Abandoned Kansai

The first time I heard about the abandoned deportation prison Birkhausen in the forest near Zweibrücken-Ixhausen, within a stone’s throw from The Style Outlets mall and Zweibrücken Airport, I got really excited. Abandoned prisons are rare… but an abandoned deportation prison? I’ve never heard of a place like that before! Even better: Zweibrücken was in rather close proximity of where I was staying during my yearly vacation to Germany, so I could easily get there by car in about 90 minutes – after I had to wait about 8 month to visit family and friends back home gain…
I met my old friend Gil at a high school reunion and we talked about urbex – he just failed entering an abandoned mill (the huge, early industrial kind from the late 19th century) due to lots of nosy neighbors and the place being boarded up, so I suggested to go on an urbex trip together. I guess it’s no suprise we decided to break into the prison! (And by “break in” I mean “enter through an open door or window” – I’ve never broke or even destroyed anything to access an urbex location and I never will! Vandalism isn’t my thing…)
The history of the prison in Birkhausen was short: The premises were used for decades to house a day-parole building with a market garden and a tree nursery (as a branch of the correctional facility Zweibrücken) before the buildings were converted into a deportation prison in 1996. About 900 people obliged to leave Germany passed through the facilty each year before it was closed in 2005 – from now on Ingelheim was the only deportation prison in Rhineland-Palatinate (no, dear Star Wars fans, not Palpatine…). Instead of demolishing the prison the Justice Department decided to keep it, considering plans to turn it into a prison for senior citizens.
When Gil and I walked along a forest road a truck with an empty construction waste container passed us by – and our hearts sank. A couple of minutes later we had certainty that the prison was in the process of being demolished. We approached the (de)contruction workers and they waved us through to their foremen. As always in situations like that honesty is the way to go, so I explained them what I am doing as a hobby and that I came to take pictures of the prison. The guys were really nice, but blocked right from the beginning – no photos, not without permission from the authorities; which would take way too long even if we could get it since they were about to finish they job by the end of the week. I asked them why the prison was taken down and they told us that geocachers were swarming the place ever since a cache was hidden there (later I found out the cache had almost 1400 logs on geocaching.com alone!) – all of a sudden the prison was kind of famous and irresponsible people brought their whole families, not even thinking about the dangers a place like that would hold. So the State decided to tear it down. So I explained that I have nothing to do with geocaching – urban exploration is about taking nothing but pictures and leaving nothing but footprints, about keeping places secret (unless they were demolished or turned into tourist attractions…). My reason to come here was to take some nice photos to keep the memory about the place alive. The older guy started thinking and said that he wanted to take pictures himself, but never had the chance since they were so fast tearing everything down – so he asked his younger colleague to stay with us while we took some quick shots to prove that the place was gone and to spread the word about it; but no pictures of people or equipment! Gil and I happily agreed and had about five minutes to take some quick shots. All of a sudden the foremen’s boss showed up, so the two guys gave us a sign and we took our equipment to head towards the exit – quickly greeting the boss while hurrying away…
Leaving the deportation prison I was devastated at first. Such a great location gone because it grew to popular – not even amongst urban explorers, but amongst geocachers! Such a shame… (To be fair: Another reason to demolish the place might have been the serious amount of vandalism – and on 2009-08-24 there was a case of arson that burned down half a building. Where those vandals came from? I have no idea, but the cache called Alcatraz was hidden back in 2006…) At least Gil and I were able to take some photos due to our successful conversation with the demolition squad – unique pictures I might add since altogether it took them about 3 weeks to get rid of the whole facility and I don’t think they gave permission to photographers before…