Teufelsberg

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Teufelsberg
Former US wiretapping building, 2007

Former US wiretapping building, 2007

height 120.1  m above sea level NHN
location Berlin ( Germany )
Coordinates 52 ° 29 '52 "  N , 13 ° 14' 34"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 29 '52 "  N , 13 ° 14' 34"  E
Teufelsberg (Berlin)
Teufelsberg
Type Mountain of rubble
particularities Covering the shell of the defense technology faculty

The Teufelsberg is a mountain of rubble in the west of Berlin and according to measurements from 2013 at 120.1  m above sea level. NHN is the second highest elevation in the city after the Arkenberge . The hill - with a view of the Grunewald nature reserve and the Havel  - is located in the Grunewald district ( Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district ) on the Teufelsseechaussee between the Grunewald and Heerstraße S-Bahn stations . It takes its name from the nearby Teufelssee . The striking buildings of a flight surveillance and listening station for the US armed forces are located on the mountain. After the military withdrew, the facility was used as an air traffic control radar station from 1991 to 1999 . Since then the buildings have been empty and dilapidated.

history

Backfilling of the mountain

View of the wiretapping system, 1974
Search Tower , from the roof of the US Radome Unit , 2009

In the 1940s, on the site of today's Teufelsberg, was the shell of the Defense Technology Faculty , which was to be built as part of the National Socialist project of the world capital Germania . Shortly after the Second World War , the facility was blown up, partially demolished and used as building material. The remaining building remains were filled with rubble from 1950. Other landfills such as the Insulaner , the Wilmersdorfer Stadium on Fritz-Wildung-Straße (formerly: Lochowdamm ), on the site of the former gas station had reached the intended capacity and could no longer be used. For 22 years, up to 800 trucks dumped up to 7,000 cubic meters of rubble every day; on November 14, 1957, the ten millionth cubic meter was approached. By 1972, a total of 26 million cubic meters of rubble had been dumped here. That corresponds roughly to a third of the rubble of bombed Berlin houses and around 15,000 buildings; In addition, there was a small proportion of industrial waste and construction rubble that accumulated on the Messedamm . The artificially raised Teufelsberg became the highest elevation in what was then West Berlin .

After the deposition was completed in 1972, the landscape was designed with sand and topsoil and planted with around a million trees. The Senate also had winter sports facilities such as a ski slope , a toboggan run , a ski jump and a drag lift built. On the occasion of the 750th anniversary of Berlin in 1987, a doctoral competition in parallel slalom was held on December 28, 1986 on the ski slope with well-known skiers. The winner was the former world champion and Olympic champion from 1980 Leonhard Stock from Austria .

Cold War period

Tobogganing on the Teufelsberg, 1978

In the 1950s, the US Army discovered the mountain as an excellent location for a wiretapping system. The initially mobile installation for monitoring the airspace - especially the three flight corridors between Berlin and the Federal Republic - was soon replaced by permanent buildings, resulting in the Berlin Teufelsberg Field Station . To this end, five antenna domes were erected over time, which took over monitoring tasks during the Cold War that extended well into the Warsaw Pact area . The system on the Teufelsberg was now mainly operated by the National Security Agency (NSA) and served as part of the global spy network Echelon . From 1957, the facility was also used by the following US and British reconnaissance and security services:

Decay of the facility, 2009
Background noise in the dome of the listening station
  • 1957: 280th ASA Company of the US Army Security Agency
  • 1961: 78th ASA Special Operations Unit, renamed 54th Special Operations Command in 1966
  • 1967: USASA Field Station Berlin
  • 1977: US Army Intelligence and Security Command ( INSCOM )
  • 6912 Electronic Security Group of the US Air Force
  • RAF No 26 Signal Unit
  • RAF No 13 Signal Regiment

A small part of the Teufelsberg green area was spared from military use. In the 1970s and 1980s, wine was grown on the southern slope of the Teufelsberg, from which the Wilmersdorfer Teufelströpfchen was pressed .

After reunification

After German reunification , the facility's electronic equipment was removed as it had become useless after the end of the Cold War. In 1991 the Americans and British withdrew. The buildings remained standing or were even renewed and new radar systems were installed, because they could be used for civil air surveillance of air traffic until 1999.

As the owner of the 4.7  hectare area of ​​the listening station, the Berlin Senate sold it for 5.2 million marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around 4 million euros) to the Cologne investor group Teufelsberg KG (IGTB). In 1998 the architects Von Gruhl & Partner carried out planning work on their behalf for the construction of a hotel with a conference center, a spy museum, exclusive apartments and a restaurant. The construction project failed due to massive resistance from environmentalists and the exploding construction costs, and the investor filed for bankruptcy . By the time the work was stopped, some foundations, a basement shell and a sample of a loft apartment had already been built. The ruins are secured with a fence and were guarded until the beginning of 2003. For financial reasons, the Senate abandoned the guard, which led to massive vandalism . From 2005 to 2012, a security company was entrusted with the security tasks.

and display information about the image
View of Berlin from the tower of the wiretapping system

Current use of the Teufelsberg and view

Downhill trail on the northeast slope

The hill is used by mountain bikers and walks. The road on the Teufelsberg has been used by longboarders for downhill skating since the 1980s . To the northeast of the Teufelsberg is the 99 meter high Drachenberg , which, when the wind conditions allow it, serves as a practice area for hang-gliders and paragliders .

The toboggan run that used to exist is closed and partially closed, but the mountain is still used by tobogganers and snowboarders in winter . A New Year's Eve run takes place on the site every year. The German Alpine Club operates a climbing rock on the Teufelsberg .

Walkers use the Teufelsberg as a local recreation area . Since February 2011 - originally on the initiative of the city historian Andreas Jüttemann - daily tours of the otherwise inaccessible area of ​​the former listening station on the Teufelsberg have been offered. In 2011, this was the first opportunity to legally step onto the summit plateau of the mountain since the Field Station was built.

Because no further construction work was carried out by the end of 2004, the building permit expired. Since April 2006, the area has been designated as a forest in accordance with the Berlin zoning plan , i.e. non-buildable area.

Some members of the Nature Conservation Center Ökowerk call for a restoration of the site. This presupposes the repurchase of the site by the State of Berlin, a decision that, in the opinion of the authorities involved, can only be made by the tax authorities and the property fund. The Senate Administration rules out a buyback, as there are mortgages of around 33 million euros on the site . On October 30, 2018, the Teufelsberg was placed under monument protection for urban and historical reasons .

The Maharishi Foundation planned to purchase the site at the end of February 2008 and expected the district to grant building rights for a Vedic Peace University with a total of 24,000 square meters of usable space and a twelve-story, 50-meter-high tower of invincibility for a total of 1,000 students. The film director David Lynch wanted to help finance the project with his David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace and laid a symbolic foundation stone. In December 2008, the Maharishi Foundation handed over responsibility for the construction of the Peace University to the Federal Chancellery on the grounds that it only provided the knowledge . The Federal Chancellery was unable to confirm receipt of corresponding letters. The foundation's legal advisor, Reinhard Buchzik, declared that they did not want to continue with the official process: it was too difficult. The Teufelsberg remains a pilot project for corresponding facilities in every federal state, with estimated nationwide costs of five billion euros. There is now a legal dispute between the owner and the foundation in which the foundation is challenging the purchase agreement.

Two veterans' associations (The US Field Station Berlin Veterans Group [USA] and the Western Allies Association in Berlin) are calling for the military area to be rededicated: They want a memorial that commemorates the support of the Western Allies and they have a petition in the Berlin House of Representatives submitted to receive the attachment.

In September 2013, US Army Teufelsberg veterans marked the 50th anniversary (1963–2013) of the construction of the permanent building for Field Station Berlin on Teufelsberg with a special issue of Cinderella stamps and the inauguration of a memorial plaque. The designer is THE Hill, the award-winning author of two novels about Field Station Berlin.

A new measurement by the Institute for Geodesy and Geoinformation Technology at the TU Berlin in 2013 showed the height to be 120.1 meters above sea level, after the Teufelsberg was previously considered 114.7 meters high. The land surveying office in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf confirmed this result. The reason for this increase in height is that a hill was piled up in 1998 as part of the failed construction project for the construction of loft apartments. The original summit cross on the west side of the US radar station was moved 150 meters further east as part of the remeasurement. He was until January 2015, the highest elevation in the city of Berlin and was the Arkenbergen in the district of Berlin-Blankenfelde the district Pankow replaced.

On November 24, 2013 the association Initiative Kultur-DENK-MAL Berliner Teufelsberg g. e. V. was founded as a platform for volunteers in art, culture, nature and history on the Teufelsberg. The association was represented at the round table on the Teufelsberg and works together with the various stakeholders . The association members are committed to ensuring that the Teufelsberg as a whole is placed under monument protection and want to develop the Teufelsberg into a modern, supraregional exchange platform and think tank for culture, art, history, technology, nature and new economic models.

On the subject of "After the round table: What is next on the Teufelsberg" refereed the club members on 26 November 2014 the Berlin House in the Committee on Urban Development and Environment.

A QR code painted on the roof of a building in the listening area leads to the website of the “Teufelsberg Monument”.

The Teufelsberg in the film

  • The hang-gliding scenes for Rudolf Steiner's film Aufwind were filmed on the Teufelsberg in 1979 , in which a hang-glider crashes and then, paraplegic, builds a new life. Since then, the Teufelsberg has been used regularly as a spectacular backdrop for films of all kinds.
  • The exterior shots of the second season of the crime series Alone Against Time were shot mostly on Teufelsberg.
  • The director Thomas Nennstiel shot the 2006 detective comedy Entführ 'mich Liebling here .
  • In the psychological thriller The Soul Breaker by Sebastian Fitzek , published in 2008, the Teufelsberg plays a role, as a fictional private clinic is located there, in which most of the plot takes place.
  • In his 2010 documentary David wants to fly , director David Sieveking also accompanied the activities of the Maharishi Foundation on the Teufelsberg: for example, the laying of the foundation stone in the dark, during which the crowned governor of the organization Invincible Germany is chanted. The arc of the filmic research closes soberingly - and almost like a parable - with images from the military ruins.
  • The finale of the German vampire thriller We Are the Night was filmed in 2010 on the Teufelsberg.
  • The shot of Julian Rosefeldt's 2015 film installation Manifesto , in which Cate Blanchett plays a homeless person who lives in one of the antenna domes and declaims manifestos of Situationism from the roof of the monitoring system, was filmed here.
  • In the three-part ZDF production The Same Sky , broadcast in 2017 , the system and the wiretapping measures there played a central role.
  • Some scenes from the fifth episode of You Are Wanted were filmed on the station in 2017.
  • In the 9th episode, 1st season of Berlin Station , key scenes take place in the radar system.
  • In Hito Steyerl's video work Factory of the Sun , which was shown in the German pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia 2015, the ruins of the Teufelsberg listening station play a central role.
  • In the 2019 film Cleo by Erik Schmitt, the protagonists are looking for a treasure that is supposed to be buried under the Teufelsberg. The history of the Teufelsberg also plays a role.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Teufelsberg  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Teufelsberg on the pages of the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district, accessed on May 23, 2013
  2. ↑ a b How Berlin got 14 mountains. In: RBB-online . April 23, 2015, accessed December 11, 2016 . Source of origin Berlin's highest mountain is now no longer available in Pankow .
  3. ^ The defense technology faculty and the university town under the Teufelsberg. From: berlin.bahninfo.de , accessed on December 29, 2017
  4. ↑ Angela M. Arnold, Gabriele von Griesheim: rubble, railways and districts. Berlin 1945–1955. Self-published, ISBN 3-00-009839-9 , p. 265 ff
  5. ^ Wilmersdorf instead of Watzmann. In: Spiegel Online , January 12, 2010
  6. ^ Ski World Cup in Munich - Toronto, Québec, New York. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 2, 2011
  7. ↑ SIGINT, Berlin and the Teufelsberg: The NSA was founded 66 years ago. In: German Spy Museum. November 4, 2018, accessed June 29, 2020 (German).
  8. ↑ On the trail of the spies . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 11, 2011
  9. ↑ Guided tours and prices ( Memento of March 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on the Teufelsberg website
  10. ↑ Land use plan Berlin, amendment no. 06/04, Teufelsberg (Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf)
  11. ↑ Expensive Teufelsberg . In: Berliner Zeitung , November 4, 2005
  12. ↑ Who owns the Teufelsberg in Berlin? In: NZZ Online , December 22, 2007
  13. ↑ Ronald Berg: Teufelsberg under monument protection - A kind of gray area . In: The daily newspaper . May 1, 2019, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed January 4, 2019]).
  14. ↑ Susanne Messmer: "We see ourselves more in the role of a moderator" . In: The daily newspaper . March 9, 2019, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 45 ( taz.de [accessed on May 1, 2019]).
  15. ^ District walls against David Lynch's Peace University . In: Der Tagesspiegel , January 9, 2008
  16. ↑ Cult director Lynch builds controversial yoga university. In: Die Welt , November 15, 2007
  17. ↑ David Lynch builds university on Teufelsberg. In: Der Tagesspiegel , November 15, 2007
  18. ↑ Yogi pilots submit building application for Teufelsberg. In: Berliner Morgenpost , January 10, 2008
  19. ↑ Merkel is supposed to save the Yogi project . In: Der Tagesspiegel , December 17, 2008
  20. ^ Signatures for a memorial on the Teufelsberg . In: Die Welt , January 29, 2009
  21. ↑ petition
  22. ↑ Field Station Berlin Reunion 2013 , accessed September 30, 2013
  23. ↑ Re- measurement: Now the Teufelsberg is the largest . In: Der Tagesspiegel , April 27, 2013