Tour Report: School "Eastern Engineering"

The last location we explored on our tour before the first CoViD lockdown in March 2020 was originally built as a military barracks. It was only after the war that the tank garages were converted into classrooms. A residential building was also added for the apprentices of the local steelworks. From the mid-1950s, the ensemble of buildings then served as an engineering school.

The area around the school is mostly wooded and not easily visible, so we were able to get close enough by car without being spotted. Of course, we still parked a little further away so as not to attract too much attention.

There wasn't really a fence, so we were able to seep in unhindered, so to speak.

When we entered the first building, we were immediately disappointed. Most areas of the school had been almost completely vandalized. There was graffiti everywhere - most of it of no artistic value whatsoever. Windows had been smashed, doors and walls had been kicked in, and the cable thieves had also left their mark.

So there was relatively little natural decay and correspondingly few worthwhile photo opportunities. Only the auditorium with its large stage and paneled ceiling still showed that the school was once a prestigious educational institution.

And so, after a relatively short time, we made our way home. We only found out later that there is also supposed to be a bunker on the site - but who knows, maybe there will be an opportunity for another visit at some point in the future...

To find out about the history of this place and to check out all the photos, click the button below.

Tour Report: School "Heart of the Mountain"

Having started out the day exploring two underground bunker complexes in the morning, it was time for something above ground, and not too far away, we had an abandoned school on our map. The drive only took about ten minutes, and we found a nice parking spot in the shade under some trees which is good around noon on a day in late July :)

Access was really easy - there was no fence around the building, and the door was open. There also was no one around; the school lies on the edge of a small village, and in the heat, most people probably just stayed indoors.

So we entered the building undisturbed and took our time exploring everything.

The main building was in surprisingly good condition - most of the windows were intact (some were boarded up), and even the vandalism was "within limits"!

After we were finished with the main building, we found a few classrooms behind the building. These had apparently been added at a later time and consisted only of thin prefabricated parts.

It was these classrooms that offered beautiful green decay!

Though this was by far no spectacular place, it was a really nice exploration due to the mostly "untouched" condition of the place - and the very calm mood that it transported in the lazy midday heat of a summer day.

To find out about the history of this place and to check out all the photos, click the button below.

National-Political Educational Institution (Part 2)

The foundations for this school were laid in 1936, and the institution was declared a prototype for many more of its kind to be built all over the Reich.
It never came to that. World War II broke out, and the work force was needed for the arms industry.
In the years until 1945, about 350 students were formed into eager national socialists - for the service to the people and the state. Among them was Heinz Hitler, nephew of Adolf Hitler.

With the end of the 3rd Reich, so ended the era of this kind of school - but the building remained.
After the founding of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the Socialist Unity Party of Germany used the building as a party school.

This use was not all that different from the one until the end of the war - these party schools' purpose was to ideologically educate the future leaders of the "workers' and peasants' state".
From 1956 until 1989, more than 16.000 members of the party attended the one-year courses at the "Regional Party School 'W. L.'", which was the second highest party school in East Germany.

After the German reunification the buildings were used by various professional schools until 2005. Since then, the buildings are empty.
Unfortunately, the vandals are slowly starting to find this place, so I'm glad we found the things we did...

Part 1 | Part 2

National-Political Educational Institution

In Germany during the 3rd Reich, there were 38 so-called National-Political Educational Institutions (NPEA). These were boarding schools that were founded after the Nazi's seizure of power in 1933.
Attendance and completion of the education qualified the students for higher education at the Reich's universities. Similar to the "Adolf-Hitler-Schools" and the SS' "Junkerschulen", the NPEAs were tasked with developing the future elite of Nazi Germany.

These schools' purpose was to "educate the students to National Socialists, strong in body and mind for the service to the people and the state".

This school was in fact the only NPEA to have been built especially for this purpose, all the others had been placed in existing schools and institutions - castles, hospitals and monasteries.

We haven't been in there for long, there were security patrols at the gate and we were lucky not to get caught. Once inside, we found that the building was swarming with wasps and horseflies, so the exploration it wasn't really a pleasure.
The building is spectacular from the outside. It's a Nazi-typical massive building borrowing elemts from neoclassicism.
On the inside, however, there are mostly endless hallways and empty rooms, since after the German reunification the building was used by various schools and none of them have left anything.

Here are the fist couple of photos.

I am saving the really interesting pictures for the next post, so stay tuned, folks!

Part 1 | Part 2