Beelitz Sanatorium · A Hospital in the Forest

In the forest thirty kilometres outside Berlin stand sixty old red-brick sanatorium buildings, put up in 1898. In the First World War they took in wounded soldiers; in the Second they were turned into a military hospital, and Hitler was treated here.

After Soviet troops arrived it went on being a hospital, until it was abandoned entirely in the 1990s. Plaster falls from the walls, beds remain in the rooms, and the corridors run on out of sight.

Some of the buildings have now been converted into a hotel and flats; the rest are still ruins. Those who have been inside say that the cleanliness of German ruins unsettles you more than dirt would.

Haunted Ruins / Brandenburg · Germany / 1898