Köthen (Anhalt), Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Three decades of vacancy and failed investment attempts had long since turned the imposing buildings of the malt factory in the German town of Köthen into a "lost place." Then, large sections of the majestic ruin burned down as well.
Flames shot from the roof, visible from afar, and a dark cloud of smoke hung over Köthen. Once again, a fire had broken out in the heart of the former seat of the Princes of Anhalt. And once again, it was the imposing brick structure of the historic malt factory that had caught fire.
Building with his own Railway
The buildings on the 100-by-200-meter site near the railway line were erected 150 years ago by Alfred Wrede, an entrepreneur from Wolfenbüttel. Just twenty years later, Germany’s largest floor-malting plant was operating within the five- and six-story administrative buildings and the long production halls.
In vast, gloomy chambers, grain was spread out flat to dry the germinating kernels and transform them into malt—an essential ingredient for brewing beer. It was a staple product that turned Mälzerei AG (formerly Albert Wrede) into a highly successful enterprise.
By the outbreak of World War I, annual production had risen to 180,000 tons, with Köthen malt being exported as far afield as Japan and America. The factory survived World War II unscathed, even though the Wehrmacht had commandeered part of the complex for use as a warehouse. The socialist GDR subsequently expropriated the malt company, which by then also included factories in the small towns Sangerhausen, Oschersleben, and the Rhineland.
Offices, barracks, and warehouses
Until just a few days ago, the abandoned offices, barracks, and warehouses bore witness to those state-owned years, when the Köthen plant produced a quarter of the GDR’s total malt supply. It was a time capsule containing cherry-wood wall units, Erika typewriters, and abandoned family photographs.
On a desk—an unadorned model set on steel legs, with an armchair featuring red upholstery positioned behind it—lies an audit report regarding the Deutsche Mark opening balance sheet from the summer of 1990. In front of it stands a massive, securely locked safe. Nearby lie books on "Occupational Safety Law in the GDR" and a dusty study titled "Perspectives on Industry in East Germany."
The malt factory, with its workforce of around 100, lacked what it needed to survive. After just six months with the long-awaited West German Mark, the optimistic figures calculated by consultants from the West were no longer enough to stave off the end.
A trifecta of woes
On a list forgotten amidst advertising brochures, empty beer crates, and a preserving jar filled with cigarette butts, one of the managers had once compiled the company’s most pressing problems. "Employee salaries rising too fast, lack of investment capital, sales to Eastern Europe becoming increasingly difficult," it reads.
A trifecta of woes—one that did not diminish even when some of the countless offices—those long suites of interconnected rooms and halls—were sublet to outside companies in a bid to generate at least some revenue.
The insurance agencies, the beverage store, the pub—everything vanished, yet everything left its mark. Amidst the ruins of VEB Braumalz—as the plant was known in its final years, having become part of the Dessau Beverage Combine after 1972—one finds abandoned bar stools, veritable mountains of printed GDR forms, socialist competition boards, rooms tidied up by someone for cozy get-togethers, and makeshift beds fashioned from mattresses and rags.
A wrecked Trabant-car
A wrecked Trabant sits in one chamber, another in a remote shed. An excavator stands here, draped in climbing plants all the way to its roof. Nearby, unknown individuals painstakingly piled up mountains of trash that have since been overgrown by rose bushes.
Time and again, a future prospect seemed to emerge for the malt factory—the most valuable plot of land Köthen possesses, according to Mayor Bernd Hauschild. Yet no plans came to fruition, and no investor stepped forward. Time transformed the site into a "lost place," exerting a magnetic pull on enthusiasts of such abandoned locations from across the country.
It's all burned down
Until the massive fire that destroyed the administrative wing, which had been spared by the last major fire eleven years ago. The fire department reported one million euros in damages after extinguishing the blaze. Köthen's perhaps most famous abandoned place, the star of numerous online photo galleries, is now nothing but a ruin.
