Berlin's rubble mountains, the Truemmerberge

Berlin was flat until the bombing stopped. Between 1946 and the early 1980s the city moved something like 55 million cubic metres of broken masonry onto sand flats, glacial rises and the blown-up shells of flak towers, then planted grass over the lot. This list follows those made hills, what each one was piled on top of and what got built on the summit afterwards, from the Grunewald listening station down to a toboggan run in Neukölln.

Places in this collection

  • Kienberg — A glacial hill to begin with, raised further by debris and rubble tipped here between 1966 and 1981, which makes it the East Berlin counter…
  • Kleiner Bunkerberg — The smaller of the two hills in Volkspark Friedrichshain, and like its larger neighbour it is a wartime flak installation, in this case the…
  • Marienhöhe — Unlike most of the others, this Tempelhof hill started as ground moraine, a glacial rise worked for gravel and sand, and it was used as a f…
  • Dörferblick — Heaped up in 1958 at the far southeastern edge of West Berlin, in Rudow, with the Wall running directly alongside. The name means village v…
  • Humboldthöhe — Two anti-aircraft towers were built in Volkspark Humboldthain at the start of the war. One was partly blown up afterwards and the wreckage…
  • Rixdorfer Höhe — Some 700,000 cubic metres of rubble built this hill inside Volkspark Hasenheide. Katharina Szelinski-Singer's bronze Trümmerfrau, 2.4 metre…
  • Insulaner — Finished in 1951, this is the textbook version of a Berlin rubble hill: debris brought in by provisional rail, piled up, then planted and t…
  • Teufelsberg — Roughly 25 to 26 million cubic metres of Berlin's rubble went onto this spot between 1946 and the 1960s, dumped over the unfinished Wehrtec…

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