Land of the Lost

Please don’t climb this low, crumpled fence and wander around the abandoned amusement park crisscrossed with gangplanks and littered with fallen dinosaurs, swan-shaped paddleboats and Viking ships. Just ignore the Ferris wheel that rises out of the forest like a candy-colored beanstalk.

The woods running along Treptower Park are punctuated with: “Privatgrundstück: Betreten verboten” signs. Based on how these are interpreted by Berlin youth, I’m pretty sure this translates as: “I dare you: It’s really cool in here.”

It felt more familiar than it should, sprinting from dilapidated ticket booth to concession stand, keeping out of sight from the road. It took me a while to realize that a scene from Hanna, the Joe Wright film, had been shot here. In the movie, they call it Grimm’s Amusement Park and it is the supposed abode of the descendants of the Brothers Grimm. The young protagonist, Hanna, battles her nemesis up and down its old rollercoaster tracks and through its railway tunnels. The caretaker, a circus clown, is murdered brutally and theatrically in his gingerbread-style cottage on the grounds. But it doesn’t take an outside source to color this place, which is really Spreepark in Planterwald, Berlin, in a macabre light. It’s a graveyard of playthings. Someone’s forgotten to pick up his toys. It begs the question, what called him away so quickly and why hasn’t he returned?

The story doesn’t have a happy ending. We can pick it up when the East Berlin fairgrounds were in shambles after the wall fell. The Wittes, a family of Austrian carnival performers and owners, invested in the site in 1991. The place transformed under the direction of Norbert Witte, the father, from a handful of scattered attractions into a full-fledged carnival wonderland. Not easily satiated, Norbert was continually adding a new stage here and a few water rides there. A whole Western town and English village sprung up according to his vision. The park thrived for almost a decade and then faltered when the city pulled thousands of parking places and the admission price rose to support each new addition. By 2001, the family filed for bankruptcy with debts approaching fifteen million euros.

To cope with their loses, Norbert decided to open another amusement park in Peru, siphoning off rides and supplies from Germany on the pretext of having them repaired in South America. But this park never got off the ground and soon his wife was having trouble feeding their five children. When things got desperate, Norbert decided to go through different channels. He packed 167 lbs of cocaine inside the flying carpet carousel and arranged for it to ship back to Germany. He left his oldest son, twenty-one year old Marcel, in charge of the transaction and headed to Germany to receive it. But the enchanted rug never arrived. One of the dealers was an undercover agent and both Norbert and his son were arrested. Norbert was sentenced to seven years in Germany and did four before he was released. In 2006, Marcel was sentenced to 20 years in Peru and is currently serving his time in one of the toughest prisons in the world. Norbert, though his wife left him, is still living in a trailer on the grounds of the park, fabricating wooden stalls for festivals.

The Grimm Brothers recorded a story called, “Godfather Death,” about a father with too many sons and too few resources. When the thirteenth son is born, in desperation, this father runs out onto the road to find a godfather to adopt this boy. At first, he encounters God who offers to provide care and happiness for the boy. But the father refuses out of spite because God has chosen to give so much to the rich and deprive the poor. So God goes on his way.

Next he encounters the Devil, who offers to give the boy gold and worldly pleasures if he is chosen as the godfather. But the father refuses the Devil as well, accusing him of lying to men and leading them astray.

Then the father meets Death on the road. Death argues that he alone treats everyone equally, rich and poor, old and young. The father is persuaded by this and, thinking Death a just guardian, gives his son into his care. Death provides the boy with a healing herb so that he can become a great physician. But the boy is always beholden to Death’s whim as to whom he is allowed to save and whom Death will claim for himself.

One day, the young doctor is called into the King’s castle to care for his daughter. The boy immediately falls in love with the princess, but Death makes it clear that she has been marked to die. Overcome with his feelings for the girl, the doctor gives her the healing herb anyway and delights in watching her cheeks regain their rosy glow. But Death is angry and leads him down to an underground cavern lined from floor to ceiling with candles representing every life on earth. Full, tall ones for healthy children and small frail ones for the old. The doctor asks to see his own candle. When Death points with a long, bony finger to a sputtering stub, he gasps. He pleads with Death to light another one for him, lest the tiny flame fail. Death reaches for a new candle but purposefully fumbles the light and the boy falls dead to the ground.

The ponds and grasses around the giant Ferris wheel in Spreepark are scattered with thousands of light bulbs. They once ran around its face in brilliant, multicolored flames. Now extinguished, they clump together in the marshy areas like overgrown frog eggs.