Action rose

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The Rose Action was a measure of the GDR government to nationalize hotels, rest homes, taxi and service companies in February 1953. The focus was on the seaside resorts of the Baltic Sea coast , especially Rügen . Over 400 entrepreneurs were arrested for alleged violations of the “Law for the Protection of Public Property and Other Social Property” (VESchG).

In 1961, measures to build the Berlin Wall were also called "Aktion Rose".

Political background

The "Aktion Rose" served as a case study for the state expropriation plans of the SED , especially the strict implementation of the National Property Protection Act of September 1952. The GDR judiciary wanted to set an example of the transfer with extensive, rapid criminal proceedings and deterrent penal sentences for medium-sized companies on the Baltic coast of companies in public ownership to speed. Another reason for the action was of a military nature: in order to develop the northeast of Rügen ( Glowe and the surrounding area) into a naval port similar to Murmansk and to set up a "Baltic Sea protection zone", the GDR needed a lot of real estate to accommodate soldiers, workers and people's police . This could be set up quickly by expropriations. For the project to build a war port in the Baltic Sea, which was planned as a large company, up to 5,000 forced laborers were housed in a prison camp near Glowe. There have even been plans for a residential area for 100,000 people. A company was set up specifically for the major project, VEB Bau-Union Nord ; he was directly subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior. The GDR was to receive a naval base the size of the port of Hamburg . As early as June 1953, the facility planned together with the Soviet Union was significantly reduced. The Rose campaign was also massively accompanied by propagandistic means, such as aggressive newspaper articles that were targeted against the owners of holiday rental establishments who were referred to as “crooks”.

Another purpose of the campaign was to provide holiday accommodation for the FDGB holiday service and for the large state- owned companies , especially the Soviet-German SDAG Wismut, which was set up for uranium mining in the Ore Mountains . For this, so-called culture houses were built in the same year in the style of the Moscow “ sugar baker's architecture ” (see also East Berlin's Stalinallee ) , for example in 1953 in Zinnowitz on Usedom .

Procedure for the Rose campaign

According to the files of the district authority of the Rostock People's Police, the action had been prepared since January 2, 1953. On January 23, the task force was formed in Rostock, to which the later East German attorney general Josef Streit belonged. The Rose campaign began on February 10th. 400 people's police officers took part. According to the operational log of February 10, they sang in the buses on the way to the operational area

“Revolutionary and homeland songs. [...] Then after three hours of sleep we went to work. Each and every one of them was convinced that by doing this they were doing a personal part in creating the foundations of socialism in the GDR. "

The police officers had been trained to look specifically for violations of the VESchG. The relevant "incriminating materials" in the subsequent criminal court proceedings included, in particular, evidence

  • Contacts to West Germany
  • GDR-critical sentiment
  • “Fascist activity” before 1945
  • as well as the creation of food supplies.

Listening to the west station RIAS was also punished. The police officers - including many who were just starting their training - had a month to investigate and terrified the operators of facilities on the Baltic Sea.

Falco Werkentin traces the case of the director of a children's home, who was arrested on February 16 and sentenced to 16 months in prison on March 6, among other things for failing to report a hundredweight of sugar, which she allegedly used to cook jam for the children needed. Later, the director's daughter came to court as the owner of the children's home. On April 1, her fortune was confiscated and a nine-month prison sentence was imposed on her because the People's Police from Aktion Rose found two receipts from West Berlin on her during the house search - for a pair of boots (27 West marks) and a coat ( 684 GDR marks). In the judgment it said:

"It is not acceptable that she earns her money in the area of ​​our republic in order to bring it to West Berlin, where it will only be used to prepare for a Third World War."

The press accompanied the action with articles like this:

"We introduce: slide under themselves. Happy festivities with richly set tables, full of sparkling wine and champagne to the point of abundance, were not uncommon with them. That was how they liked life. And for this the domestic workers could work ten to twelve or even more hours a day "

- Ostsee-Zeitung of March 17, 1953

Like in this case, many business owners have been under the pretext of economic crime or agents working for the West in summary proceedings condemned expropriated then and the penitentiary brought (many of Bützow - Dreibergen ) forcibly relocated or to distant regions of the GDR. 219 people escaped arrest by fleeing the GDR , which resulted in their automatic expropriation.

The expropriated hotels and pensions should be officially assigned to the FDGB or brokered through the state-owned travel agency. In fact, accommodation for the barracked people's police (KVP) was initially created. Due to the military planning and the standstill of the expropriated hotel operations, tourism on Rügen almost completely collapsed in 1953.

Development after June 17, 1953

After the popular uprising on June 17, 1953 , many hotel owners were released from prison. However, they were not rehabilitated, they were only granted partial use of their hotels. Many decided to leave the GDR.

Clarification of the ownership structure after reunification

As part of German reunification , the properties of many hotel owners were transferred back after 1990, but mainly those who came back from the west. The owners, who continued to manage their properties after Aktion Rose, were barely able to invest in their properties due to the prescribed low rents and other restrictions, so that the houses fell into a creeping decline and were often sold at low prices in the 1970s. A great many buildings were repurposed or rededicated. Former owners who remained in the GDR who had suffered this injustice were rehabilitated on request , but mostly not compensated for the material loss. A retransfer is also not possible. Some were offered repurchase at market value, which very few of them could afford.

literature

  • Martin Holz: The Rose Action 1953 on the Baltic Sea coast . In: Rugia Rügen yearbook. Putbus 12.2004.
  • Klaus Müller: The control of criminal justice by the SED state and party leadership in the GDR using the example of Aktion Rose . Frankfurt / M. u. a. 1995. ISBN 3-631-48492-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article about the construction of the wall on the BStU website
  2. ^ Time: The Rügen Fortress
  3. ↑ The New York Times quoted a report from AP on June 11th , according to which "the Russians abruptly abandoned the construction of a gigantic naval base on the Baltic island of Rügen" and also the share of the "East German communist government in the huge construction site by more than that Half has been cut ”. A little later, according to the New York Times of July 29, 1953, the government of the GDR again allowed the Swedish Railways ferries to call into Sassnitz on Rügen , which had been prohibited since October 1952 .
  4. ↑ quoted from Falco Werkentin: Politische Strafjustiz in der Ära Ulbricht , Ch. Links, Berlin, 1997, ISBN 978-3-86153-069-5 , pp. 59ff
  5. ↑ Falco Werkentin: Political criminal justice in the Ulbricht era , Ch. Links, Berlin, 1997, ISBN 978-3-86153-069-5
  6. ↑ District Court Bützow, April 1, 1953, judgment Ds 6/53