The ‘Save Teufelsberg’ campaign remains in full swing. They bemoan the damage caused to their beloved spy station by vandals and other unwanted visitors. However, the city turned down the proposals for some reason and the deal fell through.įormer Teufelsberg workers are working to preserve the remains of the listening post as a memorial. Lynch and some crazy foundation of meditationists and yoga-bashers wanted to build a ‘Happiness College’ featuring a 12-storey 50-meter high ‘Tower of Invincibility’ to house 1,000 students. The developers agreed a deal with filmmaker David Lynch for the site’s sale by February 2008. Spiraling costs put paid to all that however, and the project was abandoned with debts piling up and the work in its infancy. They had plans to build ‘exclusive’ apartments (all apartments are exclusive now, negating their exclusivity), a hotel and restaurant, as well as a spy-museum. In 1996, the 4.7-hectare site was sold to architect-developers Hartmut Gruhl and Hanfried Schütte for 5.2 million Deutschmark. Teufelsberg was used for air traffic control on civilian flights in 1994 but that didn’t last long. The Americans used to call them “Grunie Pigs.” Boardom was setting in. “It was no radar hill, it was the fuckin’ big ear in front their ass!”įield Station Berlin lost its raison d’être after the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the Cold War, and was eventually abandoned in 1992 to the Wildschwein that call Grunewald home. “The Soviets were pissed that the ‘Big Ear’ could even pick up their farts!” von Bronewski said. Von Bronewski worked with the Berlin Brigade and had been told same by many former Teufelsberg military police, troops and high-ranking officials. “This was no radar hill,” former policeman Reinhard von Bronewski told Abandoned Berlin. Teufelsberg’s function was to listen – nothing more. Radar is used to detect objects (such as airplanes, missiles, terrain) and the Allies already had radar facilities at Tegel, Tempelhof and Gatow airports. The feeling was mutual.Ĭontrary to common belief, there was no radar equipment installed at the facility. It’s clear that they didn’t really trust the Soviets that much. Each radome globe contained massive 12-metre satellite antennas and the most sophisticated spying equipment for the time, enabling the western powers to intercept satellite signals, radio waves, microwave links and other transmissions, before interpreting and analyzing their findings. USM 620 Kilo, as the facility was also known, was part of the worldwide Echelon spy network. Presumably this means the British GCHQ did whatever the NSA told it to.Īpparently British officers had their own toilets, while the Americans had to make do with just the two types – men’s and women’s. “While the NSA admits it had a presence in Berlin, details are still cloaked.”Īs the artificial mountain was in fact located in the British sector of Berlin, the Brits and Americans cooperated with their spying endeavors. “This is all sort of difficult to discuss since we are still bound by oaths of the time,” former Teufelsberg linguist Lew McDaniel told Abandoned Berlin. The first mobile units took up position atop the hill in July 1961, with more permanent facilities following in 1963 before Field Station Berlin Teufelsberg gradually grew over the following years to become one of the West’s largest spying stations ever – arguably the most important. American mobile listening units, eavesdropping on Soviet and East German communications in the late 1950s, discovered they got better reception and coverage from the top of Berlin’s highest (albeit modest) mountain. Spying and surveillance were the order of the day in divided Berlin. Like Berlin’s much-delayed new airport would prove to be years later, it was a considerable waste of money, time and effort, with very little in the way of airborne activity. Thankfully this remained only a pseudo war that flattered to deceive and never came to fruition despite the considerable expense accrued by its protagonists. It wasn’t very discreet three huge bulbous globes, two radomes perched atop buildings three-stories high and another sitting a further six-stories higher, creating a giant condom-shaped tower.ĭue to its unique fucked-up history – a starring role in two World Wars and its subsequent division between the world’s superpowers – Berlin found itself at the center of the so-called Cold War.
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