BERLIN ADLERSHOF

Between Dreams, Upheavals and Visions

rbb-series: "Mysterious Places"

Author & Director:

Kristof Kannegießer | Daniel Ast | Juergen Ast

Commissioning Editor:

Jens Stubenrauch

Duration:

45'

Producer:

Daniel Ast

Production:

astfilm productions | for RBB

Berlin-Adlershof. Signature for a unique area where German history has been condensed like in a burning glass since the beginning of the 20th century. An exciting and multi-layered story, full of pioneering spirit and radical upheavals. Technology and the military, media and power, science and culture have played an important role here in times of war and peace. Today, Adlershof is one of the world's most important research locations. Germany's largest science and technology park has been created here in the years since reunification. A huge, world-class laboratory for the future, a German Silicon Valley, where traces of its eventful past can still be discovered today.

The daring men and women in their flying boxes. The age of German motorized aviation began with them in 1909 at the Johannisthal airfield, in the immediate vicinity of Adlershof. Hundreds of thousands of people made the pilgrimage here from Berlin to marvel at the acrobats of the skies and their death-defying flying skills. Soon the military was in charge and the factories in Johannisthal/Adlershof became the largest warplane production facility during the First World War. After the war was lost, the halls stood empty and the up-and-coming film industry moved in. The site becomes a Berlin dream factory that is almost forgotten today. The Third Reich rearmed, and Adlershof became a focal point for air force research. High-tech for Hitler's wars of conquest.

For the Soviet "trophy hunters", Adlershof and its scientific facilities became an important "spoil of victory" in 1945; they dismantled almost everything and took it to the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, the area was targeted by the Western secret services. Adlershof became a shielded location for the MfS "Feliks Dzierzynski" guard regiment. Thousands of young men have been recruited here for Erich Mielke's "Red Guard" since the 1950s.

The center of the Academy of Sciences was also relocated to Adlershof and the German television station was established as the mouthpiece of the state party. Adlershof rises to become a unique media, science and military center in the GDR. The infamous "Schwarze Kanal" and the famous "Sandmännchen" are associated with the name Adlershof, and a young physicist, Angela Merkel, completes her doctorate here in the 1980s.

With the end of the GDR, Adlershof's time seemed to have come to an end and almost 100 years of history came to an end, but with the development company WISTA, a new, ultra-modern research and media location began to develop. A new chapter in the Adlershof success story that continues to this day.