Spreepark: Berlin's Strangest Story of Cocaine, Kings, and Rusting Carousels

When a rusted Ferris wheel in the Plänterwald forest occasionally creaks and turns in the wind—moved by nothing but Berlin's restless gusts—it feels less like mechanical physics and more like a ghost refusing to let go. This is Spreepark, arguably Berlin's most surreal monument to bad decisions, wild ambition, and the city's endless capacity for reinvention.

But here's what most visitors don't realize when they peer through the construction fencing or sign up for a guided tour: the story behind this abandoned amusement park involves a man whose grandfather claimed to have been crowned King of Albania, 167 kilograms of cocaine hidden inside a flying carpet ride, and one of the worst carousel accidents in German history. No screenwriter could have invented this.

From Socialist Wonderland to Post-Wall Chaos

On October 4, 1969, exactly twenty years after the founding of East Germany, Kulturpark Plänterwald opened its gates. This was no ordinary park—it was the only permanent amusement park in the entire German Democratic Republic, and for two decades, it represented one of the few spaces where East Berliners could experience something resembling Western-style entertainment.

At its peak, the Kulturpark drew 1.7 million visitors annually. Families lined up for the Ferris wheel, took spins on carousels, and for a few hours, the gray rigidity of socialist life softened around the edges.

Then the Wall fell.

By 1991, Berlin's Senate of Culture was looking for someone to transform this dated socialist relic into something that could compete with Western amusement parks. Seven applicants submitted proposals. The contract went to Norbert Witte, a showman from a family of carnival operators who presented himself as the visionary who would turn Plänterwald into Germany's answer to Disneyland.

What the Berlin authorities failed to do—and this would prove catastrophic—was properly check Witte's references.

The Witte Family: A Legacy of Audacious Deception

Understanding Spreepark requires understanding the Witte family, because this was never a normal business venture. It was a family dynasty built on carnival showmanship, tall tales, and an apparent genetic inability to recognize when ambition had crossed into delusion.

Norbert Witte's grandfather, Otto Witte, was a circus performer who went to his grave insisting he had been crowned King of Albania in August 1913. According to Otto's oft-repeated story, while traveling through the Balkans with a small circus, he noticed he bore a striking resemblance to a Turkish prince named Halim Eddine who was being considered for the Albanian throne. Otto allegedly forged telegrams, dressed in a fancy costume covered in medals, rode into Durrës, and was promptly crowned king. He claimed to have enjoyed a harem, declared war on Montenegro, and escaped with a chunk of the treasury when his deception was discovered five days later.

Historians have thoroughly debunked this tale—there was no Prince Halim Eddine, and the dates in Otto's story keep shifting. But Berlin police allowed his official identity card to carry the artistic pseudonym "former King of Albania," and when Otto died in 1958, those words were carved onto his tombstone in Hamburg.

The grandson, Norbert, inherited this showman's flair for spectacle—along with what appears to have been a similarly flexible relationship with reality.

A Darker Shadow: The 1981 Tragedy

Before Witte took over Spreepark, there was already a significant stain on his record that Berlin authorities somehow overlooked. In 1981, while operating carnival rides in Hamburg, Witte was responsible for one of the deadliest fairground accidents in German postwar history.

While attempting to repair a ride called the Catapult, a crane he was using collided with the Skylab carousel. Seven people were killed. Fifteen more were seriously injured. Witte later described it as "the worst feeling in my life."

How the Berlin Senate of Culture awarded him a contract to run a family amusement park after this incident remains one of the city's more uncomfortable bureaucratic mysteries.

The Spreepark Era: Ambition Meets Reality

Under Witte's management, the park was renamed Spreepark and underwent dramatic transformation. A 45-meter Ferris wheel was installed for East Germany's 40th anniversary in 1989. Roller coasters went up. A Western town appeared, along with an English village and a dinosaur-themed area complete with life-size plastic beasts. For a time, visitor numbers held steady at 1.5 million annually.

But Berlin had other plans. The surrounding Plänterwald was designated a landscape conservation area, and suddenly the park's parking lots couldn't be used. Infrastructure that Witte had counted on became legally inaccessible. Visitor numbers began dropping.

The entrance fee climbed to 30 Deutsche Marks—expensive for families who now had access to attractions across a reunified city. By 2001, only 400,000 visitors passed through the gates. Debts mounted to €11 million. The rides needed repairs that couldn't be funded.

In November 2001, Spreepark closed.

The Midnight Escape to Peru

What happened next sounds like a screenplay that would be rejected for being too implausible.

On January 18, 2002, Norbert Witte, his wife Pia, and their closest associates didn't simply declare bankruptcy and walk away. Under the pretense of shipping six rides for "repairs," they packed attractions like the Flying Carpet and the Jet Star roller coaster into 20 shipping containers and sent them to Lima, Peru.

The plan was to open a new amusement park—Lunapark—in the Peruvian capital. A fresh start in South America, away from German creditors and environmental regulations.

It failed almost immediately. Tropical weather damaged the rides. Extortion plagued the operation. Witte's poor Spanish made business negotiations nearly impossible. The money ran out faster than it had in Berlin.

167 Kilograms of Cocaine in the Flying Carpet

Desperate and deeply in debt, Witte fell into the orbit of the Peruvian drug mafia through an old acquaintance from Berlin who had connections to cocaine trafficking.

The scheme was audacious: hide 167 kilograms of cocaine—worth approximately €10 million—inside the steel mast of the Flying Carpet ride and ship it back to Germany, ostensibly for "repairs."

Witte's wife Pia later expressed disbelief: "My husband and drugs? He used to complain when the kids smoked. He must have had no other choice."

But there was an undercover investigator in Witte's network. The operation was exposed before the cocaine reached Germany. On November 5 and 6, 2003, Norbert Witte was arrested in Berlin. His son Marcel, who had signed shipping documents apparently without knowledge of their contents, was arrested in Peru.

Norbert was sentenced to seven years in a German prison, serving four. Marcel was sentenced to twenty years in one of Peru's most brutal prisons. He wasn't transferred back to Germany until 2016, after thirteen years in hellish conditions.

The Berlin Reality Check

Here's what rarely gets mentioned in the romantic "lost places" photography of Spreepark: the Witte family spent years trying to raise money to bribe Peruvian prison guards just to keep Marcel alive. When a Berlin tour company proposed partnering with Sabrina Witte (Norbert's daughter) for Spreepark tours around 2010, the demanded cut was two-thirds of earnings—specifically to fund bribes for Marcel's survival. This wasn't urban exploration; it was a family catastrophe playing out in slow motion.

The Urban Explorer Era

After the park's closure, Spreepark became something entirely unintended: an international pilgrimage site for photographers, urban explorers, and anyone drawn to decay.

The fence was flimsy. Security was minimal. For years, curious visitors crawled under or climbed over barriers to wander among fallen dinosaurs, rusting roller coaster tracks, and the creaking Ferris wheel that would occasionally spin in the wind. One night, according to local reports, an entire bumper car simply disappeared—stolen by vandals or possibly collectors of post-communist memorabilia.

The 2011 action film Hanna, starring Saoirse Ronan, used the decaying park as a shooting location, bringing international attention to this eerie wonderland. Urban exploration blogs turned Spreepark into one of the most-photographed abandoned sites in Europe.

But the unauthorized access came with costs. Vandalism accumulated. Graffiti covered surfaces. And on the evening of August 10, 2014, arsonists set fire to the English Village section, destroying significant portions of what remained. Four men were arrested; three admitted to starting the fires, reportedly wanting "one last hurrah" before one of them went to prison.

The Resurrection: Opening Spring 2027

Since 2016, the state-owned Grün Berlin GmbH has been working to transform Spreepark into something new—not a rebuilt amusement park, but what's being called a space for "art, culture, and nature."

The iconic Ferris wheel, dismantled in 2021, is being restored at a specialized workshop near Krakow, Poland. Approximately 90 tons of original steel is being reused, saving an estimated 200 tons of CO₂ compared to building new. When the wheel returns, it won't sit in the center of a water basin as before—it will be suspended dramatically at the edge, floating over the water with a bold new engineering design.

The first milestone arrived in December 2023 with the reopening of the Eierhäuschen, a historic excursion restaurant dating back over 180 years. After careful restoration, it now houses a restaurant, beer garden, and the Spreepark Art Space with exhibitions and artist residencies.

The full park is scheduled to open in spring 2027. Construction site tours are offered periodically but book out quickly—check the official Spreepark website for availability.

Visiting Spreepark Today

What You Can Access Now (2025)

The Eierhäuschen area is accessible as a destination with art exhibitions and (currently) limited gastronomy during the operator transition. A new restaurant operator is being sought, with the beer garden expected to reopen by April 2026.

Occasional construction site tours are offered, lasting approximately 90 minutes, and they're free—though spots fill up almost instantly when announced. These tours provide glimpses of the ongoing transformation and the surviving rides: the Spreeblitz roller coaster with its distinctive (somewhat angry) cat-dragon head, the spinning tea cups, the artificial rock of the Grand Canyon water ride, and the skeleton of the Cinema 2000 dome.

How to Get There

The park is located in Berlin-Treptow, accessible via S-Bahn to Plänterwald or Treptower Park stations, followed by a walk through the Plänterwald forest. By boat, you can reach the new jetty at the Eierhäuschen—a deliberate part of the sustainable mobility concept.

What to Expect in 2027

The new Spreepark won't be a traditional amusement park. There will be no roller coasters operating. Instead, expect a cultural park integrating historical relics with contemporary art installations, environmental education programs, and public green spaces. The Ferris wheel will spin again—this time powered by solar panels—but the focus is explicitly on memory, nature, and community use rather than thrill rides.

Some Berliners have grumbled about this: "We're the capital and we don't even have a proper amusement park," one commenter complained when the plans were announced. But that criticism perhaps misses the point. Spreepark's story was never really about the rides.