Wandlitz Elite Settlement – Privilege Behind the Wall

Location: 30 Kilometres North of Berlin, Behind Walls

The Waldsiedlung Wandlitz (Forest Settlement Wandlitz) lies 30 kilometres north of Berlin, amid the lake-dotted landscape of the Brandenburg March near Bernau. The complex – 1.8 square kilometres of woodland containing 23 villas, a swimming pool, a cinema, a sports ground and a shopping street stocked with Western goods – was entirely enclosed by a high wall and guarded by armed sentries. Ordinary GDR citizens had no idea what lay behind those walls.

Construction and Purpose: The Secret Parallel Society

The leadership settlement was built from 1958 onwards on the orders of Walter Ulbricht, officially registered as a sanatorium under the disguise name "Waldheim." The irony lies in the motivation: Ulbricht wanted to shield Politburo members from the population on one hand, while keeping them under mutual surveillance on the other. At Wandlitz, the entire East German leadership lived under one roof – or rather, behind one wall.

In the 23 villas lived Erich Honecker, Egon Krenz, Erich Mielke, Willi Stoph and the other Politburo members in a standard of comfort that was astronomical by GDR standards: Western cars (Mercedes, Volvo), Western goods from the settlement's own Intershop, servants, cooks, a private polyclinic equipped to Western standards. While the population waited in long queues for bananas and imported fruit, the residents of Wandlitz had permanent access to everything that the planned economy denied its citizens.

The System of Double Standards

Wandlitz represents the fundamental contradiction between socialist ideology and the actual lives of the GDR's leadership. The regime preached equality and social solidarity – and created for itself a parallel world of privilege, strictly sealed off from the very population it claimed to serve.

It was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that GDR citizens learned through newspaper reports how their "leadership of the people" had actually lived. Public outrage was enormous. Journalist Günter Schabowski described the Wandlitz revelations as one of the most important causes of the final collapse of trust in the leadership.

November 1989: The Storming of the Settlement

Honecker moved out of his villa only in November 1989, after his removal from power. Shortly afterwards the complex was stormed and searched by outraged citizens. The villas, with their colour televisions, Western refrigerators, Western wallpaper and well-stocked pantries, became symbols of the regime's hypocrisy – and photographic documents that went around the world.

Today: Clinic and Site of Memory

The Waldsiedlung is now used as a rehabilitation clinic; parts of the historic fabric remain. The site is not a conventional museum – which in some ways makes it even more powerful: a visit with historical context unlocks what the grounds alone cannot convey.