Berga (close)

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Berga
City close
Coordinates: 51 ° 44 ′ 9 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 7 ″  E
Height : 113 m
Incorporation : 1939
Postal code : 04936
Area code : 035361
Berga

Berga is part of the municipality of the southern Brandenburg town of Schlieben in the Elbe-Elster district .

history

The administrative village of Schlieben

Berga was first mentioned in documents in 1422 as the official village of Schlieben . A devastating fire has been recorded as early as 1450, in which the entire village burned down. The place consisted of twenty-two hereditary hooves in the 15th and 16th centuries . Like the neighboring town of Schlieben, Berga was badly devastated by troops passing through during the Thirty Years' War , and in 1631 the plague had spread through the country. You had to struggle with the consequences for a long time afterwards. In 1672, four Hüfner and four gardening positions were vacant as a result of the war .

HASAG

Bunker ruins on the former HASAG site

In 1938, one year before the start of the Second World War , the Leipzig armaments company Hugo and Alfred Schneider AG (HASAG) settled north of the village on an area of ​​504 hectares and set up an ammunition factory and a test site here, where newly developed ammunition was tested. A short time later the village of Berga was incorporated into Schlieben in 1939.

The factory gained particular importance with the development of the bazooka in 1942, which was produced in Schlieben-Berga and classified by Armaments Minister Albert Speer as important to the war effort. Production was carried out with the help of forced laborers from the Ravensbrück and Buchenwald concentration camps . For faster access have on the workers who built the SS in the summer of 1944 to the concentration camp Schlieben a branch of the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Ultimately, it was the third largest subcamp in Buchenwald and, by the time it was liberated in April 1945, about 5,000 prisoners passed through, of whom at least 217 lost their lives in Schlieben-Berga alone. About 100 prisoners died in the night of October 11th to 12th, 1944 in an explosion that destroyed a large part of the production facilities.

Village of youth

Youth Square

After the camp's accommodations were initially used by refugees from the former German eastern regions in the post-war period , there were plans to build a so-called youth village on the site . The state delegates' conference of the socialist youth association FDJ passed a corresponding resolution on May 11, 1947 in Halle / Saale and on March 21, 1948 the foundation stone for the project was laid in the presence of around four hundred delegates . The plans included the construction of a clubhouse, a movie theater, a vocational school, factory and administrative buildings and residential buildings. Between November 21 and December 23, 1948 alone, 3,125 young people from Saxony-Anhalt and Berlin were on assignment in Schlieben-Berga. On May 8, 1949, during a ceremony, the village of youth was given the name “ Karl Liebknecht ” youth combine . At this point in time, 25 hectares of land on the site had already been reclaimed and cultivated. In addition, three single-family houses were ready to move into and another six houses were about to be completed. In addition, they wanted to set up a “precision tool, machine and training factory” in Berga for a total of 1200 workers. And in the period that followed, several thousand young people worked extra shifts in Berga, during which the ruins of the former bazooka factory were also removed.

However, the project largely fell asleep in the early 1950s and the ambitious plans and visions were ultimately only partially implemented. Overall, a few residential buildings and a building yard were built around the “Platz der Jugend” during this time. The National People's Army (NVA) and after it the Bundeswehr later used parts of the area as a fuel depot.

Culture and sights

Permanent exhibition at the Schlieben concentration camp

After a long time only the memorial in Gartenstrasse was reminiscent of the concentration camp outpost, there has been a permanent exhibition in Schlieben-Berga since April 2011, which addresses the concentration camp Schlieben and was founded in 2009 by the association Gedenkstätte KZ-Außenlager Schlieben-Berga e.V. V. is operated. Guided tours through the former HASAG site are also offered.

Architectural monuments

Memorial for the forced laborers of the Panzerfaustfabrik in Gartenstrasse

In Berga there are some architectural monuments that have been included in the list of monuments of the state of Brandenburg. On the road to Krassig, for example, there is a 90 centimeter high historical signpost made of sandstone, which dates from the last third of the 19th century. At Naundorfer Straße 23, the house of a former large farmer is under monument protection, which was built around 1740 and was previously part of a four-sided courtyard. This is a two-storey half - timbered building which "represents an important testimony to the Central German Ernhaus in the region." ( Gramlich, Küttner : Elbe-Elster district)

The memorial in Gartenstrasse dates back to 1949. This is where the slave laborers are commemorated who died in the devastating explosion in the Panzerfaust factory in 1944. The remains of the production facilities and the surrounding walls of the former HASAG bazooka factory as well as the depot bunkers, their protective walls and access roads and the access roads between the depot bunkers are also listed as historical monuments.

Economy and Infrastructure

Elbe-Elster-Express in Schlieben station

The place is about one kilometer north of the town center of Schlieben on the state road 691 leading from Krassig to Dübrichen . On Bergaer Flur, on the former Falkenberg / Elster – Beeskow railway line, there is also the Schliebener station, the station building of which was built in 1896.

At present, there is the “Science and Industry Park Schlieben” on the premises of HASAG and the “Village of Young People”, in which, in addition to the Office for Agricultural Regulation and the “Elbe-Elster” technology and start-up center, a number of medium-sized companies are located.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Sybille Gramlich, Irmelin Küttner: District Elbe-Elster Part 1: The city of Herzberg / Elster and the offices of Falkenberg / Uebigau, Herzberg, Schlieben and Schönewalde . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1998, ISBN 978-3-88462-152-3 , p. 290/291 .
  2. ↑ The history of the Schlieben-Berga concentration camp on www. schlieben-berga.de , accessed on May 1, 2013
  3. ^ Association of authors under the guidance of Detlef Ernst: Nazi camps in Finsterwalde and places in the southern Brandenburg region 1939–1945 . Massen 2001, p. 194-209 .
  4. ^ "Activists build a village for the youth" in Berliner Zeitung , November 24, 1948, page 2
  5. ↑ a b "Berga and the village of young people - 1947 to 1949" ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , private homepage, accessed June 27, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zscherneck.de
  6. ↑ "Jugendkombinat Karl Liebknecht" in Berliner Zeitung , May 10, 1949, page 2
  7. ^ "Students have woken up" in Neues Deutschland , May 25, 1949, page 3
  8. ↑ Internet presence of the Schlieben sub-camp memorial , accessed on June 28, 2013
  9. ↑ a b List of monuments of the state of Brandenburg: Elbe-Elster district (PDF) Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation and State Archaeological Museum

Web links

Commons : Berga  - collection of images, videos and audio files