Spreepark, the corpse of the amusement park
Norbert Witte claims not to be a nostalgic man, although he lives with the ghosts of his past, always waiting to give a new and definitive turn to his life. Spreepark, the park east of Berlin where he lives, is his former kingdom of fun. When he took command of this former amusement park, he saw in it the opportunity to become the messiah of entertainment in a reunified Germany. There he still has his house, among the corpses of abandoned attractions . The place now barely serves as a workshop where he creates or repairs machines for other carnies and can only be visited on organized tours that allow a trip to nostalgia and the past or as the setting for some of the temporary events that rent the space.
With almost 60 years, Witte's life has had as many ups and downs as the roller coaster fastest in the world, the one he managed to lift in Germany in his glory days. After wealth came bankruptcy and an escape by boat that took him to Peru with part of these wagons that lie in Berlin, then loaded with cocaine. Going back, while Norbert Witte himself shows us the park in a personalized way, we discover the man who was the son of a carny and grandson of a circus star known as "the king of Albania". He is a close person in dealings and accustomed to the ups and downs. That's why he always manages to pull himself together. He says it's because he tries not to look back: "If you think too much you just get blocked and that leaves you without the strength to continue fighting," he argues.
Despite being responsible for one of the worst fairground accidents in the country's history in Hamburg, where seven people died in the 1980s on one of his carousels, Witte managed to take over the Spreepark. The Plänterwald amusement park was then an icon of the Government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and, after the fall of the Wall, a new manager was sought. The place was a personal dream for Norbert Wite and a symbol for the nation, a European Disneyland in the most suffering city of the 20th century.
Norbert Witte, life on a roller coaster
However, all hopes were dashed. Under his command it went bankrupt in 2001, after accumulating a debt of 15 million euros. The catastrophe could have come earlier, but year after year his ease with words fooled some investors who continued to invest money in the project, infected by his grandiose ideas. The new attractions that he promised never came . When the Berlin City Council did not provide enough parking spaces to ensure the influx of the public, the house of cards fell. "My grandfather was skilled in politics. That is very important in this business," he tells us.
It was then that he became "Germany's last cowboy" for the press. Like a western character, Witte looked west. he had secretly fled to Peru with some of the park's most important attractions . In a foreign country, faced with an unknown language, despair soon set in. Beset by debts, he tried to transport 170 kilos of cocaine hidden in one of his carousels . The pressure of his new life caused him to suffer a heart attack and he delegated the mission to his son Marcel, who is now serving a 20-year sentence in Lima, in one of the most dangerous prisons in the world.
"When you find out what Norbert has done you feel a certain dislike for him . Upon meeting him you realize how charismatic he is. Without knowing how you trust him. He never broke his word while we worked together, he never failed me”, says Peter Dörfler, director of the documentary about his life Achterbahn.
A decade after what happened, Norbert shares with us his particular roller coaster ride, something that he can no longer do in his own park. He is sitting in the car of a fairground attraction that does not belong to him. , a few kilometers from the place he used to run, he is now semi-retired. Seconds before the last corner, he assures us from the seat next to us that this unpredictable and risky way of life is still exhilarating.
What remains of Spreepark