Cesspool, say some. Vein of tranquillity, say others. Both are true. The Teltowkanal is one of the most contradictory places in Berlin. Allotment gardeners have set themselves up between oil tank farms. Dropouts and artists have built little tent houses in the thicket along the banks. Sometimes the canal shows its darker side. Several times, walkers have discovered body parts floating in the water. When the Teltow Canal was opened in 1906, Kaiser Wilhelm II sailed ahead on board his yacht Alexandra. It was planned as a shortcut for shipping traffic. The Teltow Canal cut 16 kilometres off the route from the Elbe to the Oder. Its construction was considered so advanced that even the engineers of the Panama Canal took its lock system as a model. Since then, the Teltow Canal has been many things: for a few days it was a front between the SS and the Red Army, then in places the border between West Berlin and the GDR. The Teltow Canal never again became an important waterway. A real forest has grown up on the former Wall strip. Willows hang their branches over the water. Old harbour facilities look as if they might have been forgotten in the meantime. But no, sometimes a freighter does puff past. After the war, the Iron Curtain cut off the canal in front of Zehlendorf and behind Britz. In Teltow, where an unknown person painted this idyll on an electricity box, the canal was a swathe of water, barriers and watchtowers from 1969 to 1989. They told the little ones back then: Never go to the Teltow Canal, if you fall in, no one can save you. Quite a few tried to escape to the West via the Teltow Canal. Eight people were shot in the process. After the fall of communism, reeds, bushes and climbing plants took over the banks again. Even the former death strip could not withstand nature.