Qualla: Döberitzer Heide

Döberitzer Heide: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, FAL. The reason there are European bison here is that nobody was ever allowed to farm it. Soldiers used the sandy heath west of Berlin for the better part of three hundred years — Prussian regiments from 1713, then the imperial army, the Reichswehr, the Wehrmacht, and finally the Red Army until 1991 — and whatever else armies do to a landscape, they do not drain it, fertilise it or plant it in rows. When the Soviet garrison left, some 5,000 hectares of open sand, dry grassland and heather lay there unimproved. It was also thick with unexploded ordnance, which kept people out for years longer. Ecologically, both facts were a gift.

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Image: A.Savin | FAL

Döberitzer Heide: Three Hundred Years of Boots

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit antoinevandermeer, Public domain. The first recorded exercises around the village of Döberitz took place in 1713 under Frederick William I. In September 1753 Frederick II held a grand manoeuvre here with some 44,000 men. But it was the 1890s that made the heath what it is. Berlin and Potsdam troops had been shoot...

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Image: antoinevandermeer | Public domain

Döberitzer Heide: Where German Military Flying Began

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Max Baur, CC BY-SA 3.0 de. In 1910 an airfield and flying school opened on the heath under the Royal Prussian Flying Corps, and it is fair to call this the point from which German military aviation grew. Then it became something darker. From the outbreak of the First World War a prisoner-of-war camp stood ...

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Image: Max Baur | CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Döberitzer Heide: Games, Tanks and Camps

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit unify, CC BY-SA 3.0. During the 1936 Olympics the heath hosted the cross-country phase of the three-day event and the riding leg of the modern pentathlon. The same year the Regiment General Göring was raised and trained here, and Germany's parachute troops were built from its men. Dry sandy ground tu...

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Image: unify | CC BY-SA 3.0

Döberitzer Heide: The Quiet After

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Lowin, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Soviet army took the site over in 1947 and kept up to 20,000 soldiers on it. Military use ended in 1992. The barracks were stripped from 1994 and demolished piece by piece, and the new housing built over them still follows the old camp street plan. The Bundeswehr kept about 6...

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Image: Michael Lowin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Döberitzer Heide: Six Thousand Seven Hundred Species

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ina Hensel (telemakro.de), CC BY-SA 4.0. The core zone covers 1,860 hectares behind a triple fence — wire mesh plus two electrified lines at 1.5 and roughly 2 metres. The first Przewalski's horses were released in January 2008, the first wisents that March. By September 2023 the enclosure held about 130 wisents, two doz...

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Image: Ina Hensel (telemakro.de) | CC BY-SA 4.0