Monument protection in the GDR

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Marking of monuments in the GDR

Monument protection in the GDR describes the regulations, organizations and measures of monument protection in the German Democratic Republic . As a central state , the GDR also organized monument protection centrally. Due to the socialist economy of scarcity and the desire for a new socialist design of the inner cities, a large number of objects worth protecting were lost. After the reunification , the investment backlog was resolved and further departures prevented.

Legal bases

For the monument protection in the Soviet zone and the early years of the GDR, the existing monument protection regulations of the federal states initially continued to apply.

centralization

With the abolition of the states in 1952, a legal turning point took place for the protection of monuments: the new political system organized the protection of monuments centrally, there was no longer any monument protection legislation of the states. The People's Chamber issued the laws or ordinances, the respective implementing ordinance of which was issued by the Minister of Culture in East Berlin .

With the ordinance on the preservation and care of national cultural monuments (monument protection) of June 26, 1952, the legislature abolished the idea of ​​a regional significance of monuments and declared preservation of monuments to be the task of the state to preserve cultural assets as the memory of the people.

On September 28, 1961, the month after the wall was built , the next ordinance followed, concerning the monuments of the republic. The previous concept of cultural monuments was replaced by the concept of monuments .

Monument Preservation Act of 1975

The historic preservation law (DPflG) from June 19, 1975 uses a different term as monuments such as the still on the ideas of the Weimar Republic -based Heritage Protection Act . It placed the monument in the service of the development of socialist society and follows the concept of "socialist national culture" as one of the "foundations of socialist society" as laid down in Article 18 of the constitution. The § 3 DPflG describes monuments as

"... objective evidence of the political, cultural and economic development, which has been declared a monument by the responsible state organs in accordance with § 9 DPflG because of its historical, artistic or scientific importance in the interests of socialist society."

The testimony value of the monument resulted from its importance for the socialist society. The determination of this importance was a state-led process that ended with the declaration of monuments . According to the new political orientation, “the law placed particular emphasis on monuments that could contribute to the development or consolidation of an image of the GDR as a nation in its own right. [...] Evidence of the culture and way of life of the working population as well as technical objects were given special emphasis. ”What was of importance for the development of socialist society changed over time. If castles were first destroyed by the rulers, the state authorities were later given the task of restoring existing castles.

After the turnaround in 1989/90 , the Monument Preservation Act in accordance with Article 9, Paragraph 1 of the Unification Treaty continued to exist in the area of ​​the states with restrictions as state law until a corresponding state legislation was passed.

organization

Following the organization of the GDR as a central state, monument protection was also organized on three levels: the central state, the districts and the districts. According to the principle of democratic centralism , the ministry had the right to issue instructions to the downstream organs of the districts and counties. In particular, the allocation of funds was carried out in accordance with the principle of the unity of all public budgets centrally within the framework of the respective five-year plan of the planned economy of the GDR.

Central level

At the GDR level, the Ministry of Culture was responsible for monument protection. The Minister of Culture drew up the Central List of Monuments for monuments of particular national or international importance, for which the central level had direct responsibility. To this end, the Institute for Monument Preservation in Berlin was at his side as a scientific institution , the structure and mode of operation of which was laid down in detail in the 1st implementation regulation of September 24, 1976. The Institute for the Preservation of Monuments of the GDR was the successor to the State Offices for the Preservation of Monuments, which were continued after 1952 as the offices of the Institute for the Preservation of Monuments of the GDR.

The Institute was the General Conservator led ( Ludwig Deiters 1961-1986, Peter Goralczyk 1987-1990), this was downstream of the jobs in East Berlin , Dresden , Erfurt , Halle and Schwerin .

District and county level

The councils of the districts and the councils of the districts were responsible for the registration and protection of the monuments , which often led to political intentions taking precedence over technical considerations. The employees of the institute supported the district and district councils in drawing up their district and district monument lists; the district monument lists were intended for monuments of national importance. Monuments of local importance were allowed on the district monuments list. For this purpose, the monuments were classified according to their value (value groups, WG I – IV), with value group I corresponding to the most valuable level. In addition, the monuments were also divided into different departments: There were, for example, the monuments of political history , in which Soviet war cemeteries were or also memorial plaques for the founding of the KPD, attached to the former establishment. In the section of the monuments of cultural history , for example, there was a sub-section for the monuments of architecture , which today is generally understood as a monument . Then there were, for example, monuments to events and personalities in art and science , monuments to craft and industrial history and monuments to rural construction .

The work of the republic-wide preservation of monuments could only be done on site with the support of many volunteer officers. These local citizens were proposed by the regionally responsible chief conservators and appointed by the respective council of the district for five years. The organization of the volunteers on site was then carried out, for example, by the Active for Monument Preservation , whose chairman made the suggestions together with the city architect and the city council for culture. This organization through the Kulturbund der DDR in 1977 led to the fact that the Society for Monument Preservation in the Kulturbund of the GDR was founded on June 3, 1977 in Berlin .

Preservation of monuments in practice

responsibility

The person authorized to dispose of it was responsible for the monument itself: he had to ensure that damaging influences were averted from the monument and had to refrain from such actions himself. Preservation had to be done under expert guidance or, according to the law, even had to be restored through restoration, for which financial support could be granted from the monument preservation fund. All active measures on a monument were subject to permission. Approval could only be granted by the district council if a monument preservation objective was presented by the Institute for Monument Preservation . The councils of the districts could impose conditions on those authorized to dispose of them, in the event of violations the approval expired.

Monument protection and urban planning

The urban planning ideas of the GDR leadership, as laid down in the construction law in 1950 (see The 16 Principles of Urban Development ), provided for a “planned construction of the cities taking into account the historical development”. The focus of the reconstruction of the inner cities destroyed by the war was less the orientation towards the historical development, but towards the assumed requirements of a socialist state and above all the model of the Soviet Union . The aim was, in particular, an urban center as a “political center” with the “most important and monumental buildings” and places for “political demonstrations” and “marches”. The architecture of the individual buildings must be "democratic in content and national in form". The architecture uses "the experience of the people embodied in the progressive traditions of the past". In contrast, the preservation and reconstruction of historical objects was given a low priority.

The remaining listed buildings were deliberately destroyed, particularly during politically exposed building projects in the 1950s, such as Langen Strasse in Rostock or East Berlin's Stalinallee . The responsible monument protection authorities were powerless in these questions in the power structure of the SED state. Today these typical forms of East German post-war architecture are themselves under monument protection.

At the end of the 1960s, the GDR leadership again pushed the renovation of the inner cities. For the larger cities, “urban planning competitions for the socialist design of city centers” were held. Conservation aspects or the preservation of historical structures were not part of the tender conditions. As a result of this planning process, there was an increased construction of prefabricated buildings in the historic inner cities and the demolition of historical buildings.

Individual monument protection controversies

Memorial plaque Paulinerkirche Leipzig

A number of churches and castles were also destroyed for ideological reasons. Well-known examples are the Paulinerkirche in Leipzig or Putbus Castle .

Results

A conclusion can be drawn for the period towards the end of the GDR: In theory, inclusion in a list of monuments put the state in the position of having to take responsibility for the protection and maintenance of monuments. However, the citizen and the individual honorary monument conservationists lacked the opportunity to enforce this. In return, the state had numerous legal measures available to issue orders. However, as in the case of many demolitions that have already been approved, a side effect of the mismanagement of the last few years was that many things simply came to a standstill. This and the sometimes enormous commitment of individuals on site, often against the will of the state, saved many witnesses of human cultural history in the area of ​​the GDR, especially those of low socialist value, from disappearing. The Dresden office of the Institute for Monument Preservation found in 1990 that between 9% and 17% of the older buildings in the cities of Altenberg , Bautzen , Görlitz , Meißen , Pirna and Zittau were lost between 1950 and 1987, but that in particular in the following five to seven years, cities would lose an average of 40% of their old buildings.

literature

  • List of monuments of particular national and international importance - Central List of Monuments - dated September 25, 1979, in: Gesetzblatt der DDR, special edition No. 1017, October 5, 1979.
  • Christian Schreiber: The development of the Saxon monument protection legislation. In: Landesverein Sächsischer Heimatschutz (Hrsg.): Messages. 1/2010, pp. 36-43.
  • Dieter Zander: Urban monument protection in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 1945–1989. In: Juliane Kirschbaum (Red.): Dilapidated and forgotten or abolished and protected? Documentation of the conference of the German National Committee for Monument Protection 1995, pp. 79–83.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christian Schreiber: The development of the Saxon monument protection legislation. In: Landesverein Sächsischer Heimatschutz (Hrsg.): Messages. 1/2010, p. 39.
  2. Kerstin Odendahl : Protection of cultural goods: Development, structure and dogmatics of a cross-level system of standards. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2005, p. 94.
  3. Peter Goralczyk: Does categorization hinder the preservation of monuments? Experience from the GDR. (PDF; 79 kB) Berlin, April 2, 2005.
  4. ^ A b Brian Campbell: Preservation for the Masses: The Idea of ​​Heimat and the Gesellschaft für Denkmalpflege in the GDR. (PDF; 141 kB)
  5. Dieter Zander : Urban monument protection in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 1945–1989. Pp. 80-81.
  6. ^ Potsdam - Against Prussia's glory. In: Der Spiegel from February 4, 1959.
  7. Dieter Zander: Urban monument protection in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 1945–1989. P. 82.