Beelitz Heilstätten
Built in 1898, this disused hospital complex of approximately 60 buildings
located in the district of Beelitz Heilstatten. Between 1898 and 1930
the complex served as a sanatorium for lung diseases,
generally housing those with then-fatal conditions such as tuberculosis.

During the first world war it served as a field hospital that treated the earliest
casualties of such new weapons as machine guns and mustard gas.
During this time it also treated a young soldier by the name of Adolf Hitler,
who had been blinded by a British gas attack and wounded in the leg at the Battle of the Somme
(This earned him the Iron Cross).
Ironically, these experiences and his successful treatment would set the stage for the hospital to once again be used as a
field hospital,
treating wounded Nazi’s during WWII. Occupied by the Russians in 1945,
it served as a Soviet military hospital for the next 50 years until 1995,
long after the fall of the Berlin wall. The hospital treated everyone from
Communist party members to the disgraced head of the East German government
who was sent there after being forced out in 1990.