Archaeological investigation of the "Republic of Free Wendland"
The archaeological investigation of the "Republic of Free Wendland" dealt with the former hut village of the anti-nuclear movement near Gorleben in Lower Saxony , in which in 1980 the Republic of Free Wendland was proclaimed. The investigation using archaeological methods took place in 2017 and 2018.
prehistory
After a site occupation with about 5,000 people on May 3, 1980 built nuclear opponents a cottage village as a protest against the construction of nuclear waste deposit Gorleben . It was built at the location of the planned Tiefbohrstelle at the 1004 Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt the Gorleben salt dome for its suitability as nuclear engineering repository should investigate. With the occupation, the “Gorleben-Soll-Leben underground office” proclaimed the Free Wendland Republic as a separate state from among the ranks of the opponents of nuclear power . The hut village, which the occupiers called "Hüttendorf 1004" or "auf 1004", included around 120 buildings made of wood and clay as well as several wooden towers. There were numerous community facilities, such as a large kitchen, church, infirmary, toilet facility and garbage dump. The largest building was the octagonal "Friendship House" with a diameter of around 30 meters, which offered space for around 400 people. In the protest camp, there was a lively everyday life with around 500 permanent occupiers, who received up to 5000 visitors on the weekends . After 33 days, the Lower Saxony police, with the support of other state police and the Federal Border Police , evacuated the camp with around 2500 occupiers on June 4, 1980. According to the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior, around 3,500 officials were involved in the eviction , which was one of the largest police operations of the post-war period .
During the evacuation of the camp, police forces destroyed the huts with bulldozers . A short time later, deep drilling site 1004 was set up on the area of the protest camp and the planned deep drilling was sunk to a depth of two kilometers. The company premises had previously been surrounded by a fortress-like wall made of concrete slabs. Because of the heavy equipment, it was given an asphalt surface , including the access roads .
geography
Coordinates: 53 ° 0 ′ 46 ″ N , 11 ° 20 ′ 4 ″ E
The hut village was located between the town of Trebel and the Gorleben nuclear waste storage facility in a large clearing in the Trebel forest within the extensive Gartower Tannen forest area . The clearing was created in the summer of 1975 during a fire in the Lüneburg Heath after an arson attack. The protest camp extended over an area of about 300 × 400 meters on the sandy wasteland with burned tree stumps.
The area of the former protest camp was largely renatured and reforested after the clearance and completion of the deep drilling in 1980 . Today (2017) it is passed with about 30-year-old poles of deciduous and coniferous trees. A part (about 5%) of the former camp is covered by the asphalt surface of the deep drilling site 1004 set up in 1980, which has been freely accessible again since the drilling rig was dismantled in the 1980s. Since then, there have been two extinguishing water wells used by the local fire brigade on the asphalted area .
Research project
The scientific research of the former protest camp was carried out by the archaeologist Attila Dézsi from the Institute for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archeology at the University of Hamburg . It was designed as a two-year doctoral project from 2016 to 2018 and was the basis of his dissertation , for which the university granted him a scholarship. The research project was called:
- “Contemporary archeology of the 20th century in places of protest. Critical archeology and community archeology of the Free Republic of Wendland. "
For his research, the archaeologist used the Lüchow- based Gorleben archive , which documents the history of the protest against the nuclear waste storage facility in Wendland . A documentary film with the title Gorleben 7 was made by the Wendland Film Cooperative for the investigation . The preliminary results of the archaeological investigations were announced in November 2017 in Trebel after the first excavation campaign in October 2017.
In February 2019, the archaeologist Attila Dézsi publicly presented further results of his investigations. This took place in connection with a discussion about the “future of the place 1004” and an interactive exhibition in Platenlaase with finds from the excavations. The presentation took place on February 22nd, 2019, the anniversary on which the then Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Ernst Albrecht, named Gorleben in 1977 as the provisional location for a “nuclear waste disposal center”.
Goals and Methods
The investigations focused on the remains of the camp and the legacies of its residents. They were carried out, among other things, by evaluating image, writing and sound sources, geophysical prospecting and excavations . The results were compared and contrasted with one another. Residents and former residents of the hut village were actively involved in the research process; but also police officers involved in the evacuation at the time. The people took part in the excavations, gave interviews with contemporary witnesses and were involved in the interpretation of the artifacts found . The knowledge gained during the investigations was also mapped in a publicly accessible database and should serve as a basis for further research.
The archaeologist Attila Dézsi expressed the aim of the investigations as follows: "I want to reconstruct exactly how the protest camp was set up and how everyday life went there". Using archaeologically explored building sites, he gained insights into the structure and function of various huts. This gave insights into the social structures of the camp and was used to research the four-week everyday life of the occupiers. The events of the occupation and evacuation of the space were also explored using soil findings and artifacts. During the research , individual small-scale excavations took place in an area of six football fields that the camp encompassed. With deeper soil digging, huts and towers should be found. The excavations also served to find the legacies of the occupiers, for example in the form of personal items and everyday things. In the run-up to the excavations, the archaeologist Attila Dézsi assumed that despite the destruction of the camp during the evacuation in 1980, he would come across a material culture such as "canisters, glass bottles, clothing" because the bulldozers only pushed the huts off the surface.
Excavations
In the spring of 2017, the first archaeological investigations were carried out as prospecting , during which the area of the previous camp was explored. The locations of the huts were localized using rectified aerial photographs . During inspections of the site with the help of probes , 450 objects were found, around two thirds of which date from around 1980. These included, above all, beverage cans and saucepans, including a pot that was probably rolled flat when clearing the space. A much older find was a medieval belt buckle.
The first excavation campaign lasted two weeks and took place in October 2017. The excavation was carried out by students from the University of Hamburg and, on a daily basis, former residents of the hut village. The excavation cuts were made in two places. They were located in an earlier tent area at the camp entrance and in the central area at the location of a kitchen building near the “friendship house”. The findings included various everyday objects, such as spoons, remains of window glass and a cup and a cream cheese package with a best before date of June 1980. The discovered findings included the wooden remains of a hut which lane of a bulldozer and a waste pit . It contained hundreds of similar objects as leftovers from short-term food intake, such as cans of ready meals and beverage cans, which could be dated to the second and third quarters of 1980. The waste can be interpreted as a disposal site by police forces or guards at the deep drilling site. Findings that testify to the eviction were a respiratory protection filter for a gas mask and a fragment of a cable tie .
A second two-week excavation campaign took place in March 2018 with the participation of students from the University of Hamburg, the University of Leipzig and the Hamburg University of Fine Arts . Five soil cuts were made, in which different colored layers of soil emerged. Objects such as saucepans, beverage and food cans as well as broken glass, nails and window frame elements were found in a found-carrying layer as components of the hut village, which the archaeologists refer to as grading events after the evacuation. Further down, the excavators came across the remains of a hut, which they completely uncovered and documented. Inside were everyday objects of the hut dwellers, such as mattresses, candles, playing cards, a whiskey bottle and a copy of the satirical magazine Titanic . The occupants had left the objects behind during the evacuation. A total of around 1,800 objects were recovered during the investigation.
The excavations were financed by a contribution made by the archaeologist who carried out the work, the University of Hamburg, the Nordmedia film fund , a prize from the Society for Post-Medieval Archeology for young scientists and donations (45%) from the politician Rebecca Harms and two private individuals.
- Finds from 2017
Beverage cans and plastic cups
Glass fragment in found packaging bag
Respiratory protection filter
Nail with wood buildup
Cans of prepared meals
Cup
Fragments of cable ties
cooking pot
Criticism and reply
The research project, which took up an event of the late 20th century, led to a discussion in the media about the meaning of contemporary archeology and its concerns. There was a lack of understanding that a site of recent history was being explored using archaeological methods. The question arises as to whether "the remains of hut roofs or a garbage dump really give the police information about what this occupation meant". Likewise, "what new knowledge a police-emptied Cola can from the 1970s" brings in view of the rich tradition of image, film and text documents in the Gorleben archive . It also remains open, “Whether and what yoghurt pots or tinned food can tell about the Free Republic of Wendland at deep drilling site 1004 and life in it”.
Proponents of the research countered that the overall picture of the Republic of Free Wendland was still sketchy despite the abundance of source material. Since the sources only reproduce parts of reality, archaeological sources could complement the picture. The investigations also served to locate the camp, since its exact topography in the area that has meanwhile been overgrown by forest is still unclear and cannot be reconstructed in detail from the existing documentary material. In addition, the dividing line between “long enough ago” and “worth digging” versus “not long ago” and “not worth digging” is difficult to draw.
meaning
The research project was the first project of contemporary archeology on everyday culture of the late 20th century in German-speaking countries. It tied in with current developments in international contemporary archeology. This discipline is still in its infancy in Germany, but there have already been a few excavations from the 20th century, such as sites from the National Socialist era ( concentration camps ) and on the former inner-German border ( escape tunnel under the Berlin Wall ).
The archaeologist in charge of the investigations, Attila Dézsi, sees the former hut village as an important place of protest and environmental history . The contemporary archeology not only promotes the memory of a historical event in the history of democracy , but also brings to mind the ongoing conflict over the storage of radioactive waste. Dézsi considers the exploration of the hut village to be important in order to pass on the knowledge gained to younger generations. In addition, he thinks the place is significant because it stands for the turnaround in energy policy .
Because of the involvement of contemporary witnesses from the anti-nuclear movement, the research process had an approach to “community archeology”. Dézsi locates his research within "critical archeology", which aims to point out social contradictions. His archaeological intervention could reflect the role of archeology in modern society and contribute to discussing the location of the event as a cultural heritage . After the excavations were completed, the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation denied the designation of the area as a cultural monument in 2019 . According to the Lüneburg district archaeologist Mario Pahlow, a cultural monument must date from a bygone era, and the excavation site is not endangered. Nevertheless, he considers it an important archaeological site. As early as June 1980, the Bremen ecologist Walther Soyka had applied for protection of the hut village still existing at that time as a living “cultural monument 1004”, which the Lüneburg Higher Administrative Court rejected because it was not a monument .
For Dézsi, his research is a paradox , since archeology examines closed history, but here an event, the cause of which is currently still being discussed. In 1980, the occupation of the site was about the question of the storage of nuclear waste in the Gorleben salt dome, which is still relevant today with the search for a repository for radioactive waste , including the Gorleben site. According to the spokesman for the Lüchow-Dannenberg environmental protection initiative, Wolfgang Ehmke , Dézsi “measured” the Gorleben resistance. The archaeologist Reinhard Bernbeck from the Free University of Berlin considers Attila Dészi's investigations to be “interventionist archeology”, since the political process with the search for a nuclear waste dump is not yet over and Gorleben plays a role in it.
literature
- Andreas Conradt: Roots in the forest. Archaeological search for traces in the former Hüttendorf 1004 in Gorleben Rundschau of the Citizens' Initiative Environmental Protection Lüchow-Dannenberg , November / December 2017, pp. 22-25 ( online , pdf)
- Katrin Weber-Klüver: clay, stones, shards in: fluter from February 4, 2018 ( online )
- Attila Dézsi: Contemporary archeology of the 20th century at places of protest and the "Free Republic of Wendland" in: Frank Nikulka, Daniela Hofmann and Robert Schumann (eds.): People - Things - Places. Current research by the Institute for Pre- and Protohistoric Archeology at the University of Hamburg , 2018, pp. 195 - 202 ( online , pdf)
- Attila Dézsi: Historical and Community Archeology at a Late-20th-Century Protest Camp Site at Gorleben in: The SHA Newsletter , Winter 2018, Volume 51, Number 4, 2019, pp. 22-24.
- Attila Dézsi: Historical archaeologist at a place of protest in the 20th century near Gorleben in: Reports on the preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony 1/2020, pp. 39–41.
Web links
- 61 color and black and white photos from the hut village, 1980 at Wendland Archive
- Carolin George: What was left of the "Republic Free Wendland" in the world of November 6, 2016
- "Republic Free Wendland": Archeology of the anti-nuclear movement with video film (3:12 minutes) at Nano on May 3, 2017
- Deike Diening: Search for remains in Gorleben in Tagesspiegel from November 17, 2017
- Friederike Gräff: "Gas mask filter and cable ties" in the daily newspaper from May 2, 2020
- Gaston Kirsche: Bringing ongoing history to light in Neues Deutschland from June 3, 2020
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gerhard Ziegler: Free Republic of Wendland: The measurement of the history of resistance began at wendland.net on November 23, 2017
- ↑ Venceremos, bye in: Der Spiegel from July 14, 1980
- ↑ Doctoral project starts: Archaeological research of the Free Republic of Wendland Press release by Attila Dézsi (University of Hamburg) from October 27, 2016
- ↑ a b c Description of Attila Dézsi's dissertation project ( memento from November 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) at the PhD program in the humanities of the University of Hamburg
- ↑ a b Archaeological research of the Free Republic of Wendland at Gorleben-archiv.de
- ↑ Gorleben 7
- ^ A b Thomas Janssen: Brief resistance studies. The archaeologist Attila Dézsi presents the first findings of his 1004 excavations in the Elbe-Jeetzel-Zeitung of November 20, 2017
- ↑ Gerhard Ziegler: Open Day of Archeology: "The Free Republic of Wendland" at wendland.net from February 18, 2019
- ^ Reimar Paul: What is buried there in Die Tageszeitung from October 16, 2016
- ↑ Gerhard Ziegler: Free Republic of Wendland: The measurement of the history of resistance began at wendland.net on November 23, 2017
- ↑ a b c Ann-Kristin Mennen: Archaeologist digs up "Free Republic of Wendland" at ndr.de from January 18, 2017
- ↑ Doctoral project archaeological excavation of the protest camp "Free Republic of Wendland" Press release of the University of Hamburg from November 8, 2017.
- ↑ Dietrich Mohaupt: Nonviolent protest for a nuclear-free future at Deutschlandfunk from November 3, 2016
- ↑ PhD project. Archaeological excavation of the protest camp "Free Republic of Wendland" at the University of Hamburg on November 8, 2017
- ↑ a b Archaeologist digs up "Republic Free Wendland" in picture from February 17, 2017
- ^ Reimar Paul: "Republic Free Wendland" is to be scientifically researched in Weser-Kurier of October 9, 2016
- ^ Archaeological excavation of the protest camp "Free Republic of Wendland". at focus.de on November 8, 2017
- ↑ Jörg Römer: Archaeologists research the 1980s at spiegel.de from September 21, 2017
- ^ Finds from the protest camp in Weser-Kurier on November 18, 2017
- ↑ a b Thomas Janssen: What is left of 30 days? In the field of tension between research and the formation of myths: The excavation of 1004 near Gorleben in Elbe-Jeetzel-Zeitung on November 3, 2017
- ↑ Archaeologists research "Republic Free Wendland" at ndr.de from November 16, 2017
- ↑ A short interim report after the excavation on April 26, 2018 at Gorleben-archiv.de
- ↑ Presentation shows finds from the "Republic of Free Wendland" in: Süddeutsche Zeitung of February 22, 2019
- ↑ Dietrich Mohaupt: Four weeks of protest history at Deutschlandfunk Kultur from March 21, 2018
- ↑ a b c Jens Feuerriegel: Digging for the roots of the resistance in Elbe-Jeetzel-Zeitung from February 24, 2019
- ↑ Press conference: PhD project archaeological excavation of the protest camp “Free Republic of Wendland” at Gorleben-archiv.de on November 9, 2017
- ↑ Doctoral project archaeological excavation of the protest camp "Free Republic of Wendland" Press release of the University of Hamburg from November 8, 2017.
- ↑ a b c Jutta Zerres: Renate Künast's chewing gum - or: When does archeology begin? at the science blog Archaeologik on February 9, 2017
- ↑ Thomas Janssen: Navel gazing in the sand? in Elbe-Jeetzel-Zeitung from November 3, 2017
- ↑ Digging for the remains of the Free Republic of Wendland at wendland.net from December 5, 2016
- ↑ Veterans of the "Free Republic of Wendland" at wendland.net
- ↑ 45th autumn conference on 23/24 September 2017 at the local history working group Lüchow-Dannenberg (HALD)
- ↑ 1004 no cultural monument in Elbe-Jeetzel-Zeitung of June 14, 1980
- ↑ Wolfgang Ehmke : 1004 - more than a place of remembrance on bi-blog of the citizens' initiative Lüchow-Dannenberg from February 23, 2019