A rubble mountain. That’s what they called it. Can you imagine? This very spot the D\u00f6rferblick was once just a pile of debris.
The D\u00f6rferblick a man-made hill in Berlin’s Rudow district. It’s one of the highest points in the city. It wasn’t always this way though. It started its life in 1958 as a Tr\u00fcmmerberg a rubble mountain formed from the wreckage of post-war Berlin.
After the Berlin Blockade and the building of the Wall access to landfills in Brandenburg was cut off. West Berlin needed somewhere to put its rubbish. The D\u00f6rferblick became one of those places. A mountain of rubble and refuse grew right here on the edge of West Berlin. Literally right on the border. Think about that for a moment. The stark contrast of destruction and division.
In the 1970s they transformed this unlikely place. They turned it into a recreational area. It wasn’t easy. Biochemical processes within the mountain weren’t complete. But they persevered.
From its tree-free summit you could see over the Wall. You could see Bohnsdorf in East Berlin and the Brandenburg villages of Sch\u00f6nefeld Wa\u00dfmannsdorf and Gro\u00dfziethen. That view gave it its first name the Drei-D\u00f6rfer-Blick the Three Villages View. Later it was shortened to the simpler D\u00f6rferblick the Villages View.
Today stand here on the D\u00f6rferblick. You can still see those villages. You can even see the BER airport. The view stretches far. It shows a unique perspective on Berlin’s history a history etched into this very ground beneath our feet. A history of destruction resilience and transformation. A history written in rubble and reclaimed as a place of recreation and remembrance. This is the D\u00f6rferblick. This is Berlin.