Exploring “Devil’s Mountain” – Berlin’s Graffiti Mecca in the Forest - Part 1 & 2

A former WWII military complex, covered with 75 million cubic meters of rubble, now an abandoned spy tower. “Devil’s Mountain” is a ruin on a hill that has become a mecca for graffiti artists all over the world and a symbol of Berlin's raw and provocative allure.

TEUFELSBERG, BERLIN'S GRAFFITI MECCA IN THE FOREST - PART 1:

From central Berlin it took me about 45 minutes by train (S-Bahn) and another 20 by foot to find the entrance. Quietly dipping off of the paved road the narrow trail meandered off through the trees of the Grunewald, made of a mix of dirt, broken rock, rebar and concrete. Camera in hand, artist in practice, I was eager to see what this mysterious wonder of Berlin was all about.

Here’s a gif map I made of my hike. There are tons of hidden trails and many different approaches to Teufelsberg. I approached East via the S-Bahn Grunewald stop, crossed Teufelsseechaussee and found a moderately-worn trailhead on the West side of the road...

This particular trail zigzags up another 10 minutes until the trees open up to a “checkpoint.” There were three men stationed outside an old toll booth surrounded by overgrown weeds, every surface freckled with graffiti tags. I had been warned that the entry had been taken over by a gang a few years earlier and that they tend to charge entry fees based on how well you respond in German. My German was pretty terrible, so I expected a premium. I hid my camera in my backpack as I approached (so as not to entice an even higher premium.) 7 euro lighter, a stamp on the wrist (was I entering a nightclub?) and I’m headed further up the Mountain.

Through the trees you begin to get a glimpse of what this place used to be. Shadows of concrete walls peeking out of the ground litter the sides of the Mountain. Rusted steel rebar blending with tree roots. Ruins are hiding everywhere. Everything is overgrown and addictively interesting. Looking up into the distance I finally started to see the familiar ragged white radar towers I had been googling just a few hours earlier. The trail ended and opened up to a massive complex of sun-baked 1980’s construction just ahead. Several stories high, outer walls had been ripped open bearing crumbled concrete slabs naked to the sea of trees around them. Their pale surfaces were plastered with layers of colorful murals and elaborate tags.

Here are a few transcribed quotes from the graffiti…

“YOU GO GIRL”...

“And not written certainly not shown but eventually what’s meant to be covered up gets done. You only want to be with her because she’s mine. You will lose me as a friend when you cross that line. She’s the gravity my life circles around.”

This place was raw. It was strange seeing fresh paint on so many crumbling surfaces. The art here celebrated the destruction, almost serving as a glue, holding what was left of it together. Painted messages were everywhere, maps, tagging names, faces, caricatures made from warped building features and solemn notes left to family, friends and lost ones.

“NO PAIN”...

There were no railings or ropes. The stairways were dark art first but quickly became flooded with light. Each floor was like arriving at a sunkissed new plateau, each time with different messages decorating the walls. There were only a few people there that I stumbled across, nearly all of them artists. One man had two german shepherds and a paint bucket. He wandered off quickly down the stairwell... Another was a woman and a baby. I walked by and gave a nod. Paint brush in hand she set up a picnic blanket on the ground, set her child up with a few toys and got to work on a nearby mural (a bizarre scene, pictured below.) Everyone I passed was distinctly soft spoken, quiet, even pious.

A clocktower peeking out of the Grunewald in the distance...

Looking down… A mix of buildings hiding in the trees.

A view from the top.

Visitors hanging off the edge of the world...

At the top you could see everything for miles. I snapped photographs attempting to frame the contrast of this messy place and the perfect sea of green around it. I wanted to capture how massive and estranged this Mountain felt to be standing on. I remember looking around and thinking, what the hell happened here?

“MEMORY CARD ERRORx”

EXPLORING DEVIL'S MOUNTAIN – PART 2 – THE HISTORY

At the time I knew very little about the history of the Mountain, which to my surprise, is actually not a mountain at all.

Inside the depths of Teufelsberg, lies a Nazi military school. Too difficult to demolish, the facility was buried beneath 400 feet of layered rubble from World War II. Hundreds of thousands of buildings were removed from the city of Berlin and brought here in pieces, sometimes brick by brick. The Devil’s Mountain is a shocking reminder of the horrors that plagued Berlin, and a measurement for the scale of destruction that the city witnessed not more than two generations ago.

The beginning of the Mountain in 1951...

Pictured (above) are the legendary Trümmerfrauen, or “Brick Women” who were responsible for removing millions of tons of rubble from Berlin and transporting much of it to Teufelsberg.

"Berlin lies strewn about, Dust blows up, then a lull again, The great rubble woman will be canonized." - Günter Grass (The German novelist, poet and artist).

After the war (in the early 1960's) the Mountain of broken stone, glass and brick became the footing for a new complex called a "Listening Station" manned by the United Stated National Security Agency (NSA). The secretive, ominous radar towers were designed to listen in on whispers of military activity in the Soviet controlled East Berlin. “Field Station Berlin” or “USM 620 Kilo” remained active until the Berlin Wall fell and reunification began in the early 1990's. It has since remained empty and abandoned.

“In God we trust, all others we monitor.” - USM 620 Kilo

I took these photographs (from PART 1) in 2013 while I lived in Berlin and visited Teufelsberg. My hope is that these images give you a greater sense of this fascinating, immense, layered and complicated place.

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By LGM-1