Wasteland Microcosm

The Lost World – Left Over of East Germany after 25 years of unification.

This week on November 9th 25 ears ago at 7 pm the polit büro of the German Democratic Republic annouced the opening of the wall. Three hours later thousands crossed in Berlin the border from east to west to visit West-Berlin. This event became the beginning of the end of the East German Republic.

In the story “The Lost World” from 1912, the writer Arthur Conan Doyle describes the discovery of a lost believed world. Something like that can be found at the abandoned and forgotten places, especially in eastern Germany. These are images of abonded monuments, industrial ruins, mostly from the Berlin area and surrounding areas.

In the small town of Premnitz near Berlin the United Köln–Rottweiler powder factories built 1915 a chemical plant, first for the manufacturing of shooting powder for the first world war, later they produced synthetic fibers, which formed the local chemical industry together with nearby plants. From 1926 the factory was transferred by fusion in the possession of IG Farben, in the Second World War 1,200 forced laborers and prisoners of war worked here. In 1949 the chemical plant became a state-owned enterprise under the name VEB chemical fiber factory “Friedrich Engels“.

After the unification of Germany and following restructuring, jobs were cut and the plant was gradually shut down; a number of former buildings are now used by other industries; the rest of the buildings fall into disrepair since the final closure, which must be between 2002-2004, that can be concluded also from the data of newspapers lying around, calendars and files.

Photos by The Ost World