The Borsig industrial park is in the north of Berlin, alongside a placid lake called the Tegeler See. The company based there is 182 years old; it built steam engines in the earliest days of rail travel. During World War II, like most German factories, it had to supply the Nazi war effort—thus, it was an unlikely location for a pocket of resistance. Borsig was the secret home of the Mannhart Resistance Group, a cabal of intellectuals and workers who advocated ways to sabotage or slow the war effort. The Nazis discovered and executed some of them. Outside the old factory site are engraved paving stones to remember them.
Renting a small part of that old factory today is another unlikely pocket of resistance, in an equally unlikely location.
“We are in the old women’s toilet,” says Andreas Martin, who is showing me the tiny, cramped, inconspicuous base of operations for Schneeeule. (Yes, there are a lot of vowels in there. Say it, SHNAY-oy-luh.) The name means snowy owl—an appropriate name for an outfit that is truly a rare bird.