Lost Places Germany Map: 26 Maps of Bunkers, Wolves and Legends

More than 154,000 maps on MapIndex lie in Germany, and many of them keep records the country itself let lapse. One man noted which way each Düsseldorf phone box faced before the last 12,000 public phones were switched off in a single night in 2023. Siren fans map the roof hatches of sirens long gone, and a wolf map has logged every dead wolf since 2004. The Cold War left the most: nuclear stores, missile accidents, a border checkpoint described down to its light masts, and more than 70 villages razed for the border strip.

Pershing Missile Map: Bases, Launch Sites and Accidents

On 22 February 1970 a nuclear warhead fell to the ground during careless maintenance at a launch position on alert. The incident was first classed BROKEN ARROW, then downgraded to BENT SPEAR. This map of 42 Pershing sites in Germany keeps such moments next to the bases. A Pershing I exploded at the entrance to Sechselberg in 1981 after an engine fire, and no one was hurt. A convoy from Neu-Ulm took a wrong turn in 1982 onto a road with a 12 % grade into Walprechtsweier. A rocket stage caught fire at the Waldheide in 1985 and killed three US soldiers. Also marked are Mutlangen, the focal point of the peace movement, and launch sites planned and never built.

Objects

4242 points

Countries

Germany

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Wolf Map Germany: Every Dead Wolf Since 2004

Dead find no. 1 is an old male shot at Wegscheid in Bavaria on 24 April 2004, with the question “enclosure wolf?”. The map adds every death since: wolf ID, district, cause. Of the first 300 dead finds, 210 died on roads. Wolf N485m, shot at Gedelitz in 2007, has the note “shooters convicted”. There are 13,029 records in all: 1,849 livestock kills in 2023 with the verdict for each, 303 territories, and evidence year by year up to 2026.

Objects

13,02913,029 points

Countries

GermanyPolandCzechiaand 7 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Payphone Map: Düsseldorf's Last Public Phones

Some 12,000 public phones in Germany were switched off centrally on the night of 31 January 2023, and this map records the Düsseldorf ones phone by phone. Layers are sorted by when each disappeared, from before 2010 to that last night. The notes read like forensics: booth type TelH 78 or TelH 90, the compass direction its back faced, whether it had Telekom squares or a shelf for bags, and the pink Münztelefon 23 it once held. One entry notes the handset was there in August 2018 and gone by November 2021.

Objects

530530 points

Countries

Germany

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
German Legends Map: 125 Tales Where They Happened

Each point holds a whole legend in its 19th-century wording, placed where it is set: the bell casting at Breslau, the little earth-man who met a shepherd boy near Dresden in 1664, the faithful dog of Bretten whose ill reward became a proverb in the Kraichgau. Many link a picture of the castle or lake. Legends tied to no place, like the nightmare spirit Alp and the spiritus familiaris sold in a sealed glass, sit in the North Sea, off the coast.

Objects

125125 points

Countries

GermanyAustriaSwitzerlandand 5 more

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Abandoned Places Map: Eastern Germany's Ruins, Dated

Spreepark Plänterwald: built 1969, abandoned 2002, visited 2007, 2008 and 2011. This urbexer’s map of 203 eastern German ruins gives many places this kind of card. Others are the Olympic village of 1936 at Elstal, the lung sanatoria of Beelitz split into numbered complexes, and manor-house ruins with their coordinates. One entry explains that the lantern on the roof of the Scharnhorst substation was there to watch Berlin’s street lights.

Objects

203203 points

Countries

Germany

Made with

Google My Maps
Border Checkpoint Map: How Marienborn Searched Travellers

The busiest crossing between the two Germanys, building by building, in 19 long notes. Walk-in light masts over 20 metres high carried up to 8,000 watts each. Bollards rose out of the road at the command of a tower. A gamma-ray device screened people in their cars. There was a morgue, a veterinary station for livestock transports, and the most heavily staffed exchange office in the GDR. A five-kilometre tunnel system joined it all underground.

Objects

1919 points

Countries

Germany

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Groundhopping Map: Björn Beyer's 780 Football Grounds

Number 50 is the Leverkusen amateur stadium, number 212 a sports ground in Hamburg named after Jonny Rehbein, number 358 the stadium on the Bruchbaum in Lippstadt. Björn Beyer has numbered every football ground he has visited and pinned more than 770 of them. Each comes with the year of his visit and a link to his write-up. Many are not stadiums at all but plain sports grounds and amateur pitches.

Objects

781781 points

Countries

GermanyNetherlandsBelgiumand 51 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Flak Map: Berlin's Air Defence in World War II

127 flak batteries, 64 searchlights, decoy installations and 109 aircraft lost over Berlin and Brandenburg. Batteries carry their unit numbers (4./564 Mühlenbeck, 2./light flak battalion 722 at the Goerzwerk). Each is sourced to a Bundesarchiv file or to captured German records now kept in Russia, some found on aerial photos from 1953. Aircraft carry their serials, such as Halifax LW466, lost on 29 January 1944.

Objects

360358 points, 2 areas

Countries

Germany

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Giant Oak Map: Germany's Thickest Trees, Measured

1,838 oaks sorted into layers by girth at breast height, each with its height and the year it was measured. At the top, the Great Oak in the Ivenack deer park measures 11.70 metres around and 32 metres high (2016). The Femeiche at Erle is nearly as thick at 10.77 metres but only 11 metres tall.

Objects

1,8381,838 points

Countries

GermanyPoland

Made with

Google My Maps
License Plate Scanner Map: Germany's Hidden Autobahn Cameras

Someone has tracked down where the police scan number plates on the motorway. Verified sites come with photos: “hidden under a bridge ledge” on the A6 at Wernberg-Ost, “very well hidden” on a sign gantry on the A3 near Aschaffenburg, three reading units on the A6 on-ramp at Waidhaus. The unit at the Seehamer See moved a few kilometres after Bavarian TV reported on it in January 2019. Routes driven without finding a scanner are marked as checked.

Objects

3922 points, 17 lines

Countries

GermanyAustria

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Cold War Bunker Map: Stasi Sites and Nuclear Stores

Both sides of the Iron Curtain on one map of 723 sites. In the west are the former nuclear weapons stores of the Federal Republic, each with its US guard unit and dates: SAS Montabaur was guarded by the 83rd USAFAD from August 1970 to June 1992. In the east are the Soviet warhead store Komplex 5001, the Soviet command bunker Zeppelin, NVA bunkers and Stasi properties. Many bunkers link to the mapmaker’s photo reports, which also reach Douaumont and Mimoyecques in France.

Objects

723723 points, 4 lines, 187 areas

Countries

GermanyFranceItalyand 8 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Schinderhannes Map: The Robber's Crimes, Dated

The career of Johannes Bückler, the robber Schinderhannes, as a crime log across the Hunsrück, Nahe and Palatinate. There are 134 entries, from break-ins into stables in 1797 to a robbery with manslaughter at Sötern in September 1801. On 31 May 1802 a patrol from the Electorate of Trier stopped him near Wolfenhausen, and he enlisted in the Austrian army.

Objects

134133 points, 1 area

Countries

Germany

Made with

Google My Maps
Siren Map: Germany's Warning Sirens, Living and Gone

Siren fans keep this census of 1,122 sites: active, silent, dismantled and moved, each tagged with its model (E57, DS-977, Pintsch-Bamag). Many entries are ghosts: a school roof in Nuremberg where “only the roof hatch is left”, an old depot where you can still see where the steps were. One E57 painted like a fly agaric moved from a house to the Bubenreuth fire station.

Objects

1,1221,119 points, 3 lines

Countries

Germany

Made with

Google My Maps
Lost Villages Map: Places Cleared for Borders, Bombs and Dams

221 places that are gone. 72 were cleared for the inner German border, 50 for military training areas, 19 for Wismut’s uranium mines and 80 for reservoirs. Among them are Gruorn on the Swabian Alb and Lenschow, which has its own memorial website. Bonnland in Franconia is kept separate: resettled rather than razed, it became a training village for urban warfare.

Objects

221174 points, 47 areas

Countries

Germany

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Tunnel Boring Machine Map: A Night Drive for Stuttgart 21

On 13 December 2013 a tunnel boring machine travelled from Stuttgart harbour to the Filder tunnel site, and this map logs the journey minute by minute. It left on the dot at 19:01 to the noise of Stuttgart 21 opponents, and the police ordered them away. It took the hairpin up to the Filder at 20:36 and got stuck for a few minutes at the B10 exit. It recoupled behind Scharnhausen at 22:32 and joined the A8 at 23:50. By 0:10 the motorway was clear again.

Objects

3122 points, 9 lines

Countries

Germany

Made with

Google My Maps
Stork Map: The Life of Schnuckel II

Ring A277 hatched on 27 June 2000 in the bird park at Bobenheim-Roxheim. This map follows her sighting by sighting for more than 6,000 days, each entry counting the days since she was ringed. She bred for years in Langenhanshagen near the Baltic, where in 2018 she laid three eggs and raised none. She spent winters near Nordhausen instead of flying south and once turned up as a “lantern stork” at Seinstedt. Quotes from her life story fill the gaps.

Objects

7777 points

Countries

Germany

Made with

Google My Maps
Abandoned Railways Map: Germany's Lost Lines, Dated

Every closed line here carries a short card: opened, closed, electrified, length, builder. The Amrum island railway ran from 1901 to 1939, was electrified in 1909 and was 2.9 km long. Even Prussia’s first railway, Berlin–Potsdam of 1838, appears in pieces: one section closed in 1946, others in 1980. Kleinbahn companies long gone (the Kyffhäuser Railway, the Mecklenburg-Pomeranian narrow gauge) sit beside tram lines and today’s network.

Objects

1,9461,946 lines

Countries

GermanyNetherlandsPolandand 2 more

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Potsdam Bombing Map: One Night in April 1945

The RAF raid on Potsdam of 14 April 1945 as a timeline. The bombers leave England near Eastbourne at 19:27, the sirens go off in Potsdam at about 22:15, and the last bomber leaves the airspace at 23:16. From 6,100 metres, the bombs had to be released 2.5 kilometres before the target. Eyewitness accounts add a candle lit in an air-raid shelter. A layer of unexploded bombs follows to the present: four defused in one day in December 2008, and an exclusion zone on 4 July 2018.

Objects

106102 points, 2 lines, 2 areas

Countries

GermanyUnited KingdomFranceand 1 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Unbuilt Autobahn Map: Germany's Roads That Never Were

A Dutch road enthusiast’s map of 220 planned, unfinished and abandoned motorways, canals and railways, written in Dutch. Strecke 77 from Hamm to Kassel was begun in 1938 and dropped in 1942. The A41 of the 1970s was meant to cross the Ruhr from north to south. A Neuss junction built as a cloverleaf for an A46 that never came was later turned into a trumpet. A station near Hamburg, Beimoor, was built in 1916 and never opened.

Objects

220125 points, 95 lines

Countries

GermanySwitzerlandAustriaand 1 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Missing Species Map: Rhineland-Palatinate's Last Sightings

Each of the 105 points is an animal and the year it was last seen there. The moth Platingraue Grasbüscheleule was last seen in 1901, Dunkelbraune Spannereule in 1921 and the southern white admiral butterfly in 1988. Many come with a photo, and some link to a “species of the week” column.

Objects

105105 points

Countries

Germany

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Graffiti Map: Hamburg's Murals by getting-up

The murals of Hamburg’s graffiti crew getting-up, each with the artists’ tags and the year. “Der Feuerskater” in the Karolinenviertel was painted by Daim, Loomit, Hesh and Panic in 1994. “Paradise Island” in St. Pauli followed in 1996. “Graffiti als Zeichen der Zeit” in Lohbrügge brought six writers together in 1995. 27 walls trace the crew from the nineties to “Identität” of 2007/08.

Objects

2727 points

Countries

Germany

Made with

Google My Maps
Westwall Bunker Map: Saarland's Defences and Older Wars

3,705 points where three wars overlap. Westwall bunkers carry their standard type (“Regelbau 51, shelter for a trench position, 6 men”), there are dragon’s teeth, and French observation posts on the other side of the border. Under them lie Roman roads, archaeological sites and the battlefields of 1870.

Objects

3,7053,705 points

Countries

GermanyFranceLuxembourg

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Munich Club Map: 728 Nightclubs by Decade

Munich’s nightlife as layers from before 1950 to the 2020s, each club at its address: the Haifisch on Blütenstraße in the fifties, Domicile and Kinki in the sixties, then a crowd of seventies discos. Of the 728 venues, most closed long ago, so the map shows which ordinary buildings were once clubs.

Objects

728728 points

Countries

Germany

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Observation Tower Map: 621 Lookouts Climbed

A tower climber’s log with each tower’s height, steps and year built, taken from a tower database. St. Johannis in Zittau has 266 steps (built 1837, climbed on 25 October 2008). The Mückentürmchen across the Czech border dates from 1568. Most are in Saxony and Bohemia, but the climber went as far as Hungary.

Objects

621620 points, 1 line

Countries

GermanyCzechiaHungaryand 3 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Peasants' War Map: The Uprising of 1525

24 places of the great uprising, each with its dates and numbers. About 6,000 peasants stormed the castle at Weinsberg on Easter Sunday 1525 and made its nobles run the gauntlet. In Memmingen the Twelve Articles were adopted in March. In March 1525 alone about 23 monasteries and 24 castles were plundered between the Black Forest and Lake Constance. The defeats at Frankenhausen and Königshofen end it.

Objects

2424 points

Countries

GermanyAustriaSwitzerland

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Boonekamp Map: Drinking Spots on Electrical Cabinets

65 electrical cabinets rated as places to drink herbal bitters, each with a name and a review. “The Healthy Cabinet for Globetrotters” stands outside a pharmacy, with a Netto nearby “where, as everyone knows, the best Boonekamp is sold”. “The Three Unequal Ones” are three cabinets side by side. Each review says where the next kiosk and the next toilet are. A few entries are in Scotland.

Objects

6565 points

Countries

GermanyUnited KingdomIceland

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap

Nothing found