Long revered as the powerhouse of high-tech engineering and world-class exports, Germany once defined itself through precision machinery, thriving research labs, and industrial products coveted around the globe.
It's a typical kind of "Hitler" architecture
But the pulse of innovation that built its identity has faded in places, leaving behind a landscape scattered with lost sites - haunted factories, forgotten castles, and monumental relics awaiting revival.
Deep in the woods are a lot of shelters
Deep in the Harz forest
Nestled deep in the Harz forest, one such ghostly monument stands: Hitler’s former elite school on the Ziegenberg near Ballenstedt. Born as a prototype for Nazi education and later hijacked by Cold War ideologies, its grand buildings remain bright against lush lawns- windows shuttered, corridors silent, history layered within every brick.
The most of the buildings are empty since 20 years
Here, where powerful regimes once shaped leaders for a turbulent century, the dreams of new beginnings flicker and fade. Will this lost place, suspended between memory and ambition, ever awaken to a future worthy of its past?
The clock isn't ticking anymore
Hitler’s Political Educational Institute
For decades, Hitler’s National Political Educational Institute stood empty on the Ziegenberg near Ballenstedt. The imposing campus, located deep in the forest, remains firmly closed to this day, awaiting its next use - something that should have begun long ago.
The area the Chinese "Soccer Academy" has occupied
Locals in Ballenstedt used to call the site the “Kremlin,” as it once housed the SED Party School. Half past seven or ten past nine? The exact moment when the "patient" took its last breath can no longer be determined - at least not by looking at the large clocks still standing on the grounds of the former National Political Educational Institute of the Third Reich, on the great Ziegenberg near Ballenstedt (Harz).
Furniture from the socialist era
Worn down clock faces
One clock stopped shortly after half past seven, another just before quarter to nine. Since then, wind and weather have worn down the clock faces, the housings have rusted, and plaster has fallen from the mounting brackets.
After Hitlers Nazi-school the communist regime used the building for the same reason
Apart from that, the former Nazi elite school - colloquially known in the Third Reich as a “Napola” - is in remarkably good condition. The façades are bright yellow, the freshly mowed lawn a lush green. The wooden-and-glass arcades along the four main buildings, arranged in a rectangle, need a fresh coat of paint, but the roofs are watertight, and the windows are firmly boarded up.
It's absolute impressible
No graffiti scrawls, no makeshift fire pits: nearly ninety years after its opening, the once bustling training ground for the Führer’s future leaders lies quietly in the sun.
The resting area
A table tennis club
Hidden in the forest - and used until 1995 as the state administrative academy of Saxony-Anhalt - the site is not quite as deserted as it appears. Some rooms are used by a table tennis club, and the dining hall has become a gymnasium. A young man peers curiously from one of the administrative buildings.
Books, read by the Chinese Soccers
Yes, he says, he is an employee of the owner, comes from China, and they plan to turn the former elite school, with its dormitories, lecture halls, and classrooms, into a clinic for Traditional Chinese Medicine. “Actually, everything should already be finished,” he says in a mix of German and English, “but then came Corona.”
A flag holder, left by the communists
This training ground of two very different German systems continues to wait for its future, firmly rooted in the foundations of two pasts. Within the network of National Political Educational Institutes (NPEA), the Nazi state sought to mold its elite.
"Sports Center" - years ago a part of the place was used by a sports club
The “Napola Anhalt”
The “Napola Anhalt,” one of 39 such boarding schools, was the only completely new construction - a “community education facility” covering 34 hectares, intended as a model for other complexes where “young men” would be trained as loyal “National Socialists, strong in body and soul.”
Outside the area the wonderful woods of Harz are waiting for hikers
The boarding school once had 350 pupils, among them Hitler’s favorite nephew Heinrich, who was captured in Russia in 1942 and died shortly thereafter. When the regime collapsed in 1945, the Napola disappeared.
Typical view on a monument building
16,000 young cadres
The Soviet army moved in first, followed by the SED’s “Wilhelm Liebknecht” Party School. The “Kremlin,” as Ballenstedt residents now call it, remained a sealed-off space, with its barbed-wire fence still standing to this day.
All the houses are empty
More than 16,000 young cadres from the Halle and Magdeburg districts completed one-year courses here in preparation for leadership positions in the GDR. The parade ground was planted with greenery, plastic benches were installed, and the aerial view of the site - resembling a Reich eagle and two victory runes - went unmentioned.
Nearer to one of the shelters
A Chinese Soccer Academy
After a brief period as a Saxony-Anhalt state training facility, the site closed its gates permanently in 1995. Only last year did Berlin-based businessman Fu Genyou, together with other Chinese investors, acquire most of the complex.
According to recent reports, in addition to an Asian medicine and education center, a joint German-Chinese soccer academy with several fields is planned, where coaches, referees, and players from China would be trained. “Unfortunately, none of these announcements has been implemented so far,” says the Ballenstedt municipal administration, adding that the city hopes “the complex, which is a listed monument, will not be left to decay, but will instead be brought back into use.”
