Trespassing Into History

At the beginning of the 1930s, a German architect was concerned with the possibility of constructing an above-ground air defense tower in such a way that its shape alone would guarantee bomb safety.

Leo Winkel was inspired by churches of Italian design, in which the bell tower stands freely next to the actual church building (so-called "campanile").

So a free-standing tower was created on the drawing table, under consideration of the shape of the greatest possible protection against bombs...(more)

Somewhere in the German state of Brandenburg, on a former training  area of the East German Army (NVA), there is a building that at first glance seems quite peculiar. Initially, it looks like an earth-covered "tent".

In truth, however, this is a Soviet project for reusable command posts and field hospitals called Type SKT (сооружение каркассно-тканевое = Frame-Fabrik-Structure).

This particular object is actually made up of two structures of this type. It was used as a training object for field care for wounded soldiers....(more)

After exploring two Cold War bunkers on that beautiful day back in September 2018, we decided to finish the day off with an above-ground location - a pretty well-known spot that neither we nor our friend Toeppi had explored before. It also kind of fit nicely into our topic of the day (Cold War), since this abandoned asylum had been used as a military hospital for the high command of the Soviet armed forces and their relatives from 1945 until 1994.

We arrived at the spot sometime towards the late afternoon and parked our car by the road a couple of hundred meters from the location, since we knew that the area was regularly patrolled by a security service, and we didn't want to arise any suspicion....(more)