I coulda been famous

Today on the U-Bahn tv there was a story about "Denkmalschutz" (historical protection) being granted to a forgotten segment of the Berlin Wall discovered in the forests outside of town. A couple weeks ago a local amateur historian living in the Pankow district "announced" the find: an 80-meter long section of the first generation Wall sitting next to the abandoned Schönholz train station in a rural area north of the city.

He came across it 20 years ago and never mentioned it to anyway until a couple weeks ago, when he saw that the weather was taking its toll on the structure and it was time to seek protection for it. So he published the story on his blog and quickly was giving interviews to local and international press. HBO did a story on him, refering to this guy as the "German Indiana Jones."

How did a piece of the Wall escape notice for so long? For one, it sits far outside the more-traveled parts of the Wall course in the middle of the city. Secondly, it sits right on the border between two districts and due to slight changes in neighborhood jurisdictions over time, it was never obvious who the tiny forested area belonged to. Unless you knew what you were looking at, it just appeared as another bit of tumble-down masonry hiding in trees behind an abandoned train station.

The Mauerweg Bike Trail, which traces the entire path of the former Berlin Wall by using the jeep patrol road remnants skirts this particular area. So thousands of cyclists and others have cruised by either on the trail or on the S-Bahn line that goes directly in front and never knew what they were looking at.

So I watched all this with interest, because I stumbled across this exact spot two years ago while out on one of my bike explorations. Am I sad that I did not take my discovery to the press and beat this local guy to it? Slightly. It would have been cool to be known as the American Indiana Jones guy who lives in Germany. 

How in the world did I end up there?

Earlier I had taken an S-Bahn train by this area and noticed the abandoned train station and out-buildings. A look at a map showed that it was right on the former course of the Wall, so I went up there one weekend on the Mauerweg (Wall Trail) to check things out. I am weird, and love exploring abandoned places.

The Mauerweg in that section takes an obvious skip around the entire old train station, so in riding it you can see that you are off the actual course of the Wall. Because I am a stickler for history, I wanted to see why this was so. I also wanted to explore the station, so I ducked down a trail through some trash and rode on a strange embankment in the forest that eventually led me to the back of the train station. I had to circle the area a few times to find it since you are constricted on one side by railroad tracks and on another side by a cemetery and an Aldi Discount store parking lot. In between it and fronting the railroad tracks is a section of forest where I discovered these now famous Wall remains.

Of course I did not know for sure this was the actual Wall, without doing lots and lots of research you wouldn't. But because it was on the route, I knew the odds were decent that it was a piece of the Wall. 

Why doesn't this look like the classic wall with the curved part on top?

The train station was bombed in the closing days of WWII, and there were tenement buildings directly behind it that were hit during the raid. When the DDR constructed the Wall in August 1961, here they linked together the remaining walls of these buildings and closed up the gaps between them with barbed wire to form the barrier. So the Wall in this sector did not have the traditional "L" shaped concrete structure with the round pipe on top.

Unfortunately I didn't take very many many pictures of the Wall remnants, saving the efforts for the more obvious story of the train station remains.

I continued to snoop around the old train station, once again wallowing in that strange rush of abandoned places. People had been here recently, as the grafitti, scattered trash and poo smell attested. Here are some pics from the station, as of summer 2016.

Schönholz Station and abandoned rail line.

Railway structure overtaken by forest.

An old border lightpost. I climbed up it for a birds-eye view of the site, possibly stupidly, but the rungs seemed sturdy enough. I was however NOT stupid enough to attempt taking a picture while clinging to the top of the pole.

Schönholz Station exterior: enter thru the torn-down corrugated sheet!

Schönholz Station, interior 1

Schönholz Station, interior 2

Schönholz Station, interior 3. Roof collapse predicted in near future.

Train Bumpers that sit at the end of the tracks.

An abandoned side track at Schönholz.

So now it seems with all the attention lots of people are heading to Schönholz to engage in that time-honored activity of Berlin: being Wall "Woodpeckers." They have put up a fence around the area but the secret is now out. Eventually they hope to turn it into a memorial / interpretive spot and protect the structure but this is a ways off and between now and then much of the stuff is going to disappear. Makes me wonder why he came forward with all this, knowing that this would immediately happen.



Birds eye view of Things:

Wall section is located in forest just to left of "Berlin Schönholz" S-Bahn sign. If you ever go.