Already from the title, you can guess that today we will visit a place somehow connected with the ex-president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. Maybe in this place you could be really invited? And can you really visit it? Well, if you are in Berlin, why not! Don’t miss this opportunity!
The Iraqi Embassy in Berlin-Pankow: A House Nobody Owns
Iraq still legally owns this crumbling Berlin ruin. In the quiet, tree-lined residential district of Niederschönhausen, in the borough of Pankow, a low white complex of prefabricated concrete buildings sits set back from Tschaikowskistraße 51, its windows boarded, its garden overgrown. It is reachable easily enough by tram or bus, and though every online guide insists the building has been sealed shut for years, a missing plank on one of the barricaded doors tells a different story: people have kept finding their way in, decade after decade. Neighbouring residential buildings mean discretion matters here — police patrol the street regularly, called out by residents unsettled by the comings and goings next door.
Historical Context
The building was constructed in 1974 as the embassy of the Republic of Iraq to the German Democratic Republic, on a plot of roughly 5,000 square meters granted to Iraq for indefinite use. The scale of the gift reflected the closeness of the relationship: Iraq had been the first non-socialist state in the world to formally recognise the GDR as a sovereign nation, in 1969, well before most of the Western bloc would even consider it. Over the following two decades, the two states developed a partnership that went well beyond diplomacy — East Germany reportedly offered Iraq scientific assistance that extended into the development of nuclear and chemical weapons programs, and Saddam Hussein is known to have invited GDR leader Erich Honecker to Baghdad in 1980, likely to discuss further arms cooperation.
A Suitcase Full of Explosives
That same year, 1980, the embassy secretary and the head of Iraqi intelligence in Berlin were caught in the act of assembling a suitcase full of explosives, reportedly intended for an attack on Kurdish dissidents living in West Germany. Under questioning, the two men eventually admitted the order had come, in their words, with special greetings from the president of Iraq — a phrase understood to point directly at Saddam Hussein himself. The incident did little to change the relationship in the short term, but a decade later, in 1990, the East German newspaper Junge Welt published an account from an Iraqi informant alleging that the embassy was being used to store explosives intended for use by terrorist groups. The building came under increased scrutiny, though German reunification and the outbreak of the first Gulf War left little institutional appetite for pursuing the matter further.
Reunification and a Hasty Exit
Germany’s reunification in October 1990 and the near-simultaneous start of the Gulf War made the embassy’s position untenable. The newly unified German government moved to sever ties with the Iraqi mission, and by January 1991 the building had been vacated — abruptly, and without any real effort to close it down properly. Documents were left in filing cabinets, typewriters remained on desks, and the doors were shut behind departing staff without so much as an inventory. A unified Iraqi embassy for the reunified Germany eventually reopened years later on Pacelliallee in the Dahlem district, and the old building in Pankow was, in the author’s words, forgotten by everybody except explorers.
Architecture and Space
The complex was designed in 1974 by a joint German-Iraqi team of architects led by Horst Bauer, working with the East German construction combine Kombinat Ingenieurhochbau Berlin, which specialised in the standardised prefabricated concrete panel construction typical of GDR institutional architecture — the same building method, known locally as Plattenbau, used across much of socialist East Berlin. The embassy’s facade, however, was more refined than the average Plattenbau block: it was finished in Carrara-washed concrete, with distinctive cantilevered parapet elements running along each floor and a wide terrace stretching above the ground level. Sections of the exterior brick cladding came from the ceramics workshop of Hedwig Bollhagen, one of the most respected East German ceramic artists of the postwar period, and the grounds included a landscaped garden conceived as part of the original design. The embassy shared this small diplomatic enclave with the East German-era missions of France, Italy and Australia, along with the residence of the Polish ambassador — together forming what locals still refer to as Pankow’s old diplomatic quarter.
What We Found
Due to some reports of other stalkers, you can see that before in the Iraqi embassy, you could find lots of things! Portraits of Saddam Hussein, different documents in Arabic, typing machines from GDR times, cassettes with speeches of young Hussein, and different anti-Iranian propaganda maps.
But now… There is, unfortunately, nothing left. Fire destroyed everything. There are some funny graffiti, but nothing more.
Just Graffiti Are Left Inside
The rooms that once held all of that are empty now, blackened in places, the walls carrying only spray paint where portraits and propaganda maps used to hang.
Bookstores but No Books Inside
What must have once been a proper archive or reading room stands as little more than bare shelving today — the structure of a library with none of its contents.
But anyway, the place is used by many people for making parties! Who would refuse to make a party at Saddam’s house?! When I was there, I found loooots of bottles of beer. Later, I found in the news that in 2009 the place was used by Australian journalist Joel Alas to organise a big party! More than 100 people accepted his invitation to come.
“We wanted to organise an event so that the visitors could experience this lively museum before the place finally disappears. Every time I visit this embassy, I feel less, and I find the building in an even more desperate state.”
Apart from parties, nothing is interesting to do in the embassy. Everything of value or interest has been removed. Though as for me, the thrill of visiting this place lay in its name…
Today I have been in an abandoned Iraqi embassy, and it was a good day.
Current Status
Ownership of the building remains, on paper, with the Republic of Iraq. The land itself belongs to the German federal government, but the GDR-era usage right granted to Iraq at the time of construction was carried over into unified Germany’s land registry, and as of the most recent available reporting, in 2023, that arrangement had not changed: German federal property authorities confirmed they hold title only to the land, not the building, while responsibility for the structure itself remains with Iraq, a state that has shown little interest in resolving the situation. No demolition or redevelopment plans have surfaced in available sources through 2023, and repeated fires — including a serious blaze reported by neighbours that drew 34 firefighters to the scene — have continued to strip away what little remained of the interior over the years. At the time of writing, in 2026, no newer public record of a change in ownership, planning status, or heritage designation for the site was found in available searches.
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