Abandoned buildings fascinate me as photography subjects, but I rarely have a chance to explore them because I am a very law-abiding citizen and do not like the idea of illegal trespassing and there are sadly few grand abandoned buildings where access is legally available for photography.

I was therefore very excited when a couple of weeks ago, when I was in Berlin, I had an opportunity to participate in a visit to a remarkable complex of large abandoned hospital buildings in Beelitz-Heilstätten, just outside the city. These buildings served originally as a tuberculosis sanatorium in the beginning of the 20th Century, but later as a German and eventually Soviet military hospitals. The photography outing was arranged by a very nice German urban exploration photography group named Go2know (see their website - in German only - at go2know.de), which specializes in visiting and photographing abandoned sites in the Berlin area.

The three particular buildings we visited (with official permission) were originally the tuberculosis (TB) sanatorium for men. They were but a small part of a much larger medical complex of about 60 buildings on the site, most of which are still standing, including the counterpart TB sanatorium for women nearby. Back in the beginning of the 20th Century, tuberculosis was rampant in Berlin as in many places in Europe and the U.S., and no effective medication was available to treat it. The main treatment was extensive recuperation in these specially built "sanatoria", which were kind of medical rest homes built in isolated places to avoid contagion, where the patients received plenty of fresh air, relaxation and good nutrition. Such sanatoria sprung up all over Europe to cope with the onslaught of tuberculosis which was a major killer in the increasingly crowded Western cities of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. The idea behind these sanatoria was that under such healthy and restful conditions, the patients' immune systems would be strengthened and would be able to fight off or isolate the TB bacterium. And in fact this therapeutic approach seems to have worked remarkably well - a large proportion of the patients in these places actually recovered from their illness.