Abandoned places in and near Berlin

Siemensbahn

One of two in all of Germany - six in Europe! The Prussian-style engine shed was completed in 1893 and could accommodate 24 locomotives. With its round dome, which has a diameter of 40 m, this monument is a rarity - but fortunately the second one is also in Berlin-Rummelsburg. If you want to see three of them you have to go to Piła in Poland.

The reason why there are only so few rotundas left is that they were not so practical anymore due to the extension of the trains and were first replaced by semicircular so-called ring locomotive sheds, one of which is also here in Pankow next to the central shed, and later by rectangular sheds. Therefore, most of the present and still preserved locomotive sheds are rectangular halls, which had the advantage of being accessible from both sides with long trains.

Speaking of today: the Berlin entrepreneur and investor Kurt Krieger (nomen est omen: he has been negotiating with the district administration for ten years), who bought the site, will build a mix of commercial, residential (2000 apartments, 30% of which social) and learning (two day-care centers, primary and secondary school), retail and office space here at "Pankower Tor". Construction is scheduled to start in four years, i.e. 2024, but what will happen to the roundhouse is still unclear, but it will definitely be renovated.

Catchwords: National Socialism, concentration camps, forced labor. During a romantic weekend trip to Oranienburg we made a bicycle tour to abandoned buildings. What I fortunately did not know before: we were near the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and these buildings were part of the Oranienburg clinker factory, which was a large brickworks and a subcamp of the concentration camp.

The buildings we visited were erected by prisoners in 1939 and there ± 80 people baked bread to supply the murderers of the SS. There was practically no interruption of the baking operations due to the war. After 1945 the bakery was run by Red Army soldiers to feed survivors of the concentration camp.

After 1946 it was run by a consumer society and two years later as Konsum-Großbäckerei Oranienburg until shortly after the end of the GDR in 1991. Three years later a fire destroyed part of the facility, which is still empty today and a listed building.

What a cynical change! On the site there was the amusement park "Traumland in Schönholz" (Dreamland), which was replaced by "Luna Park" and was open until the beginning of the war. Therefore the bunker got the name "Luna Bunker". This was built to protect the population from air raids, but when the space was no longer sufficient, air-raid shelters were created in the residential buildings. From then on the bunker was used for radio communication, a large massive anchor ring for the radio mast is located not far from the construction.

The area was transformed from a recreation area to a labor camp where prisoners from France, Belgium and Poland, Croatia, Serbia and Russia were housed in barracks. Forced labourers were also housed in Schönholz Castle and in the Thiemann'sche Festsäle (Festival Halls), which belonged to the park. By the end of 1942 there were up to 2,500 prisoners who worked in the Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken AG Berlin Borsigwalde (German Weapons and Munitions Company), among others.

All that remains of these barracks are a few piles of rubble and lumps of the former foundations. However, two gun turrets with embrasures have been preserved, located south and north of the Strait of Schönholz, which served to guard the so-called "Luna Camp". There are also some paved paths on the site, many buried underground passages of the former fun-fair establishments, and a railing leading to the former theatre, often confused with a bunker, since it is a sunken area.

The airfield was built in 1936 in the course of the Olympic Games and was put into operation as a civil land and water airport. Especially sports and leisure pilots used the runways. At the same time the Bücker Flugzeugwerke opened its new location on the eastern part of the site. Beate Uhse, who later built up a sextoy empire, started here as a trainee and obtained her aerobatics licence at the age of 18 in the Reich Flight School, which was also newly built.

Secretly, parts for war planes were produced there. From the beginning of the war, the Nazis' air force used the area, who had already cooperated with the Bücker Flugzeugwerke before. In 1944 Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg took off from this airfield to carry out an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler.

After the war, the Soviet Air Force took over command. At this point it becomes very personal, because a member of our team spent many years of early childhood here with the father, who worked as a Soviet engineer.