Tropical Islands History:
From Military Airfield to Tropical Paradise & Why This Island Exists in the Middle of Brandenburg
What was Tropical Islands before?
Before Tropical Islands, the Brand military airfield occupied the site. After World War II, the Soviet Army used the site for decades before CargoLifter AG had a huge airship hangar built there in the late 1990s. After the company went bankrupt, the hangar was converted into the tropical resort you see today.
The Berlin locals recommend.
Why was Tropical Islands built inside an airship hangar?
The Tropical Islands hangar was originally built to construct huge cargo airships for CargoLifter AG. When CargoLifter filed for bankruptcy in 2002, the enormous hangar was left behind. In 2003, the Malaysian consortium Tanjong PLC/Colin Au bought the site and had the former airship hangar converted into Tropical Islands.
Facts at a Glance
- Location: Krausnick, Brandenburg, around 60 kilometers south of Berlin
- From 1938: Military airfield of the German Luftwaffe
- From 1945: Used by the Soviet Army
- 1998: CargoLifter AG buys the site
- 1999–2000: Construction of the present-day hangar
- 2002: CargoLifter AG files for bankruptcy
- 2003: Takeover by Tanjong PLC/Colin Au
- December 19, 2004: Tropical Islands opens
- Hangar: 360 meters long, 210 meters wide and 107 meters high
Alright, friends,
when you stand inside Tropical Islands today, the first things you see are palm trees, water and a sandy beach.
It’s warm all year round, tropical plants are everywhere, and between them are the huts that have stuck with me ever since my first visit. Kids run through the hangar, people relax by the water, while outside it could be a grey Brandenburg winter.
As a kid, one thing impressed me more than anything else: the sheer size.
Today, I find it even more fascinating to understand why this enormous hangar is here in the first place. Because nobody would voluntarily build a water park in the middle of Brandenburg that is 360 meters long and more than 100 meters high.
The hangar was never built for people. It was built for airships.
And the history of the site actually begins long before CargoLifter.
What was on the site before Tropical Islands?
From 1938, the Brand-Briesen military airfield was built here for the Luftwaffe’s Brand-Guben flight school. Towards the end of World War II, the airfield was used by transport and fighter aircraft units, among others.
In 1945, the Soviet Army took over the site. Over the following decades, Brand developed into an important Soviet military airfield in East Germany.
There’s one story from that period that I didn’t know myself for a long time: On October 17, 1963, Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova landed here. Gagarin had become the first person in space two years earlier, while Tereshkova had become the first woman in space just a few months before. At the time, Brand was also used for state visits from the Soviet Union.
After the end of East Germany, the site’s military past didn’t simply disappear. From 1992, the state of Brandenburg managed the site and had kerosene tanks, ammunition and other contaminated materials removed.
By now, I’ve spent quite a lot of time exploring the Soviet history around Berlin. Just a few kilometers away is Wünsdorf, the former Soviet military town with bunkers, barracks and a history that is still visible in the forest today. I’ve been there myself and written my own blog about it.
I also keep seeing the Tropical Islands hangar from the outside whenever I’m in the area. Once you know its history, that huge white arch in the middle of Brandenburg looks completely different.
You can find these kinds of shifts from military to civilian use all around Berlin. The history of Tempelhof Airport also shows just how dramatically former airfields can change from their original purpose.
CargoLifter: A Huge Vision for Brandenburg
In 1998, CargoLifter AG bought the former military site. The idea behind it was much bigger than simply building a new factory hangar.
CargoLifter wanted to rethink heavy-load transportation. Large components for power plants, industrial facilities or infrastructure would no longer have to be transported exclusively by road, rail or ship. Instead, a huge airship was supposed to carry heavy loads directly to places that were difficult to reach using conventional transport routes.
For this, the company planned the CargoLifter CL 160. The airship was designed to carry loads of up to 160 tonnes.
Brand offered plenty of space and existing airfield infrastructure. The former military site was intended to become a new hub for so-called lighter-than-air technology.
And for that, CargoLifter needed a hangar on a scale that barely existed anywhere else.
Why is the Tropical Islands hangar so big?
The answer is pretty simple: Because it was originally built to construct huge airships.
The hangar is 360 meters long, 210 meters wide and 107 meters high. Its floor area covers around 66,000 square meters. Almost 14,000 tonnes of steel were used in its construction.
Even the two doors show the scale CargoLifter had in mind. Each consists of several movable sections, weighs around 600 tonnes and took about 20 minutes to open. Today, they are no longer moved.
The shape of the hangar also served a purpose. It was designed to maximize its internal volume while remaining aerodynamic, allowing the planned airships to be built inside.
That’s why Tropical Islands still feels so unusual today. The beach, palm trees and rainforest aren’t simply inside a large indoor water park. They’re inside an industrial hangar whose dimensions were calculated for a completely different project.
Around Berlin, you would normally associate dimensions like these with monumental structures such as the Olympiastadion Berlin. At Tropical Islands, the scale feels even more unusual because the hangar is now filled with a beach, palm trees and a rainforest.
Why did CargoLifter fail?
The vision was huge. So were the technical and financial risks.
The planned CargoLifter airship was never built. In a later report by the German Bundestag, the reasons given for the failure included extremely optimistic development timelines and financing assumptions, as well as a project structure that was not adequately designed for a project of this scale.
On June 10, 2002, CargoLifter AG filed for bankruptcy.
That left one of the world’s largest free-standing halls standing in the middle of Brandenburg – built for an airship that was never completed.
I don’t really remember CargoLifter itself from my childhood. But one thing I do remember: The news kept talking about what would happen to this enormous hangar.
I was around ten years old at the time. The hangar was simply there – gigantic, empty and built for a purpose that had suddenly disappeared.
And just a few years later, that exact situation gave rise to something that had absolutely nothing to do with airships.
How was the airship hangar turned into Tropical Islands?
After CargoLifter went bankrupt, a new use had to be found for the enormous hangar. In 2003, the Malaysian company Tanjong bought the site. The entrepreneur Colin Au was behind the new idea: the former airship hangar would be transformed into a tropical holiday world in the middle of Brandenburg.
Within just a few months, the purpose of the hangar changed completely. Where airships were originally supposed to be built, sandy beaches, lagoons, tropical plants and accommodation took their place.
Tropical Islands opened on December 19, 2004.
Looking at the history of the site, this transformation has become the most interesting thing about the place for me.
First a military airfield, then a Soviet military site, followed by an airship hangar – and finally, palm trees.
Just a few kilometers away, Wünsdorf is a place where the region’s Soviet past is still much more visible today.
Why Tropical Islands didn’t work properly at first
When Tropical Islands opened, the tropical world was still a long way from what it looks like today. The plants in particular caused problems because the original hangar shell didn’t let enough suitable sunlight inside.
In 2005, part of the hangar shell was therefore replaced with a special UV-permeable membrane. This allowed significantly more natural light to enter and helped the tropical vegetation develop.
Visually, the place was also much barer in the beginning. Concrete surfaces were still visible, and the huge former industrial hangar couldn’t simply be hidden within a few months.
One detail I find particularly interesting is that parts of the buildings in the Tropical Village were made in Bali, Borneo and Samoa before being rebuilt in Brandenburg.
Those bamboo huts in particular have stayed in my memory ever since my first visit.
My first visit to Tropical Islands
I still remember hearing about this huge hangar on the news again and again as a kid, and people talking about what was going to happen to it.
My first visit must have been around 2007. I went there with Frank, my grandpa.
And I still remember my first thought pretty clearly:
“Wow, this place is huge.”
Until then, I’d really only known normal sports halls and indoor swimming pools. And suddenly you’re standing inside this gigantic hangar, it’s tropical and warm, and in front of you are sand, palm trees and bamboo huts.
Then there was the hot-air balloon inside the hangar, the zipline and that huge waterslide tower.
It really felt like its own little world.
Something else that stuck with me: the day was pretty expensive for my grandpa. Admission, food, drinks – it all adds up over a full day.
That’s still something to keep in mind with Tropical Islands today. You can have a pretty special day there, but it isn’t cheap.
Years later, I saw the place differently
In 2019, I started looking into Tropical Islands much more closely again.
We wanted to take a short break without travelling too far. What interested me most was the option of booking our own accommodation there with a private outdoor pool.
In the end, it didn’t happen – COVID got in the way.
But that’s what made me start looking more closely at the history of the place. I’ve seen the hangar differently ever since.
I was already impressed by its size as a kid. Today, I also know why it’s so huge in the first place and what happened here before.
Through my visits to Wünsdorf, I’ve also seen the hangar from the outside again and again. Surrounded by forest and former military sites in Brandenburg, it looks pretty strange anyway. Once you know it was built for huge cargo airships, its shape suddenly makes sense.
Is Tropical Islands worth a day trip from Berlin?
Tropical Islands can be worth a day trip from Berlin if you want to spend a full day there and price isn’t your main concern. Especially for families or as a bad-weather day trip, it offers something that’s hard to compare with a regular indoor swimming pool.
If you’re craving the real sea, Tropical Islands obviously won’t replace the Baltic Sea or a holiday on the Mediterranean. But if you simply want some warmth, sand and palm trees, or want to show your kids something different from the next indoor swimming pool, I can understand the appeal.
Tropical Islands is also easy to reach from Berlin by train. For me, it would therefore be more of a full-day trip than somewhere I’d visit for just two or three hours.
Especially on a grey Berlin day, the contrast is pretty extreme. You’ll find more ideas in my family trips and activities and my tips for Berlin on a rainy day.
What remains of the history today
When you walk through Tropical Islands today, there’s barely anything at first glance that reveals what the site was originally used for.
Palm trees, sand, water, hotels and holiday homes now define the place. Tropical Islands has become one of the region’s major leisure resorts and is used by many Berliners and visitors simply as a day trip or short break.
But the hangar itself still tells its story.
Its dimensions come from CargoLifter. The site itself goes back to its military past. And ultimately, this entire tropical world only exists in its current form because a completely different project failed.
You see these kinds of transformations again and again in Berlin and Brandenburg. Tempelhof Airport serves a completely different purpose today than it originally did, while places such as Museum Island, KaDeWe and Alexanderplatz Station also have their own stories behind how they look and how they are used today.
At Tropical Islands, that contrast is just particularly striking.
A hangar built for an airship that was never completed is now an artificial tropical world in the middle of Brandenburg.
I already found the place impressive as a kid. Back then, it was because of its size, the sand and the palm trees.
Today, it’s mainly because I know what was here before.
Berlin isn’t a tourist attraction. Berlin is a city.
See you in the real Berlin – or here in the next blog.
Take care 🖤
Sources: Website “https://www.automation-next.com” | Website “https://de.wikipedia.org” | Website “https://www.tropical-islands.de” | Website “https://www.rbb24.de” | Most images in this article are sample images and were not taken at the places featured.
Check out our blogs on insider tips for Berlin.
View all-
Bus 100
Bus 100 runs right through Berlin, passing some of the city’s most famous sights along the way. Why I regularly recommended it during my time as a concierge, which stops...
Bus 100
Bus 100 runs right through Berlin, passing some of the city’s most famous sights along the way. Why I regularly recommended it during my time as a concierge, which stops...
-
Bundestag
The Bundestag is about more than its dome and views over Berlin. Find out what really happens in parliament, how you can visit the Bundestag – and why it’s worth...
Bundestag
The Bundestag is about more than its dome and views over Berlin. Find out what really happens in parliament, how you can visit the Bundestag – and why it’s worth...
-
Planetarium Berlin
The Zeiss-Großplanetarium is far more than just stargazing. Find out what to expect at the Berlin Planetarium, why this GDR-era building still impresses today – and whether it’s really worth...
Planetarium Berlin
The Zeiss-Großplanetarium is far more than just stargazing. Find out what to expect at the Berlin Planetarium, why this GDR-era building still impresses today – and whether it’s really worth...
