Urft Reservoir

Atlas ObscuraJan 15

Wollseifen Village in Schleiden, Germany

Deep inside Germany’s Eifel National Park lies Wollseifen, a deserted village whose silence tells two very different stories. First mentioned in medieval records, Wollseifen was once a normal rural community of farmers and shepherds perched on a plateau above the Urft Reservoir. But in 1946, just after World War II, the British Army ordered all 500 inhabitants to evacuate — not because of war,…