Celebration place of the Silesians

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The open air theater
The Kuhtal before the construction
The upper stands
Old lime kiln next to the open-air theater
View over the grandstands towards the flag pulpit

The celebration site of the Silesians , also celebration site Annaberg , is an open-air theater in the Kuhtal on the St. Annaberg in Upper Silesia . The open-air theater at the western end of the village of Sankt Annaberg , which offers 7,000 seats and 20,000 standing places on the grandstands as well as up to 50,000 people when using additional areas (such as the stairs), was part of an ensemble that included a Robert Tischler planned and built from 1936 to 1938 mausoleum , which was destroyed in 1945. A memorial to the uprisings in Upper Silesia has been in its place since 1955 .

history

The open-air theater was built between 1934 and 1938 in a valley on the site of an earlier quarry as a National Socialist Thingstätte . The suggestion for the construction came from the President, who on January 20, 1934 gave the order to find a suitable place for an Upper Silesian celebration and consecration place. The selected site on Annaberg was owned by Countess Franken-Sierstorpff. So that the architects could design their design, the site was extensively surveyed and the maps made were presented to the Reichsbund der Deutschen Freilicht- und Volksschauspiele in Berlin. On July 14, 1934, the groundbreaking ceremony for the building was done, and the President was present at the celebrations and gave a speech. At that time people still spoke of a "Thingstätte of the Upper Silesians". The theater was planned by Franz Böhmer and Georg Petrich from Berlin, who received the order from the Reichsbund. The 35 meter high limestone wall forms the background or the backdrop of the facility and the stage. According to the original plans, the construction should take two years, the construction time was four years. Workers from the Reich Labor Service (including the labor service from Groß Strehlitz and the Elsenruh camp ) were initially involved in the construction; they used simple tools to model the ground for the grandstands; from 1936 private companies were also used for special work. The dumps remaining from the quarry also had to be removed. Every day around 30 to 35 cubic meters of earth were brought to the upper platform with the wagon lift. Since a temporary torrent formed in the Kuhtalgraben after heavy rain, a drainage system with pipes was created for the celebration site. The main pipe has a diameter of two meters and is 200 meters long. After that, up to 250 workers were used for the construction. The round flag pulpit was erected next to the stage, which was intended as a meeting place for the flag and standard bearers and can accommodate 200 people. The stone fortifications and masonry of the celebration site were made of limestone. Almost all of the material required for the construction was obtained on site on Annaberg. On September 24, 1937, the work was largely completed and the topping-out ceremony was celebrated. The celebration site was opened on May 22, 1938. The creation is said not only to have been photographed over the four years, but was also filmed as a documentary. In addition, new models and paintings were made every year. Since the celebration site was designed more for meetings than for things games, a complex stage structure is completely missing. In order to supply the large crowds at the events, water pipes were laid and five water taps with 60 taps were built. These have not survived today. Most recently, the Kuhtal was planted with deciduous and coniferous trees. Most of the visitors should a. get to the facility via the train stations in Odertal and Bergstadt . A car parking lot was built for additional visitors and a cycle path with parking spaces for bicycles.

South of the celebration site on the access road and the large outside staircase were two lime kilns as remains of the limestone quarry. While one lime kiln was preserved, the second kiln was demolished during construction due to its advanced disrepair. The existing lime kiln was already a listed building at that time.

After the completion of the facility, Annaberg should be expanded further. In addition, a youth hostel was built next to the celebration site and new access roads to Annaberg were built. A missing section of the Reichsautobahn Berlin-Beuthen was supposed to run along the town. However, it remained unfinished. A culture house was planned, u. a. as a meeting room and seat of a local parlor or a local museum. Further construction projects were no longer realized, probably also due to the start of the war.

In order to commemorate the battles on Annaberg in 1921 and the German Free Corps fighters who fell there, a bronze commemorative plaque should be placed on the steep face of the celebration site at the request of the province. During the planning phase, a different form of commemoration was chosen, as it was felt that this plaque or even a simple memorial would not suffice for the event. This is how the plans for the memorial on the rock plateau above the celebration site came about. In 1938 the opening ceremony for the mausoleum took place with several thousand former Freikorps fighters. After that there were no more major events there.

literature

Web links

Commons : Celebration site of the Silesians  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Arnold Bartetzky, Marina Dmitrieva, Stefan Troebst: New States - New Images ?: visual culture in the service of state self-representation in Central and Eastern Europe since 1918, Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar, 2005, p. 304 [1]
  2. ↑ Description and illustration (postcard from 1938) in Marek Czapliński, Hans Joachim Hahn, Tobias Weger (eds.): Silesian places of remembrance: Memory and identity of a Central European region . Neisse-Verlag, 2005. ISBN 978-3-934-03833-2
  3. ↑ [2]
  4. ↑ Groß Strehlitzer home calendar for 1937, 1936
  5. ↑ a b The Annaberg O.-S. , In collaboration with the Annaberg working group, ed. by H. Rogier
  6. ↑ Der Oberschlesier , 1938, vol. 20, issue 6
  7. ↑ Korbinian Böck: "Bollwerk des Deutschtums im Osten": The Freikorpsehrenmal on the Annaberg / Upper Silesia . RIHA Journal 0160, June 27, 2017, [3]
  8. ↑ see also Rainer Stommer: The staged national community: the "thing movement" in the Third Reich . Jonas, 1985 and Mortimer G. Davidson: Art in Germany, 1933-1945: a scientific encyclopedia of art in the Third Reich . Grabert, 1995. Volume 3, Issue 1

Coordinates: 50 ° 27 ′ 19 ″  N , 18 ° 9 ′ 36 ″  E