning in the wind. That is the actual sound it makes! Now imagine that as a soundtrack to walking around the SpreePark, and you'll get some idea of how creepy this place can be to roam around.
The only downside of the video is, at 0:25, as we pan up the guy walking we see that he hasn't dressed himself properly, and we get a nice eyeful of his ass in his underwear. Seriously, why does he even have a belt? It's clearly not serving a purpose!
It gets even worse at 1:52 when he see that he's actually being pursued around the park by a small girl. Do you think she wants to stroll around the park looking at his ass? No wonder at 3:09 she tells him to fuck off down the tunnel into the dark.
But on a positive for anyone curious about what the Viking boat looked like before it was decaptitated, it's in the video, along with various other chunks of SpreePark that are simply not there to enjoy anymore.
Other bands have played gigs here too, but perhaps most bizarrely, Playboy rented it out for one of their parties.
Following his arrest and the end of his marriage, Norbert Witte did return briefly to live on site in a caravan, and build wooden stalls for festivals in the run down bumper car ride. His daughter, Sabrina, ran a snack van and did tours of the dilapidated theme park, which people say she brought a lot of charm and humour to, telling fun stories of what it was like to grow up in a family-run theme park. She and her siblings would take the rollercoaster cars off the tracks at night and race them, and turn up the speed on the water slide for their own enjoyment after the park was closed. She claims that if she won the lottery, she would buy the park immediately.
But ultimately Norbert and Sabrina had gone by 2014, when the City of Berlin obtained legal ownership of the park.
Judging by the style of the buildings, I assume this was once the "wild west" portion of the SpreePark.
There would have been a clock on this wall, but that has been removed. By the looks of it, it used Roman Numerals. Whether or not they are authentic in a "wild west" themed area, I have no idea.
Quite shocking, but perhaps not surprising, SpreePark is estimated to have around 500 burglaries a year, and included among those are the theft of signs that tell people to keep out!
The dinosaurs and the mammoth were stolen in April 2014, and Sabrina Witte herself had to retrieve a swan boat after thieves took it joyriding down the river spree. Perhaps most shocking was the theft of the bumper cars- Not just the cars themselves but the whole damn ride!
Predictably, almost all of the copper has also been plundered.
The current Site Manager, Wolfgang Schilling, misses the point entirely when he says "I don't understand why we have all these illegal visitors, who hurt their hands climbing over the fence or waddle through the overgrowth like wild boars. There's nothing to see here anymore!"
He'd love my blog.
Tragically in August 2014 there were two fires, each set simulataneously at separate areas of the park, and quite clearly arson. "Old England" was wiped out, along with a horror attraction, a huge tent , a pirate-themed shooting range and the games area where people wasted their money trying to grab teddies with a claw. That was a good 5000-square-metre of awesomeness lost forever.
The powers-that-be upped the security somewhat after that.
Mayor Oliver Igel, whose name adorably translates to "Hedgehog" dismissed claims that this was kids messing around, stating that there were other parties at play here, who were interested in manipulating what this land could be used for in the future. It actually sounds plausible. This sort of thing happens in the UK all the time. But in this case, Mayor Hedgehog was wrong. Four men were arrested for the arson, having also set fire to a car that night too. They were 19, 20, 21 and 29, and they admitted that they had started the fires to celebrate that the oldest one was about to do 35 days in jail for refusing to pay fines for earlier thefts.
As you can tell, if you wait patiently and don't do the washing up for several months until mold starts to grow on all of your plates, you'll have created a lifeform thats more intelligent than these four combined. These are the ones who should be thrown in that prison in Peru!
Lastly, surviving amongst the jungle of SpreePark is the SpreeBlitz rollercoaster!
The cars still sit up on the rusty ride, daring someone to climb up and sit in them. It certainly wouldn't be the first time I'd climbed a roller coaster, but I'm fairly sure the SpreeBlitz is more famous than the Knightmare of Camelot.
The tracks of this rollercoaster lead through the iconic cats mouth there in the bushes. I couldn't contain myself any longer and made a break for it, but mere seconds later a firm black hand clamped down on my shoulder. I'd been caught. It was over.
The security, while firmly adhering to the rules, were quite friendly and did make conversation as they walked us out.
My sister had accompanied me through SpreePark, and as the security shuffled us out, she did a terrific job distracting them with questions and requests for toilet breaks, which allowed me time to take some quick additional snaps. This was some pretty nifty teamwork. We were like Mungojerry and Rumpleteaser, only not as graceful. Claus and Claudia of the Chipmunks movie (the one from the 80s, not the modern shit ones) only not as weird looking! God, those two were hideous! Back then, producers didn't care about scaring the crap out of kids.
There's this old store room, but it's pretty featureless. It drew my attention with the zombie warning on the door, but it disapointed me with a lack of the undead.
For me, SpreePark was over for the foreseeable future. It continues to rot away in East Berlin.
By law this land must remain a theme park until 2061, and that's put off a lot of potential buyers, along with the 30 million euros of debt that comes with the park, and the limited carpark space that makes it financially unviable as a theme park.
In an interesting twist, Erich Von Daniken, a man who has written several books on "Ancient Astronauts" and the Annunaki's influence on early humans, tried to buy Spree Park to build a UFO landing site. The city of Berlin declined, because a race of aliens that allegedly genetically engineered humans to serve as slaves in ancient times probably wouldn't be too keen on paying taxes to the descendants of those slaves.
The lease for Spree Park also ended up on Ebay, but there were no takers.
Many speculate that city officials want to keep their hands on it and build luxury apartments on the land after 2061.
Norbert Witte is angry and bitter at being hoodwinked by Politicians, sold land with the inability to accomodate every visitor with a suitable parking space, and he's even angrier at the media whenever they say that Spree Parks natural surroundings have recovered, because he's the one who broke up the sea of concrete that was East Germanys Kultervald, planted the grass and built the lakes and introduced wildlife to them. And yet for all his frustrations he still has dreams of one day re-opening it. He says "I always have either a lot or nothing at all. I'm curious to see if I can make it to the top once again."
He's nowhere near the top. His family has fallen apart, along with his dreams of running a theme park. He readily admits "Parents are there to protect their children, therefore I failed completely."
That's all I have for SpreePark. Maybe someday I'll explore it in its entirety and climb the rollercoaster. But for now I'm content with having gotten inside. The days of explorers riding the ferris wheel and posing for pictures on the back of an apatosaurus are long gone, but unless I get my hands on a
Next time, I'm doing a blog on my Shropshire blog about war-related stuff, and then I'll be doing another post here about the final bits and bobs of Berlin, crossing the T's and dotting the I's. In the meantime, share the blog, and like my Facebook, follow my Instagram and follow my Twitter. Thanks for reading!
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