Photo: Cbmd
As the days grow shorter and Berlin's trees take on their Autumn colors I've been spending more time out of doors exploring the city's natural surroundings. With two rivers, dozens of lakes and countless acres of woodlands, Berlin is one of Europe's greenest cities, and a few minutes of strenuous pedalling in almost any direction will be rewarded with a leafy picnic spot or a sandy bank from which to watch the sun set. But the city's traumatic history casts its long shadow across even its greenest environs, a fact I encountered again this past weekend when I made a trip out to Teufelsberg, Berlin's "Devil's Mountain".
Out of the Forest of History
Cycling westward, out past the Olympic Stadium where Jesse Owens claimed his four golds in 1936, a short turn away from Heerstrasse's Sunday traffic brought me to the base of one of the city's strangest spots. Teufelsberg is a manmade mountain, created from twelve million cubic meters of rubble - the rubble of Berlin's bomb-blasted buildings carted out to the city's border and dumped over the ruins of a Nazi-era military college on the edge of the Grunewald forest. Forming one of the area's highest hills this artificial geology was soon reclaimed by nature and subsumed beneath native trees and grasses.
Though the trail was wide the hill's steep grade forced me off my bike. As as I hiked out of the treeline I finally saw what had drawn me, and dozens of others, here on this chilly afternoon. During Berlin's Cold War division Teufelsberg lay in the British Sector and the Western Allies quickly realized it was splendid for spying upon communist East Berlin's electronic communications. So the US National Security Agency fenced off the mountain's peak and installed one of their largest listening stations, a half dozen radio domes sprouting from the top of the hill like massive malevolent mushrooms. The Cold War is now history, but those eerie domes still dominate Teufelsberg's skyline and exert a powerful pull on locals and visitors alike.
A Porous Perimeter
Photo: Viernullvier
Despite its closure after German reunification the listening station is still fenced off and entrance is strictly prohibited. However, a short walk along the perimeter revealed a hole snipped through the fence, one of several through which daytrippers creep to wander around the abandoned compound.
Photo: Schrottie
Though first relieved not to be roaming the grounds alone, I was soon amazed by the dozens of fellow curiousity seekers nosing about. I made my way past the broken windows of the empty security offices and toward the main building, whose remaining walls display an impressive amount of street art and rainbows of graffiti.
After threading my way up a narrow stairway I stepped out onto the main platform, decaying domes on either side as I gazed out across Berlin's cityscape. I could easily see all the way to Alexanderplatz with its iconic TV Tower and I quickly understood why NSA loved this place. More visitors had now climbed the stairs to emerge on the platform and we exchanged smiles and greetings as we snapped photos and admired the view. The radar domes themselves have been cut open in dozens of places, victims of souvenir hunters, but their strange magic remained, as constant as the strong breeze blowing over the platform.
Penthouse for Paranoids
Photo: Jordi Torà
I again gathered my courage and curiousity and climbed the darkened stairway up the five floors to the highest dome. Here the souvenir hunters must have met their match, as the dome was in perfect condition, with only a single doorway admitting light into the darkened interior. The acoustics were also uncanny, even minute sounds were amplified by the spherical shape and visitors reacted by speaking in whispers.
The resulting hush, along with splashes of graffiti the color of stained glass, produced an oddly religious atmosphere, the dome a church of some alien creed. I spent some time contemplating the fate of this structure, first created and then abandoned by the vagaries of Berlin's unique history. Afterwards I carefully made my way back down through the ruined structures to the more stable, if no less artificial, grounds of the mountain itself. Climbing back through the fence and onto my bicycle, I was soon drifting downhill and back into the shadows of those trees which would someday reclaim even this last strange crown of Devil's Mountain.
