This past Monday, after much research, my friend and I decided to check out an old abandoned paper mill in the town of Eberswalde. It’s a small town about an hour outside of Berlin. We weren’t exactly sure how it would go, as this was both our first time sneaking into an abandoned building to take photos.
There is a lot of history about this factory, which I will only touch on very very briefly. Heegermühler Papiermühle was built in 1762 by Daniel G. Schlotter. In 1876 the factory underwent reconstruction and modernization. From 1928-1929 there was an emergence of a huge hall (reinforced concrete) and it contained the most modern paper machine in Europe. In 1945, the factory downgraded. The factory had a new owner in 1946, with its name changing to Papiermühle Wolfswinkel. In 1994, the factory went bankrupt and shut down. I found this short timeline at Papierfabrik Wolfswinkel (In Deutsch).
The factory is actually quite big, containing a central building and small buildings surrounding it. After sneaking through some posts, my friend and I wandered around for a little while until we heard a dog barking. It sounded very close, as if it were in one of the empty buildings. My friend and I froze and stared at each other. “Where do you think it came from?” I whispered. We walked around part of the building and suddenly saw people carrying some belongings into a section of the mill. My friend approached them and gave a greeting, “Hallo, Guten Tag!” After a few minutes of talking with them, he returned back to me and explained that they were the owners of the abandoned factory. They said it was ok to go around and take pictures, but to stay towards the front of the mill and to be careful of the bad conditions of the buildings. We spent 3 hours exploring all the fantastic street art in the abandoned factory. We would’ve stayed longer, but it started to snow and the temperature was slowly dropping. There were so many things to take pictures of, I’ll be sharing more photos for the next few days!
It was a fun adventure and my friend and I hope to do a lot more exploring of abandoned buildings around the Berlin area!
