„The historical guided tour for the cold war surveillance station Teufelsberg will start at approximately 1 pm sharp!“. It is 12.58. Maybe the guy at the ticket reception roaring this instruction thinks himself funny. Around 70 people have gathered in the vicinity. They are all waiting for the tour of the Teufelsberg spy installations left from the Cold War, a fantastic lost place.
The Teufelsberg is a hill in the southwestern part of Berlin City, visible from afar. On top are the typical round towers of military radar observation systems. Thus, quite a number of locals have come. Most have probably have often seen these towers and wondered how they look up close. A quarter past 1 pm, the ticket seller is still commanding visitors to sign their names and addresses into a list. Several people comment on his rudeness and the bad vibes he is emitting, so we are glad when the actual guide arrives.
R, the guide, has a grey ponytail and a pleasant and suitably strong voice. He has been involved with the Teufelsberg for three years and found a lot of interesting details. And then, because of the “many interesting things to discover with him”, he proceeds to wish us a fantastic guided tour. Working as tour guides ourselves, we consider this bad style.
Remnants of the cold war at the Teufelsberg
The Teufelsberg („devil’s mountain“) is an about 120 m high hill made of rubble from war destructions. In the Cold War period, British and US troops occupied West Berlin. However, the surrounding provinces were all in the hands of Soviet forces. Therefore, West Berlin itself was a West German island within communist East Germany. Today, you can cycle 160 km around the perimeter of this Berlin island along the Berlin Wall. For over a year in 1948/49, West Berlin was even totally cut off from supplies on the ground! That was the time of the so-called Berlin Airlift. West German and Allied airplanes brought in all the supplies for the city, through the city airport at Tempelhof.
The Teufelsberg was used by the Western intelligence offices as a surveillance station, in order to monitor and to intercept messages within the Eastern Bloc. They could listen as far as Moscow. And the staff also tried to spy on air movements and to send out confusing signals. Several high towers bore special equipment to listen in to far-away radio waves.
How spys work
The whole Teufelsberg cold war surveillance station was a high-security operation; no Germans were allowed to work there. Similarly, the British and American officers were, for example, not allowed to take certain Berlin underground trains. Namely, there were some lines that famously passed through (underground) areas of East Berlin. There were even ghost stations where the trains went through slowly, watched by East German guards.
Electrical lines and computer cables within the buildings of the Teufelsberg Cold War surveillance station were also particularly sensitive. In order to detect any tampering with the cables, the cables ran in in special vacuum-sealed tubes with under-pressure. After all, this spy facility at the very edge of the Cold War border may have been one of the first places to be connected to the newly developed Internet!
The Teufelsberg after the cold war
When the Cold War ended and Germany was unified, the installations became disused and deteriorated. Later, a number of ever more dubious projects moved in. Most of them were trying to utilise the science-fiction-like setting for art events or alternative living models. The main problem with this is that officially the whole area is forest and under natural protection. Therefore, all housing or accommodation projects are impossible, or at least illegal, from the start.
Our guide R talks a lot about the current use and the graffiti art that is prevelent everywhere. The previous administrator had placed additional beton walls in the large halls in order to create more wall space. With that he was trying to attract graffiti artists from all over the world. The concept itself is somewhat interesting, as are some of the graffitis, but it’s not quite what we expect from a historical tour. That is why we leave the group at one point and climb the surveillance tower on our own. The staircase is pitch dark for stretches, but in the semi-circular dome on top there are fantastic acoustics. The dome also offers an amazing view and is also popular with youths drinking cheap sparkling wine.
Is the Teufelsberg cold war surveillance station worth a visit?
Altogether theTeufelsberg cold war surveillance station makes for an interesting outing from Berlin. The setting is definitely weird and as a lost place it is very atmospheric. But we would advise against the so-called historical tour. We think that a normal entrance ticket which allows you to stroll on your own and climb the tower is definitely enough.
NB: We had no sponsoring for this post about the Teufelsberg guided tour. We paid all expenses ourselves. Obviously, the opinions are our own. This post does not contain affiliate links.
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