The room where BER stores their favourite confiscated items is not part of the main airport but sits in a modest administrative building of the Zoll – the customs office – about a 10-minute walk from the terminal. On the day I visited, a strike by airport workers had grounded all flights, meaning the only arrivals on the S-Bahn to Berlin-Brandenburg Airport that morning were a handful of uniformed security staff and a scattering of confused tourists.
The most valuable item? On the black market, a rhinoceros horn can fetch up to €70,000 per kilogram.
Heading over to the logistics centre across the deserted forecourt, I passed Melli-Beese-Ring, Hugo-Junkers-Ring and Georg-Wulf-Straße – the airport’s streets are named for early German aviation pioneers. There was no traffic on these access roads, nor was one easily distinguishable from the other and, as the wintry sun burned thinly through the morning fog, it was difficult to know the right direction. Finally, I saw Christian Böhm, head of the Berlin customs office, walking towards me. He would be my guide to the Wunderkammer, the “cabinet of curiosities” at BER airport.
Were it not for its contents, the storage room would be indistinguishable from its low-ceilinged neighbours (changing rooms, conference rooms and offices). Inside, its holdings are split almost exactly in two. On one side, Produktpiraterie – knockoff goods like fake Louis Vuitton handbags, imitation Givenchy sliders, perfumes, toys and battery packs, discovered in travellers luggage or as part of cargo freight. Facing this horde of off-brand merchandise: a real lion pelt, a lifeless sea turtle, a genuine leopard skin. The seized remains of protected animals and plants, confiscated from travellers passing through Berlin’s airports over the last 30 years.
The object that had brought me to this logistics centre on the outskirts of Brandenburg was a walrus-tusk scrimshaw, decorated with images of significant figures from Russian naval history. It had been discovered in a woman’s luggage last October when she arrived on a flight from Georgia. Since walrus tusks are protected, the object was confiscated. The find made the news. This was the only item I had asked to see specifically, but Böhm was not particularly impressed.
“It’s an imitation. It is a real walrus tusk, but look – run your hand over it. The artwork is printed. That’s not the traditional method used by indigenous peoples – Eskimos, Inuits – who actually carve into the tooth.”
He brings over three more walrus tusks: two longer, decorated ones and a shorter, plain one. “Indigenous people are the only ones allowed to hunt walruses and sell their body parts. It’s part of their tradition. Otherwise, the walrus is protected. Technically, trade is possible with the right permits, but those are rarely issued. As a tourist, you must be careful not to simply buy a walrus tooth. It must come from an indigenous group, such as the Inuits, and have a specific certificate proving its legality.”
The two long tusks kept in the Zoll cabinet are beautiful. A date on one indicates that it was made in 1990. The scenes, etched into the ivory and carefully coloured, depict traditional hunting: ice fishing, harpooning whales, lancing walruses, hauling dead seals on dog-pulled sleds. The shorter, unmarked tusk was naturally eroded, Böhm explains, worn down as walruses drive their tusks into the beach and haul themselves onto land.
“Can you guess what this is? I mean, the figure is a voodoo doll. Only the skull is protected. But can you tell what animal it’s from?”
“When we get extremely unusual items like this, we sometimes consult outside experts,” Böhm tells me. “So, for this one, I called up the Naturkundemuseum – the natural history museum – and said, ‘I’ve got something here, and I don’t know what it is.’ And they said, ‘Sure, come by.’ So, I took it to an expert there.”
“He had a good look at it and said, ‘I have no idea.’ They called in a second expert. No clue either.”
“It was only on the third try that someone said, ‘Hang on… ’ and we went down into the collection rooms of the museum. It was really fascinating. They have these huge cabinets full of bones and skulls. He took me to the Africa section and said, ‘Look at this!’ And there it was – the exact same skull. It was a porcupine.”
“The rest of the figure? Not worth mentioning. It’s a wooden carving, the skull bound on top with string, and the rest covered with bits of plants and small plates of bone. The item was found in someone’s luggage as they arrived from… I think it was Tanzania. I’m not sure, but I think it was.”
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Each item in this cabinet of endangered species tells two stories. First, there is the object’s intended purpose – as tourist trinket, religious idol, medical remedy, hunting knife, or musical instrument. Then comes its second life: its discovery and confiscation at Berlin’s airport.
Facing this horde of off-brand merchandise: a real lion pelt, a lifeless sea turtle, a genuine leopard skin.
Take the full lion’s pelt. It came from a German hunter who shot the lion in Kenya. The man had a legal permit for the kill, but not the skin. He had it taxidermied at a local workshop and shipped to Berlin, but they had failed to provide the necessary species protection documents. He was fined €4,000.
Perhaps the most unsettling artefacts are the monkey heads. Two knives, each adorned with a primate’s skull, and a large ceremonial war shield affixed with the head of a chimpanzee. Primates are strictly protected, with great apes being granted the highest level of protection. If German customs officers intercept one, it triggers criminal proceedings.
But the most valuable item? On the black market, a rhinoceros horn can fetch up to €70,000 per kilogram. Yet, as Böhm notes, the term horn is misleading – it’s not a bone, but is actually composed of keratin, much like human hair and nails.
Surveying the table of confiscated goods – there are also Mongolian string instruments edged with python skin, a protected species of frog (mounted on wood, holding a drum), several cross-sections of rhino horn which resemble rare crystals, plasters daubed with a mixture of menthol herbs and tiger bone power as a traditional remedy for arthritis, and vials of bile, drained from the liver of a captive bear – one cannot help but wonder about the objects not on display today. Böhm and his team say they find something of interest three times a week. Everything they decide not to keep gets burned in a waste incineration plant that operates at temperatures of more than 1,500 degrees – and disappears forever.
