Spy tours: Ruins, secrets and the memory of Cold War Berlin

Abstract

Field Station Berlin – a National Security Agency/US Army listening post atop Berlin's rubble-built Teufelsberg (‘Devil's Mountain’) – shows how societies transform surveillance infrastructure into spaces of memory. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork and his experience as a former US Army intelligence operative at the site, the author reveals how visitors make sense of this Cold War ruin. Through Alison Landsberg's concept of ‘prosthetic memory’, the analysis shows how tourists piece together meaning from accumulated cultural references, while classified aspects of the station's operations remain beyond reach. As Teufelsberg has transformed from spy station to tourist site, it illustrates how cities grapple with their military past. Tourists now explore what was once Berlin's most secret spy station, while protesters turn its walls into canvases for anti-war art.