Family trip to Beelitz Heilstätten
On our traditional family Easter trip, this year we spent the only sunny Easter day visiting the Beelitz Heilstätten, a sanatorium near Berlin, built over one hundred years ago.
Beelitz Heilstätten, that is
- a sanatorium during both World Wars, where Private Adolf Hitler stayed during World War I,
- military hospital for the Russians after WW2, and the biggest of it's kind outside the soviet union
- refuge for Erich Honecker who suffered from cancer as much as from a dramatic loss of friends after the wall came down,
- one of the most modern combined heating- and powerplants of its time
- collection of outstanding architecture, which has been used as scenery for multiple films, such as Polanski's The Pianist.
What we found was a huge area with beautiful, old, broken buildings. The paint was coming off their walls, the roofs full of holes, but the place did not look as if it was ever to be defeated by nature. About a hundred meters behind the gate, a Russian monument of a stretcher holding soldier waited there to welcome us.
Past the monument, one of the large buildings waited for their exploration.
The place had been set up in the woods. Lots of space to hang around, chill, and enjoy yourself. The impression of wellness and regeneration was almost forced onto us. Looked like an old ghost town, nothing seemed like anyone had been here for the last years. But we found some evidence of human presence ;)
The combined heat and power plant had been restored as a museum. One of the few buildings with fresh paint on it :)
After picnicing and hanging around there for long enough, we extended our trip to Schmerwitz, a place where the grandmother of my grandfather's grandmother (must have been when Napolean was around) was lessee of a manor. That looked a lot sadder than the previously visited place, though.
