Fernsehturm Müggelberge – Berlin, Germany - Atlas Obscura
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Fernsehturm Müggelberge

Berlin, Germany

This TV tower once secretly housed a GDR intelligence team. 

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The unfinished TV Tower Berlin-Müggelberge. (Wikimedia Commons) Andreas Steinhoff
The unfinished TV Tower Berlin-Müggelberge. (Wikimedia Commons) Andreas Steinhoff
The path up to the tower Alice From Online (Atlas Obscura User)
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On Muggleberge, a mountain in the southeast of Berlin, construction work began in 1954 on a television tower that stood roughly 430 feet tall. The tower included an observation deck at a height of 230 feet. During the planning stage, though, someone forgot that, if complete, the television tower as planned would interfere with air traffic at Berlin-Schoenefeld, the most important airport in the region.

On December 13, 1955, construction work on the tower was stopped and the incomplete stump was turned into a post for the secret service of the former GDR. The reason for the stop in construction, and for the use of the stump, remained a secret for decades. It was said that the tower was intended to be used as a meteorological observatory, but construction was halted when it was determined that there was no requirement for such an object.

After the German reunification, the television tower was transformed into a radio relay station. The tower remains under lockdown and cannot normally be visited; it is not to be confused with the Muggelberge Observation Tower, which sits about .6 miles away.

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April 26, 2011
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