Pages of Pravda were glued directly to the walls as Soviet wallpaper.
The Olympic Village of 1936 lies in Elstal, a small settlement in the municipality of Wustermark in the state of Brandenburg, roughly 18 kilometres west of the Berlin Olympiastadion. Built between 1934 and 1936 on Wehrmacht-owned land adjacent to the Döberitz military training ground, it was designed from the outset to serve a dual purpose: to house athletes during the XI Summer Olympiad and then, immediately after the Games, to become a Wehrmacht infantry school. What remained when the Soviet army left in 1992 — after fifty years of military use, first German then Soviet — was an enormous, partially ruined complex: 136 residential buildings, a swimming hall, a gymnasium, the Speisehaus der Nationen (Dining Hall of the Nations) and, on the walls of the latter, slogans painted in Russian and Soviet-era newspapers pasted directly over the original plasterwork. The territory feels like a small Chernobyl.
Historical Context
The Village of Peace That Was Always a Barracks
Berlin was awarded the XI Summer Olympic Games on 13 May 1931, during the Weimar Republic, before Adolf Hitler came to power. By the time the Games opened on 1 August 1936, the country was governed by the NSDAP, and the Olympics had become a carefully constructed propaganda exercise. To project an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany, antisemitic signage was temporarily removed from public spaces. Hitler personally visited the village before the Games opened and named it Dorf des Friedens — the Village of Peace.
The planning and construction of the village was overseen by architect Werner March, who had also designed the Reichssportfeld complex and the Olympiastadion, working with his brother Walter March. The 55-hectare site — a total built area of approximately 540,000 square metres — was carved out of the Döberitz military estate west of Berlin. Tens of thousands of cubic metres of earth were moved to create an upper and lower village, artificial hills, and a lake. Waterfowl and animals from the Berlin Zoo were brought in to populate the grounds. The first commandant of the Olympic Village was Wolfgang Fürstner, an army officer classified under Nazi racial law as a Vierteljude (quarter-Jew) due to a baptised Jewish grandfather; he was replaced on 27 May 1936 and two days after the Games ended, shot himself.
The village housed approximately 3,600 male athletes and coaches from 49 nations during the two weeks of competition (1 to 16 August 1936); female athletes were accommodated separately at the Reichssportfeld. The 136 one- and two-storey Sportlerunterkunft (athlete dormitory buildings) were each named after a German city, depending on their location within the village — Nuremberg, Munich, Berlin and so on. Athletes ate in their own national canteens in the Speisehaus der Nationen, which contained 40 separate dining areas, one for each national delegation. The most celebrated single figure to sleep here was the American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals — in the 100m, 200m, long jump and 4×100m relay — in front of the Nazi leadership.
The Wehrmacht and Soviet Years
A condition of the village’s construction had been stated explicitly at the planning stage: all buildings would transfer to Wehrmacht ownership immediately after the Games. The Speisehaus became a field hospital — described by contemporary German sources as one of the most modern of its time. The Hindenburghaus was converted into a lecture hall. The residential buildings became barracks for the Infantry School (Infanterieschule) and the 1st Battalion of the Infantry Training Regiment. The village functioned as a military installation until the end of World War II in 1945.
After the German defeat, the Red Army moved in and the site became a major Soviet military base — the largest and most important in the whole of the GDR, where Soviet officers lived with their families. Original German sculptures and reliefs were removed. Murals were whitewashed and replaced with Soviet-era images, slogans and paintings no less propagandistic than what they covered. Soviet-era apartment blocks (Plattenbau) were inserted where earlier residential buildings had been demolished. The Sports Club of the Soviet Armed Forces used the gymnasium, swimming hall and Speisehaus for training, including preparation for Olympic competitions. When the Soviet and subsequently Russian army finally left in 1992, they took with them vehicles, equipment and whatever was portable, and left behind chaos: wrecked vehicles, decades of maintenance deferred, and an enormous, barely-touched complex suddenly without a function.
What We Found
Chernobyl in Miniature
The territory of the Olympic village now reminds me of Chernobyl in miniature. Huge territory with a lot of abandoned houses. Inside the buildings, nothing is preserved nowadays — just walls and, in places, pages of Pravda used instead of wallpaper.
The Speisehaus der Nationen
The most interesting building is the Canteen of Nations, built in the form of a lens — positioned so that it looks, according to its designers’ idea, toward the Olympic Stadium some 20 km away. Inside, a huge dining room still holds a table with plates and empty bottles, as well as two large flags — of Italy and China — hanging above it. In other rooms of the building, probably used for administrative purposes, the walls carry Russian-language patterns and Soviet slogans: Faster, Higher, Stronger! On the ground floor, a few pommel horses remain — whether used by athletes during the Games or by Soviet military sportsmen afterwards is impossible to say.
The Residential Buildings
The dormitories stood in varying states of decay. Old-style boxes for living — that is the best description. Instead of some missing houses there are now signs with inscriptions explaining what was here and what it was for. Initially, about 145 one- and two-storey residential buildings were built for the Olympics, alongside a dining hall, a theatre, a hospital, an indoor stadium, a swimming pool and a sauna. The number of preserved buildings is now several times fewer.
Current Status
In 2017, construction began on an ambitious residential project called G.O.L.D. — Gartenstadt Olympisches Dorf. The former Speisehaus der Nationen has been restored, and new apartment buildings have been built on the sites of the former athlete dormitories in a radial arrangement. By 2023, a total of 485 residential units had been occupied. The site has been under Denkmalschutz (heritage protection) since 1993. The remaining historic buildings — the Hindenburghaus, the commandant’s house, the swimming hall, the gymnasium and eight former athlete dormitories, including the Jesse Owens house — are managed as a heritage area. Guided tours of the heritage section were suspended; currently, no tours can be offered in that part of the former Olympic Village. As of 2026, the site is a functioning mixed residential and heritage complex. The wild, derelict character described in the original visit — and the Soviet Pravda wallpaper — belongs to a phase of the site that no longer exists in the sections now redeveloped. The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge continues to offer occasional guided tours of the surviving historic structures.
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