The gloomy haunted sanatorium of Beelitz-Heilstetten (17 photos + 1 video)

Built in 1898 by architect Heino Schmieden, this sanatorium was Kaiser Wilhelm II's response to the rapid rise of tuberculosis. Today, the building suffers from its haunted past.





Once one of Germany's largest sanatoriums, with over 60 buildings, it is now a ghost town of both size and disrepair. Fallen trees block the roads leading to the site, where crumbling balconies and overgrown tunnel shafts seem to recall the past of this convalescent home that housed patients such as Adolf Hitler and Erich Honecker.



During the day, it is eerily quiet, but empty bottles, rubbish and burnt candle stubs are reminders that the hospital is not entirely abandoned. The place has become an unlikely mecca for everyone from Satanists to lovers on a romantic weekend, from urban explorers and architecture buffs to esotericists and late-night ravers.





Built in 1898 to designs by architect Heino Schmieden, the Beelitz Sanatorium was Kaiser Wilhelm II's response to the rapid rise in tuberculosis caused by urbanization. The 600-bed facility, equipped with the latest technology, allowed patients to enjoy the country air and undergo simple procedures that were standard in the era before antibiotics.

The patient pavilion, which included terraced balconies used for air bath treatments, was divided into four sections, with women and men at the western and eastern ends respectively. A north-south axis separated the infectious patients in quarantine from the rest.



In 1908, the building was expanded to 1,200 beds, and the hospital became an independent city with its own post office, restaurant, nursery, bakery, butcher's shop, and stables, as well as two kitchens and two laundries. During the First World War, the hospital was forced to open its doors to the wounded returning from the Western Front. Between 1914 and 1918, Beelitz treated around 17,500 people, including the future Fuhrer, who was wounded in the leg during the Battle of the Somme.



But Hitler was only the first dictator to take up residence in the Brandenburg Forest. Beelitz was occupied by the Soviet army in 1945 and remained a military hospital until 1995. So it was the perfect getaway for Erich and Margot Honecker, who settled here in December 1990 as the GDR fell apart before their eyes. The disgraced head of state suffered from liver cancer and was treated here before dying three years later in Chile.



Successive attempts to privatize the sanatorium in the late 1990s ended in the bankruptcy of the investors, and only one part of the complex was restored as a neurological clinic. The rest was left to decay, a process accelerated by looters and nostalgic collectors.



However, the hospital has been the scene of darker acts than simple vandalism, and has even been the scene of a brutal murder. In 2008, photographer Michael K. brought a young model, Anya P., to the site for a photo shoot in an abandoned operating room. He then lured her to a small apartment on the outskirts of campus and beat her to death with a frying pan.



In the period between the fall of the wall and the reunification of Germany, a serial killer known as Die Bestie von Beelitz (The Beast of Beelitz) began terrorizing local women associated with the sanatorium, using pink underwear to strangle them. He was later identified as Wolfgang Schmidt. He was eventually apprehended and sentenced to 15 years in a psychiatric ward.

While this dark past may scare some, Michael Wetzlaugk, one of the few permanent residents, remains resilient. A Berlin architect bought and converted one of the sanatorium's annexes to live there with his family.



The sanatorium's eerie grandeur has made it popular with the local film industry, with everything from low-brow porn to expensive Babelsberg productions like Roman Polanski's The Pianist. But it's especially popular with amateurs. The weekend crowds never seem to dry up...



More and more curious people (known locally as adventurers) are flocking to the dying hospital as photos and videos spread quickly on social media. What are they looking for? Anomalies, thrills and, of course, ghosts, which are far less scary to encounter than simply looking at the slowly crumbling grandeur of the architectural complex.







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