Twenty-five hauntingly beautiful images of an abandoned sanatorium in Germany.
Rusty railings, vine-covered abandoned buildings, collapsing roofs, and empty corridors with walls covered in graffiti and slowly peeling paint are what remains of the gigantic Beelitz-Heilstätten abandoned hospital. Beelitz was built in the late 19th century to help rehabilitate the growing number of tuberculosis patients in the expanding city of Berlin. During the Great War, Beelitz-Heilstätten was turned into a military hospital and was where a young Adolf Hitler was treated for a thigh injury from a grenade blast during the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
Hitler was not the only dictator to recuperate at the creepy houses of Beelitz-Heilstätten. In 1990 GDR leader Erich Honecker received treatment for liver cancer, and after he was deposed following the fall of East Germany, he used Beelitz-Heilstätten as his starting point in his flight to Russia to escape prosecution. The haunted houses of Beelitz-Heilstätten remain serene and eminently peaceful…in spite of its past.
Cool fact: The abandoned houses was used as a filming location for Roman Polanski’s Oscar winner ‘The Pianist’ and the 2008 film ‘Valkyrie’ starring Tom Cruise.
I am often inspired by quotes & verses to create my image titles and have included them where applicable to each photograph of this abandoned place. All images were photographed on October 19th,2013.
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Source: ronazevedo.com
“Enamored”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they’re falling like
they’re falling in love with the ground.’
~Andrea Gibson
“Facing Fear”
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”
“A New Day Dawning”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge’ ~Kahlil Gibran
“Die Bestie von Beelitz”
Image by: RonAzevedo
The years 1989 to 1990 brought terror to the women living in the area as a serial killer began to murder workers of Beelitz and residents of the area. He became known as Die Bestie von Beelitz (The Beast of Beelitz). The killer often left his own left pink lingerie on the corpse, and sometimes used it to strangle or gag the victims while they were raped. In March of 1990 one of the most heinous of his crimes was committed…a wife of one of the senior physicians at the hospital was taking her infant son on a stroll through the forest when the killer grabbed the child and crushed his head on a tree. The screaming mother was gagged with a brassiere and strangled. In August of 1990 two joggers were attacked by the killer, however one was able to overpower the man and take him to the police. He was identified as Wolfgang Schmidt, and given a 15 year sentence in prison and detention in a psychiatric hospital. A movie about the killer was released in 2008, named Der Rosa Riese (The Pink Giant – in reference to his trademark lingerie).
“Don’t Look Back”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘Never look backwards or you’ll fall down the stairs.’
~Rudyard Kipling
“What Lies Within”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.’
“Benevolent Light”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘Light gives of itself freely, filling all available space. It does not seek anything in return; it asks not whether you are friend or foe. It gives of itself and is not thereby diminished.’ ~Michael Strassfeld
“Light Of Life”
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
~Jesus,Life Application Study Bible: NIV
“Broken Places”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘The world breaks everyone, and afterword many are stronger in the broken places.’ – Ernest Hemingway
“Darkness Restores”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘For darkness restores what light cannot repair.’ ~Joseph Brodsky
“Sustaining Element”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘Light, when suddenly let in, dazzles and hurts and almost blinds us: but this soon passes away, and it seems to become the only element we can exist in.’ ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, “Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers”, 1827
“Right Light”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.’ ~Aaron Rose
“Escape The Madness”
A ‘horror movie’ like room in the basement of a Beelitz facility.
“Phantom Sanatorium”
Image by: RonAzevedo
One the 60+ buildings that make up the Beelitz Heilstätten complex.
“Thou Presence My Light”
Image by: RonAzevedo
“No Other Way”
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“God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.”
~ C.S. Lewis
“Potentiality”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible.’ ~George Chakiris
“Shelter Me”
Image by: RonAzevedo
“Wide Open”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘The windows of my soul I throw wide open to the sun.’ ~John Greenleaf Whittier
“Sufficient Light”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.’ ~Blaise Pascal
“Darkness Waits”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always gotten there first, and is waiting for it.’ ~ Terry Pratchett
“Surmounting Fear”
Image by: RonAzevedo
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “In order to learn the important lessons in life, one must, each day, surmount a fear.”
“Whatever May Pass”
Image by: RonAzevedo
“Within A Dream”
Image by: RonAzevedo
‘All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.’ ~Edgar Allen Poe
“When All Else Fades”
Image by: RonAzevedo
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