German Decays: The shimmering Blue Wonder

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Germany - once the proud nation of high-tech industry and global-exporting factories - now finds itself fringed by tales of what might have been: abandoned innovation parks, ruined industrial halls, and ambitious visions lost to decay.   Sometimes the lake are blue

Near the Harz village of Hüttenrode, a former industrial wasteland has transformed over the past hundred years into an azure-blue shimmering lake. But now the “Blue Eye” has vanished – day-trippers and tourists stand bewildered before an empty hole in the rock.

It`s a magic place

The young man from Thuringia is puzzled. “Is that supposed to be it?” he asks incredulously, pointing with his reflex camera toward the limestone pit where only a puddle of brownish water remains. “That’s the Blue Lake?” he shakes his head in disbelief.

The best-known lake

Three pictures from different times: Blue, green and lost 

He doesn’t really want to believe it – after all, he came all the way from Sömmerda just to take beautiful photos of the famous body of water. Halfway between Hüttenrode and Rübeland lies what is, after the Rappbode Reservoir, perhaps the best-known lake in the Harz Mountains.

From above the water is like that one in Nepal's Milk River

The Blue Lake is not a natural formation, yet the former industrial site offers spectacular views – witnesses of a history whose traces still shape the landscape today. This story is told in part 82 of the MZ series “Forgotten Places”: The famous Blue Lake near Rübeland.

Sunny day, green water

The Blue Eye

Or rather, it used to tell it. Because of what was once known as the “Blue Eye of the Harz” – a pond about 30 by 60 meters in size, filled with brilliantly turquoise water – nothing remains. The lake is dry, leaving behind a barren limestone basin through which visitors walk in astonishment.

Every stone thrown in the lake is one too much

The lake wasn’t always blue in the past either. When too many people ignored the bathing ban, the crystal-clear water turned green as algae spread. But even then, the lake, classified by the State Office for Geology and Mining as a geotope, remained a striking sight. On weekends, crowds of hikers passed by on the circular trail, and hiking apps praised it as a “unique natural backdrop” that one simply had to see.

40 years ago: The same lake

It isn't a natural wonder

Nature, however, is scarce here. Like the jagged canyons surrounding it, the up to 15-meter-deep rock basin is not the result of geological processes but of human activity. The Blue Lake is no natural wonder, but rather a leftover open-pit mine – a remnant of the former Garkenholz quarry. Limestone was mined here from 1885 onwards for the production of quicklime.

Now it`s gone

The material came from the so-called Elbingerode Reef, formed around 387 million years ago when, in a primeval sea several hundred meters deep, corals and algae accumulated into a high-purity layer of limestone. A railway line was built that ran along the embankment now used as a hiking trail to the lake.

The surrounding - not the Grand Canyon. A place made by men

A limestone mine

Industrial buildings and rail spurs for transport trolleys were constructed. Gradually, the stonecutters worked their way deeper into the terrain. In large crushing plants, limestone was broken down and transported toward Blankenburg or Rübeland.

Once prisoners must dig this hole

Like the dried-up lake, the steep, towering cliffs also bear witness to that time. What today looks like a natural idyll is in fact an industrial wasteland reclaimed by trees, shrubs, and dry grassland since the site’s closure in 1946.

The Blue Lake without a lake

15 meters of water depth - that’s the Blue Lake’s usual level near Hüttenrode. At present, however, visitors find the lagoon dried up for the second time. Yet not only have the traces of mining disappeared, but also all memories of the horrific events the cliffs once witnessed.

Life Danger!

Hundreds of prisoners

Local historian Birger Stagge reports on a camp in Garkenholz where hundreds of Russian prisoners of war were murdered. After the war ended, the dying continued. “Then the Russians set up a prison camp,” he says. Later, DDR paramilitary groups took over the area. The now-protected biotope was turned into a shooting range.

The way the prisoners have to go

This history did nothing to diminish the Blue Eye’s popularity. From the early 1980s, the area developed into a secret tip for wild campers escaping DDR holiday routines with FDJ shirts and morning roll calls. Each summer, the blue lagoon drew hundreds of young people who camped illegally, drank lake water, and played guitar around campfires.

Karst springs around

Anyone who knew the lake back then is even more shocked today. “It was never this empty, not even in midsummer,” recalls one of the old regulars. Karst springs reliably replenished what evaporated or seeped through cracks in the limestone.

It's a gated place

“Something is different,” says the man who has known the lake for forty years and still visits regularly. What exactly, no one knows. Climate change, the dry summers? Michael Randhahn-Schülke from the Harz district mentions a falling groundwater level or altered water inflows in the karst. The lake had already disappeared once in the summer of 2020 – and now it’s gone again.

“Due to changing climatic conditions, it is possible that this scenario will occur more frequently in the future,” says Randhahn-Schülke.

At the bottom of everything, like Conor Oberst sings.  Up on the hill  A blue wonder

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