The Ghost on the hill: Ruins of childhoods

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Once a bustling center of socialist education, the POS „Ernst Schneller“ now stands as a decaying fortress overlooking the Harz mountains. With 850,000 views on YouTube, it’s a global "Lost Place" sensation. The school on the hill.

But for the locals, it’s a bittersweet reminder of a vanishing past. From abandoned pianos to archives dating back to the 50s, step inside the school that time forgot before the wrecking ball finally arrives.

The lost piano.

Like a castle, the two-winged building towers over the small village of Straßberg - a fortress behind a high fence, bolted and barred, overgrown with trees and weeds, and currently serving as a collection point for autumn leaves. In the twilight, what was once the POS “Ernst Schneller” (a polytechnic secondary school in the socialists term) looms like a dark shadow over the tiny village near Stolberg at the mountains Harz.

One of the lost class rooms.

Hollow window socks

Empty, hollow window sockets look out over this district of the town of Harzgerode; sheet metal cladding is peeling off the facade, and threadbare curtains flutter spookily from a gaping window.TRaces 

Traces of fire.

The old school has become the most significant attraction in this Harz village since the global community of “Lost Place” fans discovered the four-story standard GDR school building as a decorative photo motif.

The monster doll.

Countless galleries on Facebook and Pinterest rack up likes, while on YouTube, several films entice viewers curious about places where nature is slowly and thoroughly erasing human handiwork from the face of the earth.

Three chairs.

One crumbling school

One of these videos has been watched by 850,000 people - this is 1,500 times more people than Straßberg has inhabitants. Yet Ramona Alig is not proud of the fame the ruin has brought to her home village. “We are aware of it, but it’s still not pleasant,” says the volunteer archaeological monument conservator, who also runs a website about her hometown.

Rotten curtain.

For her, the old school is a constant reminder of a past “when Straßberg was still an industrial village with a steadily growing population.”

The blackboard with right wing phrases.

The school on the hill

In the early 1980s, there was no other choice: a new school had to be built. “Until then, the classrooms for the children were scattered all over the village,” Ramona Alig remembers.

Relaxing chair.

The new POS, named after a KPD (Communist Party) official murdered in a concentration camp, was then attended by students from the entire surrounding area. “Including my younger brother.”

Another class room, spooky too.

But the baby-boom generations eventually swept through Straßberg like a wave. “At some point, there simply weren’t enough children,” says Ramona Alig. First, the secondary levels moved out of the four-story “Erfurt” type concrete building.

Playing chamber.

Some things are left

At the time, the community set up a school museum in some of the seven-by-seven-meter classrooms, with many residents donating memorabilia. But after 2004 -as revealed by abandoned calendars and bills left in the principal's office - the primary school also vanished from the building on the hill.

The piano room.

What remains are almost picturesquely arranged remnants of a quarter-century of school life. Gymnastic benches stand in the foyer, alongside toy trucks and balls, one final specimen of the cast-iron GDR standard scale, and building blocks still stacked into a tower.

Paper works.

Apiano on the floor

The piano on the ground floor is out of tune due to the damp but remains undamaged, as does a fine porcelain tea set that the school management once used to entertain guests. In an archive room, files are stacked dating back to the 1950s; in the former biology lab, the remains of the school’s own apiary lie on a cupboard next to paintings by children.

This is where children were once allowed to print, just like in the Middle Ages.

The “Schneller” POS was not a “run-of-the-mill” school; you can still feel that today. “But what good is that when there is no next generation?” asks Ramona Alig.

The youth has now to travel

Today, the students from Straßberg have to travel to the next Harzgerode for classes, just like everyone else. The fate of this magnet for ruin tourists is also sealed: the demolition is said to be decided, though the city administration could not provide information on when it will actually take place.

A warm welcome. Destroyed changing room. Painted Policeman

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