Cold War Military Intelligence Listening Post on Berlin 'Rubble Mountain'

The NSA Berlin Field Station on Teufelsberg: A "Berlin Stories" Photo Gallery

A pleasant walk uphill through the forest of Grunewald leads to us the former US/UK military installation — a listening post that monitored radio/telecommunications from Moscow. I first made the trek up Teufelsberg in 2008. To my spy-movie-lover’s eye, the ruin of the US Army “Field Station Berlin” looked just like the villain’s hideout from the 1969 James Bond film, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

An inn on the summit of Schildhorn, in Switzerland, was the actual location for the James Bond villain (Blofeld’s) mountaintop lair, in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” 1969. (Credit: Piz Gloria)

Today, you have to pay ten euros to stroll around this once TOP SECRET installation and read about it (in German only) on sketchy printed sheets, affixed to the old poured-concrete walls. Over the decades, graffiti artists from around the world have enjoyed these gray military surfaces as “canvas” for their colorful, free-wheeling murals.

Family and I visited the “Listening Post” on Teufelsberg-Berlin on a Sunday in March 2024.

This is a “Rubble Mountain” (Trümmerberg) near Kassel. It is similar to our own Teufelsberg, made from the bombed-building rubble of Berlin. (credit: https://www.d13pfad.de)