FEATURED EXPERIENCE NO. 63

Head Up The Teufelsberg

Cold War Listening Station Turned Art Colony

By virtue of its unique position in the circumstances of the Cold War, Berlin served for much of the 20th century as the undisputed spy capital of the world.

Embassies bristled with antennas, shadowy figures exchanged briefcases on foggy park benches, and tunnels were dug beneath the East/West border for tapping communications or facilitating escapes.

The Glienicke Bridge, connecting West Berlin to Potsdam in the GDR, became known as the ‘Bridge of Spies’, famous for high-profile agent exchanges. The CIA, Britain’s MI6, France’s SDECE, and West Germany’s BND operated cheek-by-jowl, their primary targets being the Soviet KGB and the GDR’s notoriously efficient Ministry for State Security – the Stasi. Information was currency, paranoia was the norm, and the potential for conflict simmered constantly beneath the surface. Everyone was watching everyone.

Against this backdrop of tension and intrigue, the Western Allies needed every advantage they could get. They needed eyes and ears that could penetrate the Iron Curtain, gathering intelligence on Soviet military movements, political intentions, and technological advancements.

High above the treetops of the Grunewald forest, in the British Sector of West Berlin, a strange and imposing structure began to take shape in the early 1960s. A cluster of large, white, geodesic domes perched atop an artificial hill, looking like futuristic golf balls dropped onto the landscape.

This was Teufelsberg – the ‘Devil’s Mountain’. Officially a listening post operated jointly by the American National Security Agency (NSA) and the British signals intelligence agency (GCHQ), it would become one of the West’s most crucial intelligence-gathering facilities during the Cold War, a silent sentinel eavesdropping deep into the heart of the Eastern Bloc. Its very existence, built on the detritus of one conflict to fight another, tells a uniquely Berlin story.

The story of Teufelsberg, the physical hill itself, begins not with spies, but with destruction on an unimaginable scale. The Second World War left Berlin devastated. Allied bombing raids, followed by the brutal street-by-street fighting of the Battle of Berlin in 1945, reduced vast swathes of the city to rubble. Estimates suggest that around 75 million cubic metres of debris choked the streets – mountains of shattered bricks, twisted steel, broken concrete, and the remnants of countless lives. Cleaning this up was a monumental task, essential for the city’s survival and rebirth.

Initially, much of this work fell to the Trümmerfrauen – the ‘rubble women’. With many men dead or still prisoners of war, Berlin’s women, armed with little more than buckets, pickaxes, and sheer determination, began the arduous process of clearing the wreckage. They salvaged usable bricks, sorted materials, and loaded debris onto carts and makeshift narrow-gauge railways (Trümmerbahnen) that snaked through the ruined city. But where could all this debris ultimately go? Berlin is situated on a flat, sandy plain. Landfill sites within the city limits quickly filled up. A more permanent solution was needed.

The authorities designated several locations on the city’s outskirts as official dumping grounds (Schuttberge).

One chosen site was in the Grunewald forest, West Berlin’s vast green lung located in the British Sector. Day after day, year after year, convoys of trucks and trains arrived, disgorging their loads of pulverised history onto this growing mound. Between 1950 and 1972, an estimated 26 million cubic metres of Berlin’s wartime rubble – almost one-third of the city’s total – were deposited here, gradually forming the highest elevation in West Berlin, reaching approximately 120 metres (394 feet) above sea level.

But Teufelsberg hides a deeper, darker secret beneath its layers of wartime debris. Before the bombs fell, this site was earmarked for a project central to Nazi ideology. Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect, had designed a colossal Military-Technical College (Wehrtechnische Fakultät) here, intended as part of the grandiose Germania plan to reshape Berlin as the capital of the world. Construction had begun, and the shell of the massive faculty building was partially completed when the war intervened. After the war, the Allies found the structure too robust and heavily reinforced to demolish easily with explosives without risking damage to the surrounding areas. The simplest solution? Bury it.

And so, Hitler’s unfinished monument to Nazi military ambition lies entombed beneath millions of tons of the very destruction his regime unleashed upon the city. This artificial mountain, born from the ashes of war, was ironically christened Teufelsberg, ‘Devil’s Mountain’, after the nearby Teufelssee (“Devil’s Lake”). It was this strategically high point, built on the remnants of fascism, that would soon become a critical outpost in the next global confrontation.

The unique geography of West Berlin made Teufelsberg an ideal location for signals intelligence (SIGINT). As the highest point in the relatively flat landscape, it offered an unobstructed line-of-sight deep into East Germany and beyond, towards Poland and the Soviet Union. The Western Allies, particularly the Americans and the British, were desperate to monitor Warsaw Pact military communications, track Soviet troop movements, listen in on East German government and diplomatic traffic, and intercept any signals related to missile tests or air defence systems. In the early 1960s, mobile listening units confirmed the site’s potential, and construction of a permanent facility began.

The iconic white radomes, which gave the site its distinctive appearance, were not the listening devices themselves but protective coverings made of fibreglass. They shielded the large, sensitive dish antennas and other sophisticated electronic equipment inside from the harsh Berlin weather – wind, rain, snow, and ice – and also concealed their exact nature and orientation from prying eyes (and potential Soviet satellite reconnaissance).

Inside the operations buildings, hundreds of technicians, linguists, and analysts worked around the clock in shifts, tuning receivers, intercepting radio waves, microwaves, and other electronic emissions radiating from the East. They listened for everything: coded military messages, conversations between tank commanders on manoeuvres, radar signals from air defence installations, communications from East German border guards, even potentially sensitive economic or political information passed over state telephone lines. The raw intercepted data would be recorded, filtered, and potentially decrypted. Highly trained linguists fluent in Russian, German, Polish, and Czech would translate relevant intercepts, which analysts would then piece together to build a picture of Warsaw Pact capabilities and intentions. It was a painstaking, vital part of the West’s intelligence jigsaw puzzle.

The relationship between the different agencies wasn’t always smooth. While the NSA and GCHQ collaborated closely on Teufelsberg, there were underlying currents of competition and differing priorities, mirroring the broader intelligence community dynamics. The CIA, focused more on human intelligence (HUMINT) – recruiting spies and agents – also had a presence and interest in the intelligence gleaned from Teufelsberg. On the other side, the Soviet KGB and the East German Stasi were acutely aware of the listening station’s capabilities. They employed countermeasures, such as frequently changing codes and frequencies, using secure landlines, and attempting electronic jamming. There were constant fears of infiltration – that the Stasi or KGB might have managed to place an agent amongst the thousands of American, British, and German personnel who worked at or serviced the station over its decades of operation. Several spy scandals rocked the Berlin intelligence community during the Cold War, highlighting the ever-present risk.

Teufelsberg represented the technological frontline of the Cold War. As Soviet technology advanced, so too did the West’s interception capabilities, requiring constant upgrades to the equipment housed beneath the domes. This electronic cat-and-mouse game continued relentlessly until the political landscape shifted dramatically. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the subsequent reunification of Germany in 1990, the primary raison d’être for Teufelsberg vanished. The Warsaw Pact dissolved, the Soviet Union crumbled, and the enemy the station was built to watch ceased to exist in its Cold War form. The listening operations wound down, sensitive equipment was removed or destroyed, classified documents were shredded or shipped out, and by 1992, the Americans and British handed the keys back to the German authorities.

The Devil’s Mountain fell silent.

After the military departed, Teufelsberg entered a strange limbo. The imposing structures remained, empty shells stripped of their secret technology, overlooking a newly unified city.

Ownership reverted to the Berlin Senate, and optimistic plans for redevelopment soon emerged. In the mid-1990s, a Cologne-based investment group bought the site, envisioning luxury apartments, a hotel, a conference centre, and even a spy museum. Foundations were laid, but escalating costs, planning disputes, difficulties with the site’s unique history and location within a protected forest area, and ultimately financial insolvency brought the project crashing down by the early 2000s.

For years, Teufelsberg languished in a state of dereliction. The fences were breached, and the abandoned buildings became a playground for urban explorers, vandals, and partygoers. Nature began reclaiming the site, while graffiti artists discovered the vast, decaying concrete surfaces, transforming the former spy station into one of Europe’s largest and most dynamic street art galleries. The stark, skeletal remains of the radomes and operations buildings became canvases for vibrant murals, tags, and installations, creating a surreal juxtaposition of Cold War history and contemporary urban culture. Even the famous filmmaker David Lynch was briefly interested, proposing to establish a Vedic Peace University on the site, another ambitious plan that never materialised.

Today, Teufelsberg exists in a semi-official state. It is technically private property, but managed by a collective that allows controlled access to the public, usually via paid tours or entry fees. Visiting Teufelsberg now offers a unique, multi-layered experience unlike anything else in Berlin. Firstly, there’s the palpable sense of history. Walking through the echoing, graffiti-covered buildings, climbing the dark stairwells, and standing beneath the skeletal frames of the giant radomes evokes the atmosphere of Cold War espionage in a way no museum exhibit can.

Secondly, the site is a living testament to urban art. The sheer scale and quality of the street art are breathtaking, constantly evolving as new pieces are added over older ones. It’s a vibrant, chaotic, and visually stunning environment.

Thirdly, the views from the top are arguably the best in Berlin. On a clear day, you have a panoramic vista stretching across the dense Grunewald forest, over the city skyline with landmarks like the Fernsehturm (TV Tower) clearly visible, and far out towards the Brandenburg plains. This is no polished museum; it’s an atmospheric ruin that tells its story through its very fabric. It’s a journey up a man-made mountain built on ruins, crowned with the ghosts of espionage, and now pulsating with creative energy.