Teufelsberg, Berlin

 I hope that you will indulge me but I want to look back at some of the places I’ve visited this year. I was looking through my camera roll on my phone and the Teufelsburg just on the outskirts of Berlin really stood out. 

It started out as a place to dump rubble and dispose of the ruins that Berlin had been turned in to by allied bombing during the latter stages of World War Two. Gradually this grew into a very large hill that over looked the city below. 

American intelligence agencies saw the potential in building a listing post to pick up radio transmissions from east Berlin and the GDR/DDR below as all this was inside the British sector at the time they also built a listening post. 

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany reunified and the ending of the Cold War the listening posts became redundant and were abandoned. The option on the lease was purchased by developers but lapsed before it could be used. 

The listening station became a home for artists and they would use the walls of the station as their canvases and develop their art. Now it’s a museum and gallery, the museum is dedicated to the men and women who worked in the listening stations during the Cold War and the gallery is available to view by the public. The art is really good and well worth an vist and it’s really cheap to enter. 

It’s also very close to the Olympic stadium