Schnöggersburg practice town

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Forest district map of the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide around 1900

The practice town of Schnöggersburg was created in the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide from 2012 over a period of five years as a practice town for urban and urban warfare by the Bundeswehr. It is the largest of its kind in Europe. It was created on the site of a former village and forest site of the same name.

history

Until the 1930s, the village of Schnöggersburg was a climatic health resort and was used as a local recreation area for the Magdeburg area. The farmsteads were demolished in the years 1933 to 1936 with the establishment of the Hillersleben Army Research Center and the installation of the 29 kilometer long shooting range to the north, and the residents were forcibly relocated. The replacement site in Neu-Schnöggersburg, further east, was evacuated in 1941 and the residents were relocated again.

In the following 70 years, the village, like the former village centers of Salchau and Paxförde, was in desolation and completely disappeared in the practice operations of the various users of the current Heer Combat Training Center (GÜZ) as part of the Altmark military training area .

The settlement was near Salchau on the connecting route between Staats and Letzlingen on the southern edge of what is now the state district.

The state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt decided in 1991 to use the heath for civilian purposes.

Military training city

From 2012 to 2017, the “Schnöggersburg urban agglomeration” was built near the former village location as part of the GÜZ.

Goal setting

This urban complex with infrastructure elements of modern cities was completed in 2017 and has been used for combat exercises since 2015. On October 26, 2017, a first part of the facility was officially handed over to the army. The entire practice town with more than 500 buildings should be ready by 2021.

construction

In the northern center of the GÜZ around 520 buildings, a motorway, an artificial river ("Eiser"), several bridges, an industrial area, open and closed residential developments, high-rise and administrative buildings, a cemetery, and a sacred building with references to it were built on around six square kilometers Christianity and Islam, a school, a prison, hotel business, a market place, a stadium, a “slum”, destroyed infrastructure elements, barracks and an airfield. The 1700 meter long grass runway is suitable as a runway for heavy transport aircraft such as the Transall . In addition, the "place" received a 350-meter-long underground tunnel with three stations and a "practice sewer system". The operation takes place with a laser-supported simulation system. The events are recorded and analyzed on the computer screen. Up to 1500 soldiers are to train here at the same time.

Other artificial locations in the GÜZ are Stullenstadt , Plattenhausen and Salchau .

financing

As with the surrounding combat training center, a public-private partnership (PPP) with the armaments company Rheinmetall is used to finance the construction and operation of the simulation city Schnöggersburg . Around 100 million euros were estimated for the construction costs. By August 2016, the amount increased to 140 million euros.

Lawsuit from nature conservation associations

In September 2013, NABU Sachsen-Anhalt filed a lawsuit against the planning process before the Administrative Court of Saxony-Anhalt for non-participation. This was dismissed on May 4, 2017 for formal reasons, as the lawsuit was filed too late. However, the court had basically determined that nature conservation associations must also be involved in the administrative procedure in proceedings with confidentiality and security reasons.

Protests

Concert of Lebenslaute in Schnöggersburg

Several organizations of the peace movement criticize Schnöggersburg, especially because they fear that the deployment in the interior of the country would be trained there. The local population is still “divided”, although the Bundestag and Bundeswehr “baited” the population with the so-called “Heide Compromise”. 1200 jobs were created in the Bundeswehr and Rheinmetall .

Rally in front of the district court in Gardelegen because of the trial of activists of the Open Heath

Members of the citizens' initiative Offene Heide criticized Schnöggersburg and entered the zone illegally. On 20 and 27 March 2018 so four people were in front of the District Court Gardelegen for trespassing and sentenced to ten daily rates.

Activists from the same citizens' initiative occupied Schnöggersburg on October 3, 2018 and opened a peace training center. The initiative against the military presence in their home country was awarded the Aachen Peace Prize in 2016.

Similar plants

Urban Warfare Training Center "Baladia City" in Israel (2012)
Joint Readiness Training Center in Fort Polk, USA (2013)
  • Urban Warfare Training Center (UWTC). A similarly dimensioned system of a military training city was built in 2005 with “Baladia City” in Israel's Negev desert near Tze'elim. This measures 19 km² and consists of 600 individual buildings. The construction cost was about 40 million US dollars. In addition to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the facility is also used by the US Army and, since October 2015, by the German Armed Forces.
  • Zussman Village in Fort Knox since 1999. 12 hectare urban center (30 acres , total area 50,000 acres), construction costs 15 million US dollars.
  • Barstow, California: Replica of an Afghan city.

literature

  • Stephen Graham: Cities Under Siege. The New Military Urbanism. Verso, 2010. ISBN 978-1844673155 . limited preview in Google Book search
  • Ernst Bauke, Bernd Plettke: Börgitz, Uchtspringe, Wilhelmshof, Schnöggersburg. Pictures tell from days gone by. Geiger-Verlag, Horb am Neckar 1999, ISBN 3-89570-524-1 .

Web links

Commons : Schnöggersburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Christoph D. Richter: Military training town - subway in the heath. In: Deutschlandfunk: Country Report , February 17, 2015.
  2. ^ Saxony-Anhalt - house-to-house warfare in the Altmark. Retrieved December 25, 2018 (German).
  3. ↑ Thomas Gerlach: Future of the Bundeswehr - ghost town of Schnöggersburg. In: taz.de , July 29, 2013.
  4. ↑ Shooting more beautifully in "Schnöggersburg". Spiegel online, June 20, 2012. Retrieved March 5, 2014.
  5. ^ Parts of Schnöggersburg handed over to ZDF, October 26, 2017
  6. ↑ Bundeswehr builds huge ghost town in the middle of Germany (September 27, 2018; with film report 4:17 min)
  7. ^ A b Matthias Fricke: Schnöggersburg: Movement in the ghost town. People's vote from October 6, 2016
  8. ↑ Bundestag printed matter 17/10445: Planned construction of a combat town in the combat training center in the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide. (PDF; 85 KB, 8 pages), August 8, 2012
  9. ↑ Schnöggersburg, the new practice town. bundeswehr.de, February 14, 2013.
  10. ↑ Bundeswehr builds ghost town. House fighting in "Schnöggersburg". tagesschau.de, October 1, 2015. Accessed October 3, 2015.
  11. ↑ Operation in Afghanistan: Last exercise of the Saarland Brigade before the emergency. deutschesheer.de, December 3, 2010.
  12. ↑ Costs for new training city increased dramatically RP Online, August 30, 2016.
  13. ↑ | Administrative Court of Magdeburg - press release no .: 009/2017 , Administrative Court of Saxony-Anhalt, May 4, 2017
  14. ↑ Schnöggersburg under attack taz , September 6, 2012
  15. ^ Protests at the taz exercise area , August 24, 2014
  16. ^ Urban warfare in the Altmark Deutschlandfunk Kultur , November 7, 2016
  17. ^ "Offene Heide" spokesman Helmut Adolf sentenced to a fine after entering Schnöggersburg Altmark Zeitung , March 28, 2018
  18. ↑ “If everyone followed my example, there would be more peace” Altmark Zeitung, March 21, 2018
  19. ↑ Schnöggersburg occupied. October 4, 2018, accessed December 25, 2018 .
  20. ↑ Steve Przybilla: A City in Case of War | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . November 20, 2017, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed December 25, 2018]).
  21. ↑ Urban Warfare Training Center - Simulating the Modern Battle-Field ( Memento of the original from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. IDF, October 26, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.idfblog.com
  22. ↑ Note: Cf. also → en: Baladia .
  23. ↑ The Bundeswehr is supposed to learn house warfare in Israel. Die Welt, August 30, 2015.
  24. ^ Army Training Site Brings To Life the Horrors of War. ( Memento from July 14, 2010 on the Internet Archive ) National Defense magazine, July 2001.
  25. ^ Victor Robert Lee, The Diplomat: Satellite Imagery: China Staging Mock Invasion of Taiwan? Retrieved December 25, 2018 (American English).
  26. ↑ Geoff Manaugh, Nicola Twilley: It's Artificial Afghanistan: A Simulated Battlefield in the Mojave Desert. Retrieved May 18, 2013, December 25, 2018 (American English).

Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 8.1 ″  N , 11 ° 36 ′ 14.5 ″  E