German working group Hamhŭng
The German Working Group Hamhŭng (DAH) was a group of engineers and architects who were sent by the GDR to North Korea in the 1950s and 1960s to work on the reconstruction of the North Korean city of Hamhŭng, which was destroyed during the Korean War , as part of a German-North Korean development project to contribute.
Establishment of the working group
During the Korean War (1950-1953) the North Korean provincial capital Hamhŭng was destroyed by US air strikes and ship artillery to about 80 to 90 percent. On the occasion of a visit by the North Korean Foreign Minister to the GDR in 1954, the then GDR Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl promised to help rebuild North Korea with the words "We'll build you a city", whereupon North Korean President Kim Il-sung started a joint reconstruction project for the city Hamhŭng proposed as an industrial center.
After two delegations from East Germany had gathered information for a development program in Hamhŭng, the aid project was decided on February 17, 1955 by the GDR government. Ten-year supervision and support for the reconstruction by the GDR was planned, in the form of scientific and technical assistance with planning and project planning work, as well as instruction and training of Korean specialists on site. In addition, there was material aid in the form of deliveries of certain production facilities and finished products that were necessary for the construction.
On the part of the GDR, the Council of Ministers was responsible for the implementation of the construction project, which set up the “Korea Construction Staff”. A selected group of experts (such as engineers for building and construction, and city planners, architects, engineers for road and bridge construction, heating, water and electricity, for surveying, geologists and specialists, for example, hospital construction) was used as " d eutsche A rbeits g "(DAG) roup sent to Hamhung.
The first members of the German working group worked under unusually difficult conditions and were housed in tents. To accommodate the following German colleagues and to set up a German and a Korean planning office, four two-storey buildings and a single-storey farm building were constructed using rammed earth. The management was incumbent on the architect Hans Grotewohl, the son of the GDR Prime Minister. From 1955 to 1956, his wife Madleen Grotewohl managed the construction of several small houses for the Korean staff, consisting of engineers, architects and interpreters.
From 1955 to 1956 the Bauhaus- trained architect and town planner Konrad Püschel was head of urban planning for the Hamhŭng project and from 1956 to 1959 he worked on the sister project in Hŭngnam . When he arrived in Hamhŭng in 1955, he was accompanied by a team of around 175 DAG members. Püschel was honored for his work with the Korean Order of the State Banner.
Construction projects and costs
As one of the first of the objects realized with the help of the German working group Hamhŭng, a middle school for 1,200 pupils was built in 1956, which was financed with donations from the GDR population. The school had a friendly partnership with a school in Dresden until the 1980s.
For the buildings erected by the Korean side, the GDR mainly supplied the technical equipment and fittings and a complete panel factory for the residential construction. In addition, the GDR improved the prerequisites for the construction of Hamhŭng with, among other things, a clay pipe factory, a tile and ceramic factory and a large carpentry workshop.
Furthermore, through the German-North Korean cooperation, residential and industrial areas, industrial plants, a new road network, supply systems, a waterworks, a sewage treatment plant, schools and kindergartens, shops and a department store, hotel, a cultural center (or a theater), a tuberculosis Hospital and a prosthesis factory, sports and green areas, an outdoor swimming pool and the train station were built.
With a construction time of eight years, the work was completed faster than originally planned. The last German advisors therefore traveled back to the GDR as early as 1962.
According to various sources, the GDR invested a total of 118 million GDR marks or 208 million rubles (218.4 million marks) in the project.
Construction of multi-storey residential buildings
Erection of prefabricated apartments with Korean Ondol heating
New buildings in the DAG settlement
Housing construction in the center
Construction site 1958
Intercultural exchange
As a rule, the delegation to Hamhŭng lasted about a year. However, there were exceptions with two years or more. Several members of the German working group lived and worked in Hamhŭng without their families during this time. Wherever possible, however, the building staff could also send family members on the trip and also employ the spouses in the German working group. The children of the German families were looked after in their own day care center. In several cases, the daily collaboration between Germans and Koreans resulted in family friendships.
About 170,000 people currently lived in Hamhŭng. The working and living conditions in Korea were sometimes described by the German working group as difficult. Some members of the German working group were not able to cope with the tasks assigned to them as well as they had initially thought they could. During the bilateral cooperation, there were social conflicts between individual members of the working group and their Korean colleagues due to language barriers and cultural differences. Some Germans were sent back to Germany after inappropriately consuming alcohol and sexual misconduct, which is why around 60 percent of East German helpers spent more than six months in North Korea in the first year.
The North Korean media initially reported the project as “fraternal” and later as “technical assistance”. After that it was no longer discussed or further communicated, which in Germany was perceived as a lack of gratitude. In Germany there was almost no media coverage of the structure of Hamhŭng.
Otto Grotewohl was made an honorary citizen of Hamhŭng for his work.
Further development
Wilhelm-Pieck-Allee, a main thoroughfare in Hamhŭng, named after GDR President Wilhelm Pieck , was later renamed J Stadtngsŏng-Straße (German: "Straße der Treue") and the former headquarters of the German working group, a two-story building block , converted to the city planning office.
Hamhŭng developed into a growing city with a university and several colleges under a new Korean generation of planners in the 21st century.
literature
- Norbert Korrek Konrad Püschel - urban planner in the Soviet Union, North Korea and the GDR , pp. 483–496 in Hannes Meyer's new Bauhaus apprenticeship : From Dessau to Mexico (Philipp Oswalt, ed.). Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2019 ISBN 978-3-03561-724-5
- Dong-Sam Sin The planning of the reconstruction of the cities of Hamhung and Hungnam in North Korea by the DAG urban development brigade of the GDR from 1955 - 1962: a treatise on the history of urban development from the perspective of a contemporary witness . Berlin: wvb Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2017 ISBN 978-3-96138-009-1
- Rüdiger Frank : The GDR and North Korea. The reconstruction of the city of Hamhŭng 1954–1962. Shaker, Aachen, 1996 ISBN 3-8265-5472-8
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d The Last City of the GDR Focus from November 7, 2005.
- ↑ Christoph Kleßmann , Bernd Stöver : The Korean War: Perception, Effect, Memory , 2008, ISBN 978-3-412-20178-4 , pp. 145 f.
- ^ A b The first German proxy war Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of June 11, 2010.
- ↑ : Hans Grotewohl . In: Der Spiegel . tape 48 , November 24, 1954 ( spiegel.de [accessed February 12, 2019]).
- ↑ Dong-Sam Sin The planning of the reconstruction of the cities of Hamhung and Hungnam in North Korea by the DAG urban development brigade of the GDR from 1955 to 1962 , pp. 40-44. Dissertation for HafenCity University Hamburg , 1996. Retrieved April 20, 2019
- ^ Konrad Püschel Ways of a Bauhausler: Memories and Views Dessau: Anhaltische Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 1997
- ↑ Christoph Kleßmann , Bernd Stöver : The Korean War: Perception, Effect, Memory , 2008, ISBN 978-3-412-20178-4 , p. 215.
- ^ Liana Kang-Schmitz: North Korea's Dealing with Dependency and Security Risk - Using the Example of Bilateral Relations with the GDR (PDF; 1.5 MB). P. 128 ff.
- ↑ a b Christoph Moeskes (ed.): North Korea: Insights into an enigmatic country . Ch. Links Verlag, 2013, ISBN 3-86284-038-7 .
- ^ Rüdiger Frank: North Korea. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2014, page 37, ISBN 978-3-421-04641-3 .