Traveling to Berlin and in need of some adventure instead of visiting the Museum Insel, the Brandenburger Tor, or waiting an insufferable amount of time in a line in the cold just to get turned away at the door of Berghain? If you are a fan of history, art, street culture and hiking, with the desire to get off the beaten path, then the Teufelsberg might just be the perfect place for you. 

An eerie yet beautiful relic of the Cold War, the Teufelsberg or the “Devil’s Mountain” has a long and colorful history, just like the various art works that cover its walls. Before there was even a Teufelsberg, there was a Nazi military-technical college in its place. After the Allies defeated the third Reich and Berlin was split in two in the aftermath, they attempted to destroy the former college. When they did not succeed in leveling the entire complex, they decided to bury what was left with the tons of rubble that had accumulated in Berlin during the war. This mountain of rubble, or “Trummerberg” was developed into Berlin’s second largest man-made “Berg”, packed with soil and peppered with trees, overtime turning into a roughly 120m high mountain in the middle of the Grunewald. Perfect for hiking and mountain biking, the ghostly alluring Teufelsberg sits at the crown, looking over the rest of the city beneath it. 

The Teufelsberg with its four insect-egg like radomes that give it its iconic shape, was used during the Cold War as a spy listening outpost by the Western Bloc to monitor and capture communications from the Soviet controlled Eastern Bloc. Taking place in the outskirts of Berlin – the aptly titled, if outdated, “City of Spies”, the Teufelsberg is an example of the precarious and volatile nature of the Cold War. Its very unique form of indirect conflict relying mostly upon deterrence, proxy wars, and most excitingly – subterfuge, provides peace studies, political science/international relations/history students and adventurous tourists alike the chance to see an individual relic of an important developmental conflict in the Post-WW2 landscape. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Teufelsberg listening post was slowly abandoned. Without a purpose, and with constantly changing owners, groups of street artists crept in and started to breathe new life into the now vacant and forsaken skeleton of the Cold War, adorning its walls with thought provoking and complex graffiti pieces – an art form that has its own culturally important place in history. 

Both art forms serve a purpose: to stamp one’s identity onto a surface, but to also convey a message for others to be interpreted – some rather literally. A piece depicting Uncle Sam, a notorious symbolic fictional-figure of American nationalism, riding a missile with the bold and inflammatory statement, “Thank God it’s our bomb”. Beyond the complementary composition of color and the surface level humor of the image lies the deeper valid critique of the United States as perpetrator of war and as a war machine, responsible for the destabilization of many countries and engaging in ideological interventionist wars. Political pieces abound here. A subtle image of a fox carrying a dead dove with an olive branch in its mouth. A neon pink, blue, and orange piece of two Vladimir Putins kissing one another with the title “ONE LOVE”. A provocative piece of a  young Black boy behind a barbed wire fence shooting his sling-shot painted across a multi-colored background titled, “Fuck Your Borders”, openly critiquing the refugee and migration crisis that overwhelmingly affects populations of the so-called Global South struggling with colonial legacy structures.

However, not all the art here is of an explicitly political nature. Many showcase the artistic capabilities of the artist themselves, their history and culture, or celebrate the environment – be it natural or urban. A mural depiction of the Teufelsberg radomes as giant insect eggs, a neon cityscape that gives the impression that you are walking along in the middle of it, an optical illusion of a silver humanoid emerging from the walls it is painted on, a portrait of a joyous black woman with goddess braids and a bucket hat holding a spray paint can, to a young girl celebrating her self-expression through dance. Peppered among these different mural depictions: the political, the natural, the urban, the literal to the abstract, there are also many images and symbols depicting peace. Either through the literal word “peace” or its many symbolic images (i.e., the peace sign, the V-sign, doves with olive branches). This concept has come up in discussions within the Peace and Conflict Study program at the Otto-von-Guericke University, where students attempt to visualize their own ideas of what an amorphous concept such as peace is due to its own individually contextual and subjective nature. 

Besides the abandoned complex exhibit, there is also a small outdoor eating area with a few food trucks serving a variety of beverages and food options for the guests, however depending on the time of year you go, they may or may not be present – so always bring your own snacks just in case! There is a more traditional museum section that goes into detail the story of the Teufelsberg, its history during WWII and its role during the Cold War, culminating in its evolution into the exhibit it is today – gift shop included. So strap on some good hiking boots or sneakers (it’s only a 30 minute hike from the nearest S-Bahn) and take your friends on an illuminating excursion to experience a form of counter-culture / sub-culture art. In contrast to the abandoned spy outpost, a place of utmost secrecy and state confidentiality, the Teufelsberg creates a unique environment to think about the past, reflect on the messages of the artists and how they relate to the various conflicts, and most importantly the hopes our world has today.