Zombie Hospital (Kinderkrankenhaus Weißensee). Photography by Ciarán Fahey.
Berlin is a city haunted by its traumatic past, with ghosts of yesteryear lurking behind many a wind-chilled corner. A century of upheaval driven by cycles of development and destruction has left its mark on the German capital: abandoned hospitals, military bases, factories, breweries, fairgrounds, schools, colleges, train stations, airports, embassies, sanatoriums, bunkers, boats, swimming pools, bowling alleys—you name —dot the cityscape and beyond.
But Berlin is also easily distracted by new things, though they don’t always live up to expectation. The new airport, for example, just can’t get off the ground, and by the time it opens up—if it opens up at all, that is—it will be deemed too small and the city will need another. And so it goes: the leftovers are cast aside, forgotten and neglected, left to fester and deteriorate beneath layers of refuse and bottle caps. So, who could blame them for striking back? Who can blame them for reminding us that they’re still here? They demand respect, the ghosts of Berlin’s past. Tip your hat to them if you meet any this Halloween.
1. Beelitz-Heilstätten
Few places around Berlin are spookier than the hospital complex at Beelitz-Heilstätten, whose haunted halls played host to Adolf Hitler, Erich Honecker, Red Army soldiers and plenty more. On top of that, the “Beast of Beelitz” terrified local women when he went on a killing spree in the area between 1989-91. Wolfgang (now Beate) Schmidt murdered five women—including the wife of a Russian doctor working at Beelitz and their baby—and tried to kill more before being eventually caught by two joggers in the forest.
Opening its doors as a tuberculosis sanatorium in 1902, Beelitz found new use in 1914 following the outbreak of the First World War—Hitler was among the 12,586 patients treated there after hurting his thigh during the Battle of the Somme, and whiled away almost two months in Beelitz in 1916. After WWII, the victorious Russians took over, turning Beelitz into the largest Soviet military hospital outside the USSR, and in December 1990, former DDR leader Honecker was admitted with liver cancer, having just seen his country cease to exist. Now, only the phantoms survive, though their time might be up too with investors circling.
2. Zombie Hospital (Kinderkrankenhaus Weißensee)
In Weißensee, in the eastern district of Pankow, lies an abandoned children’s hospital, known colloquially as ‘Zombie Hospital’. Opening to great fanfare as Prussia’s first municipal children’s hospital in 1911, complete with milk production facilities including a cowshed and dairy, Kinderkrankenhaus Weißensee remained open, with buildings added to it, right up to October 1987, before it was cruelly shut down after 85 and a half years of service to Berlin’s newest arrivals on 1 January 1997. It’s been idle ever since, punished by weather and abused by brainless ‘zombies’ who insist on burning it every so often. It’s a favourite for arsonists.
3. Anatomy Institute
This place is best avoided on Halloween—in case the students come back looking for more bodies to chop up. Clues hinting at their gruesome activities are abandoned all around: tiled rooms, laboratories, dissecting tables, display cases, strange contraptions, eerie auditoriums, projector rooms, hurriedly scribbled notes… and that’s before you even reach the basement! (Note: Don’t go to the basement. It will send a chill down your spine. This is where the corpses were stored, kept fresh in stainless steel fridges stacked like pigeonholes). Located in Dahlem, in the outer-skirts of the city, this was Freie Universität Berlin’s Institute of Anatomy before the facility moved for fancier facilities in Mitte in 2005. None of the corpses were in a position to complain.
4. Siemensbahn abandoned S-Bahn Line
Berlin has more than its fair share of ghost stations due to the division of the city caused by the Berlin Wall. Three ghost stations haunt the tracks along the forgotten Siemensbahn, an S-Bahn line that used to start at Jungfernheide and take in S-Bahn stations Wernerwerk, Siemensstadt, before ending at Gartenfeld. They’ve been waiting for trains to trundle through again since September 1980, when a boycott of DDR-run S-Bahns through West Berlin and then a train workers’ strike gave the East German state railway enough reason to cut the service. There is talk of banishing the ghosts with the whoosh of new trains operating the Siemensbahn again, but they’ll be haunting this line for a long time yet.
5. Wünsdorf-Waldstadt, military headquarters
Once the Soviets abandoned the former military camp at Wünsdorf in September 1994, they left Lenin behind to look after the place. To make sure he really looked after the place, they left two statues of him— one frowning reproachfully outside a now boarded up villa, the other doing much the same across the lawn, outside the “Haus der Offiziere” (the Officers’ House). The two of them have been haunting the place since, presumably with the spirits of any number of disgruntled soldiers.
Wünsdorf’s military history began long before the Russians arrived, going back to the time of the Imperial German Army and Prussian Army. By 1914, Wünsdorf was Europe’s largest military base, hosting Germany’s first mosque for muslim POWs, and was later used by the Nazis, becoming the Wehrmacht headquarters in 1935. After WWII, Wünsdorf reinvented itself as the Red Army’s headquarters in Germany. It was the biggest Soviet military camp outside the USSR, so big it was known as Little Moscow, with trains running to the real Moscow every day. To locals, it was “die Verbotene Stadt” (the Forbidden City), off-limits unless the Russians said otherwise. But they’re gone now. Only their ghosts remain.
Ciarán Fahey is the author of Abandoned Berlin. All photography courtesy of the author.