The motto, In God we trust; all others we monitor, was never more applicable than in West Berlin during the Cold War. During those years, the US National Security Agency (NSA) erected a Field Station in the British sector of the city where I grew up. Located at the edge of Berlin’s largest forested area, the Grunewald, the post’s mission remained shrouded in secrecy. Rumors had it that the purpose of the station, used by both American and British personnel, was to eavesdrop on the communications of East Germany, the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries.
The complex stood atop of the Teufelsberg (Devil’s Mountain), a hill that was man-made from close to 424 million cubic feet of World War II rubble. Between 1945 (the end of the war) and 1950, it had been the job of Truemmerfrauen (rubble women) to sift through tons of debris, pick out reusable bricks, chip away the mortar, and to load them onto carts and lories as reconstruction material. The leftover refuse was then lugged to the Grunewald and other locations in the city. It was from this rubble, that the 377-foot-highTeufelsberg was created; and on top of it, the NSA erected a 262 foot-high spy station.
The first intelligence units moved onto the mound in July 1961. More permanent buildings were erected in 1963. Three huge globes and two radomes topped the facilities. Over the years, the station grew into one of the West’s largest intelligence-gathering posts. Its secret mission continued until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 after which the station was closed and the equipment removed. But the building shells remained, and they are still standing today.
The 1990s brought talks of preserving Field Station Teufelsberg as a spy museum. Six years later, the site was sold to developers with plans for a hotel, a restaurant, and a museum. But the project was abandoned when funds ran out. In 2008, American filmmaker David Lynch tried to turn the site into a Transcendental Meditation Center but could not secure the city’s approval. More recently, there have been calls to preserve the site and turn it into a memorial.
Also visit http://walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle-/legacy-of-rubble-women/ to read about the work of the Truemmerfrauen (rubble women).
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic and current events, people, places and food.
Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.
