Trespassing Into History

This abandoned administration building of a steel company in Germany was built in 1977 and offered space for more than a thousand employees.

In accordance with the prevailing need for representation of large corporations at the time, the main building with its reflective glass curtain wall appears as a cubic solitaire that provides space.

This effect is enhanced by the contrast to the blunt, closed surfaces of the brick-faced escape stair towers and the smaller, separate cube of the data center.

In the centrally located access core, escalators instead of the usual group of elevators ensure a more....(more)

In July of 1951, the Western Allies agreed that Germany had to build a civil air defense system.

The Department of the Interior set up the committee for air defense in November of the same year, which in 1953 merged into the Federal Office for Air Defense.

In 1954, the German constitution was changed in order to give the government the authority to build a civil defense.
Integral parts of the civil air defense since 1956 were the ten so-called "Warnämter" (Warning Offices)....(more)

It was still our late fall vacation in 2018. After exploring the abandoned railyard, we drove to the Harz mountains to visit with our dear friend Jens and to spend three nights at his place on top of the mountain. We didn't have a barbecue over the campfire as we'd thought - but Jens had installed an old kitchen wood stove in "our" room for heating and cooking, so we made a pot of stew for dinner and sat and talked with Jens for a few hours before going to bed.

The next morning, we had a nice long breakfast with fresh coffee, and the weather was beautiful, so we decided to go for a short tour to an abandoned sanatorium. We had seen this place in 2014 - but only from a distance, so to speak, since only a few weeks before, there had been a big...(more)