Urban Exporing: Schönwalde Airbase

SCHÖNWALDE Flughafen

It was the second time I attempted to get into this site, a former Nazi then Soviet airbase in the sticks northwest of Berlin.

The first attempt this Spring was cut short less than 30 seconds after I entered through a ruined gate and was accosted by site security. He was patrolling the ex-airport in his truck and gets paid specifically to throw people out. I told him the gate was open "Die Tür war geoffnet und ich habe gedacht vielleicht.." (The gate was open and I thought maybe...)

Nope. Get out and don't even look back, there are dangerous things here, he said. As if merely looking back would hurt me. I sheepishly turned about and biked out the way I came, passing the border fence of the closed-off area. Of course now I really wanted to get back.

Scattered around Berlin's outskirts are many forgotten places.  They are closed-down sanitariums, abandoned airports, old train stations. These are places that found themselves on the wrong side of the historical forces that washed over this city during the 20th century. Lack of money during the GDR years effectively preserved these installations. The  Brandenburg countryside is sprinkled with these obscure time capsules, mostly hidden in forests or forgotten off on little country roads. While all of these places are fascinating, the old airports are the ones that I really gravitate towards.

Part of the strange fascination is that many of them were former Soviet airbases. When the Soviets left after Reunification (the last Soviet forces departed Germany in 1992), there was no need for all of their military facilities. There also was no money to do anything with the vast sites, so the German government just put up fences and forgot about them.

Nature took over the locations. Trees grew up through hangar ceilings and bushes popped up through the tarmac of old runways. Increasingly obscured by nature was a tremendous historical record: old helicopter pilot seats, hardened airplane bunkers, rotting camouflage netting. The fact that you could jump a fence and walk through this history is irresistible.

Growing up in the 80's the thought of WWIII with Russia was a thought that occupied everyone's minds. For 30 years it was the plot line of most of the spy/disaster/contemporary war movies in addition to finding its way into pop songs, TV dramas and bestsellers.

No parent, pastor or politician could guarantee that it could never happen. You almost expected that it would happen. Maybe not this year, but the chances of it all coming apart just increases the further into the future one gazed. At some point, I thought, these Russians might do something stupid and we would be forced to respond, and then everything would over.

Growing up with this mental conditioning, the mere mention of the GDR or the Berlin Wall sent your head to an unhappy place. This conditioning is part of what makes stepping through these sites today so surreal: if such a war had come, these are the lethal places would have sprung into action against us. It did not come, the West won, and now here were these mouldering trophies of the Cold War rotting away in the forests of the former East Germany. You tend to a certain smugness exploring these spots: Ha Ha, you were wrong and we were right. You lost.

There's that. There is also a slightly uneasy aspect of these places too: something people here call a "Ghost Aura." Wandering through abandoned areas where many people and their industriousness and energy once coursed is strange, to put it lightly. A rusty child's tricycle or jungle gym in a forest is every bit as eerie as a crumbling base guardhouse.

At Schönwalde they wanted to prevent soldiers, support staff, and their families from straying off-base so all services were provided within the perimeter. This included recreation facilities, schools, playgrounds, lounges. At one point there was plenty of activity at Schönwalde, even aside from the military presence.

Walking through all this now you can feel a very quiet and haunted energy. Not overt as if you are being watched from a behind a broken window of one of these barracks, but the silence. It is peaceful because it is quiet, but it wasn't designed to be peaceful or quiet.

In my America the events of the late 1980's in Europe are distant memories and the only physical evidence from that time might be an old newspaper yellowing in an attic. Yet here you can walk into an old Soviet airport hangar and find Cyrillic newspapers and discarded pilot oxygen masks. The immediacy of it is overwhelming.

In addition to the ghosts, other beings course through these sites too. They are explorers, kids looking to party, vandals, arsonists...There are many reasons for sneaking into places like these. Sometimes people conduct rituals and end up burning down buildings. Outdoor spray artists have also found these places. Out of the sight of authorities, people have time to get creative on massive concrete canvases of old hangar walls and workshops. Perhaps it is a thrill to know that no one will ever see their work except others who are willing to jump over fences to get into these places.

The first time I tried Schönwalde it was early summer. Now it was Fall, when I guessed that the owners of the site may not find it as necessary to employ a security firm to chase people out. A private investor does actually own the area, bought cheaply at some point with an idea perhaps to turn it into something. Nothing is proceeding with that plan.

The Schönwalde site sits just West of the town of Henningsdorf, a frequent cycling destination for me and my biking buddy about 20 km north of Berlin. It was a German Luftwaffe airbase and pilot training school until 1943, then taken over by the Soviets three days before the city fell in 1945.

The first Soviet jet aircraft were stationed here in the early fifties, however the runway wasn't quite long enough to facilitate the increasing capabilities and power of such planes. Also, since Schönwalde was in the middle of the Allied air corridor between West Germany and Berlin, they had to announce their air traffic to avoid collisions with Allied aircraft. This was obviously not ideal so the base eventually was transitioned to a Soviet Army facility instead. Helicopters were here until about 1965.

The first time I tried to access this site I went in through the West side out the back of a small development, climbing with my bike over an embankment and going through a field until I found a small path that led straight to the opening of one of the hangars. That's where the Security guy caught me.

This time I did some more research up front. Google Earth is a great tool for this. Here is a look at the map with Berlin, the route I took north and the area of the old airport in the red circle:

After looking over the site from Google Earth, I analyzed the approaches and determined that if I came from the North through some old forest lanes I would be able to get into the back of the site and have plenty of cover. If a security guy was there, I'd be far inside the area with lots of forest to hide in and hopefully I would see him first. The fact that Berlin had also just experienced a massive windstorm that blew down trees helped, because this meant stuff would be lying across the remaining site access roads. Perhaps this would impede the progress of security around the area.

Google Earth Site Review:

I took the Ubahn out to Spandau and turned North to take Schönwalder Allee northwest until reaching a forest road turn-off from the highway.

Initially it looked good: lots of trees down and clearly little evidence of human passage recently. I started riding but soon had to dismount with all the trunks lying across the old path.

At length I came to a big chain link fence, which someone had flattened a few yards to the left of an old rusty gate. I went around the gate. I was now "inside" the site. I wasn't supposed to be there. The game was ON.

There is a super adrenaline rush when you are in this state: your ears tune in to all sorts of noises, your eyes dart everywhere and lots of inner voices are yelling at you for being such an idiot doing this. You become quite conscious of the deafening sound of your own breathing.

Realistically, you probably won't meet anyone, but plenty of people come to these places and do bizarre things, and if anything happened no one would know about it for quite some time. There was also the security guy issue. I proceeded slowly, stopping often to listen intently to every single twig snap in the forest, wondering if I'd be fleeing back through the forest suddenly.

Continuing down the old road, one of the main entrances to the old base, I started passing crumbled walls in the woods. Soon, through the trees, I could now spot large three story buildings that had been barracks. Their windows and doors had been smashed open and now sat looking like dark open wounds in their facades. I caught splashes of graffiti through the trees.

The first buildings I passed: warehouses of some sort with collapsed roofs.

Little things like spider webs and low-hanging branches seem much larger obstacles to you when you are alone on these things. But now that I was in I didn't want to leave without at least making a go of it, so I continued down the leafy ex-road past the half-hidden haunted buildings in the trees. Soon, the site started revealing its treasures.

Fireplug.

"Passage prohibited. Building in danger of collapse."

Here was a sentry gate at one of the main entrances.

The base swimming pool. The old diving blocks are still there.

I climbed down into the pool at the dry shallow end: you can see the painted lane designations.

And then you look up and see a vampire staring at you, which is not freaky or anything.

Trump, Merkel and Mugabe adorn the wall of an old shop. Straw and bits of wool covered one corner of the large room: someone had been keeping a herd of sheep in this building.

Decades peeling off the walls.

Some sort of vehicle bays.

I tentatively progressed further and further into the site, seeing no one. I was super careful: avoiding long straight alleys and keeping to the trees whenever possible. My hunch was correct about the windstorm: much the roads were impassable due to deadfall. This would constrict the security guy's movements to a small area near the hangars, so I got through other parts of the site first in case something happened at the hangars (like getting ejected again).

At length I went into the hangars. Most of the roofs have fallen in. Moss grows on the roof pieces on the ground and small forests have sprung up across the expanse. Other bits of roof construction dangle from the girders, creaking sadly in the wind. I explored workshops, vehicle bays and hidden hallways with walls marked up with paint and old doors hanging off rusted metal hinge hardware. The floors were covered with junk. Walls in certain places had fallen in. The black holes of basement stairs beckoned here and there.

Fresh tire tracks in the mud revealed that someone had been through part of the site recently (since the storm) but I did not come across anyone. I started loosening up now, not freezing and holding my breath every time an animal shifted in the leaves or an old door banged in a distant building.

Google Earth picture of the Eastern end of the site, featuring the two main hangar structures.

In the main hangar buildings, a three-stack of soldier bunk beds.

Inside of one of the hangars.

Storeroom in the back of the hangars.

Vehicle repair shop.

Another dark hallway with bits of fallen ceiling.

Series of rooms connected to the vehicle bays at rear of the hangars.

A barracks building with an open door to a spooky basement. Did not go inside.

Switch box.

This guy's eyes were definitely following me.

"Hergestellt in der DDR." Control knob on machinery in the power plant building.

Quonset Hut-type of structures next to the airfield.

Front apron and taxiway.

Looking in the hangar through where the big doors used to be.

I decided at that point to exit the site on its South side and follow some trails back around to the road instead of retracing back through the site and forest. With a few more pics I gratefully slipped outside the gate at a place where someone had laid a big board over barbed wire. Success.

Within biking distance of Berlin (~50 km) there are probably 8 to 10 sites like this. Expanding beyond that distance nets explorers many more options. I won't say that it is a relaxing way to spend an afternoon, but it definitely is a singular experience that you aren't going to get many places.