Lost Places: Five places in Germany that tell of the beauty of decay

2023-08-14 10:18:00

If you enjoyed hanging around in ruined castles as a child, you will surely also like modern ruins. For example, at empty industrial plants, former churches, closed hotels, cleared factory buildings, boarded-up sanatoriums. What they have in common is that they are left to decay. There are hundreds of them in Germany, you can find them in all federal states.

These places are called Lost Places in modern German. Some people come across it by accident, while others are specifically looking for it. The latter call themselves Urbexer, i.e. Urban Explorers. They track down places from earlier human civilization, stroll through overgrown terrain, climb through ruins, enjoy the aura of mystery, take photos and try to capture the charm of decay in disturbingly beautiful snapshots.

Finding such images is not too difficult, they are easy to come across on the Internet. Books also promise insider tips (which aren’t really any more). Photo excursions are offered to some Lost Places, or they are popular as film locations.

The Berlin photojournalist Oliver Gerhard has been going to the Beelitz sanatorium in Brandenburg for years to capture the facility with his camera

Source: Oliver Gerhard

Sometimes the only reminders of the past are the remains of foundations in the ground, overgrown signs or a pile of bricks in the forest. More exciting and mysterious are buildings that have only recently been abandoned, in which ideally there are still old dishes on the table or dusty lamps dangling from the ceiling and rusting away.

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Caution is advised on any Lost Place expedition. Some are in danger of collapsing, sometimes entering is expressly forbidden, elsewhere volunteers make sure that not too much collapses at once. Appropriate signs must be observed, otherwise one commits trespassing. And of course: don’t take anything with you, destroy anything, leave nothing behind, and certainly no rubbish.

We have put together five special Lost Places in Germany, all of them enchanted places with a special atmosphere that were only abandoned a few years or decades ago. Entering the five ruins is not forbidden. You can visit them, either on your own or as part of a guided tour.

Brandenburg: Beelitz sanatoriums

Oliver Gerhard was particularly taken with the creepy and fascinating character of the facility. The Berlin photojournalist has been taking his camera out to Beelitz-Heilstätten in Brandenburg for years. From 1898 one of the largest hospitals in the region was built in the district of Beelitz. The lung sanatoriums became hospitals during the world wars. In 1945 the ensemble of around 60 houses was taken over by the Red Army, it was the largest military hospital outside of the Soviet Union.

In 1994 the military withdrew. The investor who took over the site went bankrupt in 2001. Since then, only parts of the huge complex have been modernized, the rest has sunk in morbid charm. Nature reclaims a lot, some old hospital wings look like overgrown Mayan pyramids in the jungle.

You can stroll around the grounds of the Baum-&-Zeit-Baumkronenpfad Beelitz-Heilstätten, whose makers also offer regular guided tours. Where they lead into the ruins, participants are required to wear helmets.

From the treetop path “Baum & Zeit” you have a good view of the area of ​​the former lung sanatorium in Beelitz-Heilstätten

Quelle: bye/dpa/dpa-ZB/Monika Skolimowska

Of course, the Beelitz sanatoriums are also a fantastic film backdrop – Roman Polanski shot “The Pianist” here, Tom Cruise was there in the film “Operation Valkyrie”. Oliver Gerhard discovered the Lost Place on one of the photo tours that are regularly offered here: “You always find new motifs,” he says, “and there are also fantastic graffiti works of art.” The historical connections are also very exciting – only a highly modern hospital city in the imperial era , later location of the Russians, today decay and destruction. “Where else can you experience that up close?”

The treetop path offers tours to Beelitz-Heilstätten, baumundzeit.de

North Rhine-Westphalia: the Hansa coking plant

Today, the Hansa coking plant in Dortmund is an impressive architectural and industrial monument – but in 1927, when it was built, it itself created abandoned places. As a large coking plant, it replaced smaller coking plants that stood empty and became ruins.

A similar fate befell Hansa in 1992, it was replaced by the new Kaiserstuhl coking plant. In its best times, the Hansa coking plant produced up to 5,200 tons of coke daily from 7,000 tons of coking coal mixture in 314 ovens, i.e. a coal-based fuel that has a higher calorific value and contains less ash and sulfur.

The illuminated Hansa coking plant in Dortmund at night

Source: PA / blickwinkel/S. goat

Anyone interested in the industrial past of the Ruhr area can explore the imposing site with its ovens, laboratories and towers on guided tours and learn more about the work in a coking plant. Conveyor belts, huge boilers, pipes and lines, huge halls with compressors – especially those who are not familiar with coal mining and its related industries can learn a lot here and experience a journey into the past.

A special plus: Former employees guide you through the disused coking plant, which is a large walk-in sculpture. If you want to find out more background information, you can download a media guide tour as an app onto your smartphone.

Information, including guided tours: industriedenkmal-stiftung.de/denkmale/kokerei-hansa; nrw-tourismus.de/a-kokerei-hansa-dortmund

Berlin: the Teufelsberg

Everything is great in this place: history, present and view. In flat Berlin you can’t often see far, but you can from this 120-meter-high mountain of rubble in the west of the city. Berlin’s heaps of rubble arose after the Second World War. By 1972, the Teufelsberg had grown from a total of 26 million cubic meters of rubble and became the highest peak in West Berlin.

It was covered with earth and planted with a million trees; in winter there was even a ski lift. The Americans “planted” giant white spheres on the top, which are still visible from afar today – they are the remains of a flight monitoring and listening station of the US armed forces.

The remains of the former air traffic control and listening station of the US armed forces on Teufelsberg are battered and covered in graffiti

Quelle: pa/Eibner-Pressefoto/Augst

For more than 20 years, the complex has been empty and decaying. Graffiti covers every wall in the area, even the stairwells to the viewpoints are full of them – but you can only see it with a flashlight, because inside it’s pitch black, almost scary.

The reverberation in the balls themselves is surprising – if you need a stage to sing, you can try it here. The area is confusing and poorly secured. You have to be careful where you step.

Current visit regulations (individual or with a guide): teufelsberg-berlin.de/besuch/

Baden-Württemberg: the “Hotel Waldlust”

In May 1900 a grand hotel opened in Freudenstadt, the “Waldlust”. In the most magnificent Art Nouveau style, the dining veranda beckoned, a conservatory for dining. The press praised the elegance and splendor of the new house, which shone from the hillside with white, ornate balconies, with a panorama as far as the Swabian Jura.

The balconies of the former grand hotel “Waldlust” once offered guests a great view

Source: pa/dpa/Uli Deck

Aristocrats, sultans and movie stars came, there were 140 rooms, 60 private bathrooms, 100 balconies. In 1922 a ballroom decorated with stucco opened. During the war the house was used as a military hospital, after which guests came again. In 1949 the hotel owner was murdered in the house. The “Waldlust” remained a hotel, but now there was talk of inexplicable phenomena – who knows whether the ghost of the dead still haunts the corridors and rooms?

View of the hotel’s stucco ballroom, which opened in 1922

Quelle: Uli Deck/picture alliance/dpa

The “Waldlust” remained an attraction for vacationers until 2005, since then there have been no more overnight guests. Fortunately, an association is now taking care of the preservation of the listed property, the decay has stopped, there are worthwhile photo tours where you can still come across chandeliers and dusty upholstered furniture. It is uncertain whether the house will ever reopen as a hotel.

Guided tours and photo tours at waldlust-denkmal.de

Bavaria: the explosives factory Fasan

The locals still call the plant “the factory”. We are talking about the former explosives factory Fasan in the forest near Bobingen south of Augsburg. Artificial silk was first produced here from 1899, but during the Nazi era they switched to highly explosive hexogen.

The factory had been an armaments factory for Dynamit AG since the late 1930s, and the factory was responsible for a large part of the Wehrmacht’s explosives production. “Pheasant” was the alias. In 1945 the US Army occupied the plant, which was partially damaged by bombing in 1944. After that, artificial silk was produced there again.

Nature is gradually reclaiming the site of the former explosives factory Fasan

Source: Markus slotted spoon

You can only walk around on the site of the former Fasan II factory, Fasan I is on private property. Wandering through the forest, you will come across gloomy corridors, weather-beaten concrete walls and lots of graffiti. And the almost comforting fact that everything is gradually disappearing, roots are penetrating the masonry, trees are growing out of it.

Some of the remains of the facilities in the Fasan II area can be visited on your own. Signs prohibiting access must be observed. The same applies to the commemorative character of the area, which the historians Anne Dreesbach and Laura Bachmann refer to in their book “Lost & Dark Places Oberbayern” (Bruckmann Verlag): “Forced laborers had to live and work at this place so that a war could be sustained – this is a place of remembrance and not a place for excessive partying.”

Visit to the Fasan II area on your own

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This article was first published in November 2022.