Ten years of a day: time travel to forgotten places

It is this silence and loneliness that fascinates so much, almost all those who have ever been caught by the maelstrom of vanished worlds. Quiet, of all places where life used to flourish, in villages and towns that were once thought to be particularly progressive, incredibly rich or densely populated - until a day X, a drama, a natural disaster, a structural change, a war changed everything.

Once upon a time there are magnificent cathedrals, stomping factories, proud mansions, luxurious sanatoriums left deserted for decades, hidden by the sprawling nature that slowly and relentlessly recaptures them. Anyone who discovers such mysterious places feels as though he has traveled with a time capsule: things that have gone long past remain unchanged here - though not for eternity: the fragile walls crumble, dust, waver, threaten to disappear altogether old witnesses of past wars, still much to tell.

10 years spell of transience

Sunken holiday paradise: Argentina's Atlantis

1922 was the Argentine seaside resort Villa Epecuén. Tens of thousands of tourists visited the thriving tourist paradise until a dam broke and the town sank. Meanwhile, the ruins have surfaced again - an adventure playground for photographers.

Deserted Detroit: The Wreck City

Full throttle into decline: Detroit was once the most important industrial city in the world - and Albert Kahn its architect. The son of German immigrants built factories and skyscrapers like on the assembly line. But as soon as "his" city grew, she was abandoned.

Ruin Photographer Will Ellis: Ghost Town New York

Photographer Will Ellis loves the downside: In the middle of New York he is on the hunt for ruins. His haunting scary images freeze the past of a city that otherwise only stares forward.

Photos of forgotten places: setting in green - when nature wins

Ivy conquers castles, roots blow up church walls: Sven Fennema has photographed everywhere in Europe, just as nature has first artfully transformed deserted places - and then dramatically destroyed them.

Wall Underground: Berlin's Forbidden Ghost Stations

Next stop: not there anymore. To stop refugees, the GDR walled in 1961 in East Berlin subway entrances and created ghost stations. Photographer Robert Conrad secretly descended to the forbidden tracks in 1989 - one day shows his pictures from the underworld.

Hitler's Superbunker: megalomania in reinforced concrete

In 1942, thousands of forced laborers set up a monstrous bunker near Bremen. After the war, the colossus was suddenly celebrated as the "eighth wonder of the world" - hundreds of forced laborers lost their lives during the construction.

Ufo Houses in Taiwan: The Ghost Town of the Aliens

A true alien landing could hardly be more mysterious: a holiday resort with futuristic apartments has been falling on the coast of Taiwan since the 1980s. Michail Hengstenberg sought the builders - and came across a story between web legend and Japanese horror film.

Alpensanatorium Agra: Incurable German

Thousands recovered here, but any help came too late for the pulmonary sanatorium itself. Closed in the sixties, it decayed for decades. Photographer Beat Hauser has captured the magic of the haunted house.

North Brother Island: The Island of the Damned

Leprosy, typhus, tuberculosis: In the 19th century, New York banished seriously ill people to an island in the East River. For decades now the island has been abandoned, access forbidden - and yet impressive recordings of the decaying quarantine hospital are circulating.

Somewhere in nowhere: Russia's forgotten space ferries

The Soviets' expensive space program fell into ruins. Today, the Buran shuttles rot in a gigantic tomb - access prohibited. Photographer Dietmar Eckell came in anyway - and brought spectacular pictures.

Abandoned Soviet training rooms: a moment in the halls

For eleven years, Angus Boulton tracked down abandoned Russian barracks in eastern Germany to photograph their colorful gymnasiums before the demolition. We tell the story of a crazy idea - and show the impressive pictures of the photographer.

Lost Places: Ufo from the Cold War

Every year at the end of July, thousands of Bulgarians make a pilgrimage to the Bushlja Mountain. Once upon a time, the Communists built a futuristic giant monument here. Where formerly party bosses met, today decay prevails.

Forgotten Places: Ghost Town in the Ocean

Once densely populated, now a phantom island: On the Japanese mini-island Hashima workers risked their lives in coal shafts under the sea. In 1974, the former model city was abandoned - today its ruins are a paradise for photographers.

Forgotten Places: Photo Treasures from the Gold Rush Ghost Town

In 1880, the Gold Rush made the US Nest Bodie the nastiest city in the Wild West. Shootings took place almost daily in the "Sea of ​​Sin." Today the place is a ghost town - and benefits from the spectacular charm of its decay.

Hubertusbad in Berlin: the forgotten bath cathedral

Once the Berlin Hubertusbad was a symbol of modern bathing culture, today there is silence in the dilapidated halls. Photographer Jörg Rüger entered the building - and discovered remnants of religious sublimity between dust and rubble.

Luxurious sanatorium Beelitz: The healing world of yesteryear

Magnificent arcades, huge dining rooms: since 1898, the Beelitz Heilstätten were the luxury resort for Berlin. Meanwhile, the oasis in which Hitler was treated and Honecker took refuge, left. A photographer has captured the magic of decay.

Abandoned Places: Ghost Barracks for Hollywood

Behind their walls, the Nazi elite learned to ride. Today in the former barracks Krampnitz nature directs - and sometimes a star like George Clooney.

Felt gift of the industry: Adenauer's scandal villa

A pompous ruin in the forest of the Eifel - more was not left of the "Adenauer Villa". The rubble testify to the Klüngel of the young Federal Republic. Industrial bosses wanted to make the chancellor 1955 a great pleasure.

Austria's underground Nazi heritage: code name "Bergkristall"

At the end of the Second World War, gigantic underground facilities for armaments factories were built in Austria. Thousands of concentration camp inmates were killed - but the Alpine republic later replaced their responsibility.

Abandoned Army Base: The Forbidden City of the Soviets

A touch of Moscow - in the middle of Brandenburg: After 1945, 50,000 Red Army soldiers moved to the tiny community of Wünsdorf. The most important Soviet military facility in Germany was entrenched behind walls. Today photographers document their decay.

For ten years, the contemporary history department has been trying to find the forgotten stories behind these forgotten places and to present them in a visually powerful image. Yes, that's nostalgic and maybe the modern version of the baroque vanitas motif: everything is transient, and every breakdown gives off a morbid charm. But behind it is always the question: how could it even happen that entire villages and cities suddenly orphaned?

From the cold of the Arctic to the heat of the desert

Over the past decade, we've taken our readers on a journey around the world: into the oppressive Hak Nam, the "Fortress of Darkness", a once-gigantic slum-dwelling in Hong Kong that few photographers dared to do. Or to the Atlantis of Argentina, a sophisticated Badeidyll, which sank completely after a dam break in 1985 - and reappeared decades later. On we went to the tiny Japanese island of Hashima, once one of the most densely populated areas in the world, a place of torture for Korean forced laborers.

We talked about the strange mining settlement "Pyramiden" on Spitsbergen, about a grotesque, spaceship-like soviet monument in Bulgaria, about abandoned radar installations in the cold of the Arctic and a once booming diamond town in the heat of Africa. Yes, it even went down to the lagoon bottom of a huge ship cemetery on a distant Pacific atoll.

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27 pictures

Sometimes readers sent us strange pictures, or we stumbled upon bizarre recordings that seemed to have no plausible explanation. Why do huge concrete ears adorn the coast of Great Britain? And from which planet did these gumballed UFO houses on the coast of Taiwan come? An editor went in search of the builder - and came across a story between web legend and Japanese horror film.

"Everything disappears ..."

Often it is possible to tell German and European history very concretely on the basis of the abandoned places. In the ghost town of Kayaköy, for example, the roots of the still-smoldering hostility between Turks and Greeks can be experienced. In the kilometer-long tunnels of the secret project "Schwalbe 1", one can still feel the insane hope of the Nazi leadership to secretly develop in the last second those weapons that could turn the long-lost war. And, of all things, an abandoned Nazi bunker became a special German location after being used by the NVA. Here the GDR had millions of banknotes of the Ostmark buried, which had become worthless after the fall of 1989.

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18 pictures

It becomes especially touching when those people return to the very places they once had to leave. For example, photographer Sarah Schönfeld said goodbye to the orphaned places of her GDR childhood, and 15 former residents of the ghost town of Pripyat returned briefly to their home country, which has been contaminated since the Chernobyl accident.

The search for ghost places is always a race against time. "You have to hurry, if you want to see something," already wrote in the 19th century, the French painter Paul Cézanne and added sadly: "Everything disappears ..." Cézanne had expired in the age of depression. One of his last paintings shows three skulls on a decorated carpet - symbol of transience.

Disguised in the "Führerbunker"

Photographers such as Robert Conrad therefore see themselves as chroniclers who capture with their camera what will disappear forever. So Conrad, disguised as a GDR construction worker, went secretly into Hitler's former bunker in East Berlin - even during the demolition work. He was caught, but that did not prevent him, after the fall of the wall again secretly in Berlin's underworld to rise - this time to photograph ghost stations: the SED state had walled in the sixties several subway entrances and secured to one Prevent escape underground.

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30 pictures

When the day began ten years ago, people like Robert Conrad have long been interested in forgotten places. But we ourselves were not sure of what we should call the phenomenon: lost places? Lost places? Abandoned places? From the enthusiasm of a whole movement, which today includes thousands of followers of the "Urban Exploration" scene and numerous "Lost Places" professional photographers, 2007 was barely noticeable.

Fragile time capsules

For some, this hype has become too big. You speak of "ruin tourism", complain that not everyone sticks to simple rules of the game: take nothing, do not change anything, destroy nothing. Therefore, some photographers deliberately keep the locations of the ghost places they have found secret.

Because the most fragile thing about the shattering ruins is not their porous foundation - it's their charm that comes from the feeling that time is frozen here.

But there is a small consolation: The new ghost towns are being built long ago, now, at this moment, worldwide: You do not even have to wait for the next Olympic Games, which will leave orphan concrete ruins in good regularity.