Tour Report: Prison of the Navy

In May of 2019, we got the chance to legally explore a historically significant building in my hometown: The abandoned former prison of the Navy. It was built in the early 20th century and used as a prison until after World War II. Many delinquents waited in one of the narrow cells for the transport to the local shooting range - to be executed.

The association that takes care of many of the old Navy buildings in the area organized an exhibition a few years ago, and I had the pleasure to contribute a few photos from the abandoned former military hospital, so I was able to establish some contacts which I used to get permission to explore the old prison.

I met up with my good friends Pixelcracker and Lost Places in Schleswig-Holstein und Umland at the parking lot right across the building, and we only had to wait a few minutes until the president of the cultural association drove up to us and nonchalantly handed the prison keys over through the car window.

The building is abandoned, but had been used a year earlier to stage a play about the Kiel sailor uprising of 1918, and some of the stuff had not been cleaned out yet, so in terms of photography, the place was a nice mixture of a little decay, long hallways, old furniture and historical "gimmicks", such as posters, cartoons, etc.

Since we had permission to be there, we wee able to take our time without the risk of being caught, and we did. We checked out every room on every floor and took a lot of photos - not forgetting that for the first 40 years of the 20th century, this must have been one of the most feared places in the city...

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

Tour Report: The District Court

After finishing up our exploration of the abandoned district hospital, my wife and I went to check out the second location on our list for the day.
The abandoned building that used to be the local jail before its use as a courthouse sits right next to the hospital buildings - its access point is even the same as the one for the hospital.
We left the hospital through the hole in the fence and went along the back wall of the courthouse until we found the open window that we had spotted on the way in. It was a small window, so we struggled a bit to get in, but we made it.
The inside of the building was somewhat disappointing, because it had obviously been used for residential purposes during the years of the German separaton, and these years and the years after that haven't been kind to the interior...
We stayed for about half an hour before we went on our way again to drive to the third location.


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

Operation "Easter Basket" - Prison 93

Due to traffic jams all over the Ruhr area, we arrived at our hotel rather late - but at least the tour had started with the exploration of an abandoned psychiatric hospital.
We went out for dinner and planned our tour for the next day, and we finished the first day of Operation "Easter Basket" with a couple of beers and shots in our hotel room.
The next morning, we got up relatively early and drove for about 70 kilometers to our first spot. We had decided for a more than a hundred-year-old prison that has been left unused for about 5 years now.
Freddy and I had only been to one other prison before, and I had found that experience pretty cool, and this particular prison is huge compared to the one I'd visited in Denmark, so it seemed like a good idea to check this one out.
When we got to the location, we first drove around the block to check for a good place to park and maybe spot a way in. All you could see from the streets were high walls and the central building of the prison.
So we consulted the map one more time and decided to park in the residential area richt next to the prison. We found a parking place near a little path that looked like it led in the direction of the prison, and I hoped that this was the case.
It had started to rain, so there were no people outside that could keep us from exploring, but I could feel the neighbor's eyes on us through their windows...
Anyway, we walked along the path and it deed in fact lead us right to the prison wall. It was like a deja vu - just like in the Danish prison, someone had broken a hole in the wall, and we could climb through easily. Once we were inside the walls, we started looking for the way into the buildings. It took us some time to find an open door that led us into the newer building and through the basement, we were able to get into the large older part.
In spite of all the graffiti that have been sprayed on the walls over the years, exploring this prison was a unique experience. Seeing the facility from the inside and imagining how the inmates must have lived there set a really strange mood. In a way, the prison was still active, because there was still electricity, and the neon lights were humming their typical 50 Hertz song...

After about three hours, more people came for a photo shoot, and they started being loud and making noises, which kind of ruined the mood, so we finished up our exploration and left the same way we came.

There have been recent developments regarding this prison. About one month after our visit, a fire broke out in the prison chapel, and after that, a security service was tasked with protection of the place 24/7.
Preparations for the demolition of the prison have begun over this month, and the demolition is scheduled to take place from February until November of next year.


To find out more about the history of this old prison and to check out all the photos from this amazing spot, click the button below.

Prison 46

I had gotten a tip regarding this abandoned prison from a fellow explorer in Denmark who said that it might be a nice place for me to explore. So naturally, my friend Lichtbeschatter and myself added this to our list of potential spota for our tour in Denmark in August of last year.
After we had finished exploring the meat factory, we drove south through the beatiful Danish countryside until we got to a small village where we had been told we would find the prison.
I admit, I had been skeptical about this tip, because what I could see from the images on Google Earth hardly looked like a prison; more like a large residential building - and there were no photos on GE to undermine the fact that this was a prison.
So I was more than curious what we were going to find in the little village in Denmark...
The coordinates I had placed the prison right at the main road through the village - and there it was!
Right at the corner, opposite the local inn, was an old building that in fact did look like a prison. A small one, but a prison nonetheless.
So we parked on the inn's parking lot, grabbed our gear from the trunk and walked over to the building. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people around. On that particular corner was not only the local inn, but also a snack shop and a bus stop.
I didn't really care about the snack shop and the inn, because there was a way of getting near the prison without really being seen from there - but the bus stop was kind of annoying, because it was right by the prison. Also, there was a bus stopping at the bus stop right then, and a lot of people got out.
So we stayed at the bus stop across the street and waited until everyone had gone their seperate ways. Lichtbaschatter was worried about the police driving past or that someone from the snack bar might call them , and I told him that this village was so far away from the next larger town that it would take them way too long to get here in time. Then I turned around, started walking toward the prison across the patch of gras surrounding it - and a police car drove by......
They didn't stop and just kept driving, but it was a nice little scare. But that was our cue, because I said that it was very improbable that there would be a second police car driving by anytime soon.
So we walked toward the backside of the prison and foud a little shed that was right at the prison wall. We climbed in and found a small hole in the back wall of the prison. We slipped through and in we were.
It was a really nice place although it wasn't anything spectacular, but we found plenty of nice scenes to shoot.


To find out more about the history of this old prison and to check out all the photos from this spot, click the button below.