Seelower Heights Memorial

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Seelower Heights Memorial

The Seelow Heights Memorial in the Brandenburg district town of Seelow in the Märkisch-Oderland district commemorates the battle of the same name for the Seelower Heights in 1945. The director of the memorial is Kerstin Niebsch.

Building history and use

In May 1945, the Soviet Commander in Chief of the battle, Marshal Zhukov , gave the order to build the memorial. Lew Kerbel and Wladimir Zigal produced the monumental statue in just five months and had it erected on the plateau above today's museum. The inauguration took place on November 27, 1945.

The building below the sculpture was built in 1972 as part of the Liberation Memorial , with which the GDR reorganized the memorial. The opening took place on December 28, 1972 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union . The single-storey building is clad with massive, dark brown wooden logs, which are supposed to be reminiscent of Marshal Zhukov's command bunker . This bunker was located on the Reitweiner Höhe and served as the command post for the attack on April 15 and 16, 1945. In the same year, the forecourt is also laid out on which large military equipment is exhibited. In the upper area the burial ground with the distinctive red tombstones was created. In the building, the battle was portrayed from the perspective of the GDR leadership; She attached importance to the portrayal of the “heroic struggle of the Red Army ” and “the size and severity of the fighting”. The design of the exhibition as well as the selection of personnel were in the hands of the SED - district headquarters in Frankfurt (Oder) . German soldiers and officers were shown "largely anonymously and undifferentiated as a fascist Wehrmacht ". The showcases contained mainly weapons and equipment from the Red Army. Next to it, a diorama showed the beginning of the battle. From 1973 onwards, the director of the memorial looked after an FDJ applicant collective. It was for 10 years and consisted of young people who are in the 10th grade as NVA - a professional soldier committed. On the 30th anniversary of the liberation, the SED and the bloc parties tried to persuade the churches to hold a common day of remembrance. A meeting in December 1974 in Seelow with representatives of the National Front of the Frankfurt (Oder) district did not lead to an understanding. Only a few individual evangelical clergy laid wreaths at the memorial. From 1978 onwards, the trip to the memorial was part of military instruction for upper-grade students from the Frankfurt (Oder) district .

In 1985 a semicircular entrance area was added to the building, which was inaugurated on April 16, 1985 by the Soviet Ambassador Vyacheslav Kotschemassow and the GDR Defense Minister Heinz Hoffmann . Now the participation of the 1st Polish Army during the battle was reported for the first time . The Soviet view of history continued to shape the exhibition; At the same time, however, it became more vivid and focused more than ever on the role of the Wehrmacht. Today there is a double timeline on the wall, which gives the visitor an initial orientation of the events, starting with the war against the Soviet Union, the time after the Second World War and the history of the memorial.

From 1972 to 1990 around 1.3 million visitors from 130 countries visited the site. In addition to joint laying of wreaths, meetings of the “brotherhood in arms” of soldiers from the Warsaw Pact took place. The NVA carried out swearing-in ceremonies with them; the Society for Sport and Technology organized appeals from its members.

After the fall of the Wall , the concept was increasingly critically questioned and redesigned. This led to a realignment that was first shown in 1995. The civilian population now appears stronger; likewise the role of the armed forces. In 2003, a Russian Orthodox cross was inaugurated on the edge of the memorial. It was renewed in 2013. Next to it is the place of rest , which allows a view over the Oderbruch from Küstrin to Reitweiner Höhe. On the occasion of a ceremony to mark the 40th anniversary of the memorial, the then Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck made it clear that this was one of the “most important places in Brandenburg with a significance that extends far beyond the state's borders”.

War cemetery

The graves of over 7,000 Soviet soldiers are located on the site. The Soviet command offices were initially responsible for maintaining the grave. With the order No. 89 of the SMAD of March 18, 1946, this task was handed over to the municipalities. From 1949 the mayor of Seelow took over responsibility for the tombs. These were partly looked after by students from the “Young Historians” working groups, who also led youth groups through the complex and determined the individual fates of Soviet soldiers.

Construction of the memorial

The site is divided into three areas: the forecourt, the museum and the burial site with the monumental sculpture. An audio guide with a running time of around 45 minutes is available in the museum, explaining the eleven boards distributed around the site in more detail in German , Russian and English .

Forecourt

Forecourt of the memorial with the BM-13-16NM missile launcher and the T-34/85 medium tank

In the autumn of 1945, the Soviet troops erected two steles on the forecourt to frame the stairway to the memorial. Both steles are made of light sandstone that tapers towards the top. They wear the red star , hammer and sickle on the front ; a metal bowl is attached on top. On the left stele is written in Cyrillic “1941 - You honored your homeland” as a sign of the beginning of the war against Nazi Germany. The right stele is labeled “1945 - You won't forget your homeland” to commemorate the sacrifices the war brought with it. In 1972 the left stele was moved to its current location during the course of the new memorial building.

Behind the steles are five large military equipment that were used in the attack:

Museum building

Texts, audio and visual documents show the events in 1945 and the history of the memorial on around 200 m². Since a redesign in 2012, the exhibition has been divided into a total of three chapters: “From the Oder to Berlin” illustrates the structure of the bridgeheads and provides information on the fighting in the Seelower Heights and in Berlin . This is followed by the chapter “The memorial and the memorial”, which deals with the history of the memorial, while the third and final chapter “After the political upheaval” illustrates the changes that the turning point for this site brought me. An afterword shows the embedding of this place with other German, Soviet and Polish war cemeteries . Another display shows the laborious recovery of ammunition , which can still be found in the surrounding area today. Several stations are equipped with interactive media stations. The 30-minute film “Battlefield in front of Berlin” is shown in a separate room. There is also a three-dimensional map of the Seelow heights with the most important front lines. An archive and a reference library are available to visitors after registration. Guided tours of the museum and the outdoor facilities are offered for groups.

Burial place and monumental sculpture

Monumental sculpture by Lew Kerbel and Vladimir Zigal

Behind the museum there is a monumental sculpture by Lew Kerbel and Vladimir Zigal on a hill. The bronze figure was created in the Hermann Noack foundry in Berlin and shows a Red Army soldier with a submachine gun standing next to the turret of a destroyed German tank. Kerbel, whose most famous works include the Karl Marx Monument in Chemnitz and the Ernst Thälmann Monument in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg , created the work together with Zigal in just five months. The sculpture stands on a pedestal with the inscription "1941–1945 / Eternal Glory the Heroes, Fallen in the Fight Against the Fascist Invaders for the Freedom and Independence of the Soviet Union". These verses by the German poet Helmut Preißler were only added in 1977 during the remodeling of the memorial that began in 1972.

At the foot of the sculpture are the graves of 66 members of the Red Army who were killed in the battle. In 1972, the area was expanded to include a cemetery in front of it, in which reburial from other graves was planned - but this was not to take place until 2008. Boards between the two burial grounds have been listing the names of missing Soviet soldiers since 1994. An APM-90 searchlight has been standing above the building since 1977 . This model was only produced after the end of the Second World War and usually illuminated the runways of airfields . At this location it was used to illuminate the memorial at major events. Until 1989 it was claimed that this model was also used in the battle in Seelow. To the left of the sculpture, a little to one side, there is a Russian Orthodox cross with the inscription “To the children of Russia from the mother church”. Archbishop Feofan of Berlin and Germany consecrated it in 2003. South of the cross there is a view of the Oderbruch.

Integration of the memorial within the former Reichsstrasse 1

At the same time as the sculpture was erected in Seelow, two further cenotaphs were erected along Reichsstrasse 1 , today's Bundesstrasse 1 , on instructions from Zhukov . They symbolize important milestones in the advance of the 1st Belarusian Front from the Oder to Berlin. In the chronology of events, the first memorial is located in the König bastion of the Küstrin Fortress , the second here in Seelow and the third and last in the Great Tiergarten in Berlin on Strasse des 17. Juni , the Soviet memorial . Wreaths were laid on these memorials on public holidays such as Liberation Day , May 8th, or November 7th, the day of the Great October Socialist Revolution .

gallery

  • Stele on the forecourt

  • T-34 tanks

  • Cemetery of Soviet soldiers

  • Extension of the burial ground in 1972

  • Russian Orthodox Cross

literature

  • Seelower Heights Memorial. From the battlefield to the place of memory. Brochure accompanying the fifth permanent exhibition (since 1972), which opened on December 15, 2012 . 2013, p. 48 .
  • Richard Lakowski: Memorial / Museum Seelower Heights . 7th edition. 1992, p. 50 .
  • Gerd-Ulrich Herrmann: Continuity and break in the representation of the Soviet past in the Seelower Heights memorial . In: Olga Kurilo (ed.): The Second World War in the museum. Continuity and change . Avinus, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-930064-82-3 , p. 63 ff.

Web links

Commons : Seelower Heights Memorial  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Sources and individual references

  1. ↑ New management of the Seelow Memorial. (No longer available online.) In: www.kulturradio.de. Formerly in the original ; Retrieved June 26, 2016 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.kulturradio.de  
  2. ↑ a b panel no. 11 Museum at the memorial
  3. ^ Plate: "The exhibition and its historical picture 1972–1990" in the museum
  4. ↑ Display board: Remembrance as part of the "military education" in the memorial.
  5. ↑ Display board: “The population and the memorial” in the memorial
  6. ↑ Battle of the Seelow Heights - The Hill of Horror . In: Berliner Kurier , December 16, 2012, accessed on April 28, 2014.
  7. ↑ Seelower Heights Memorial - battlefield and place of remembrance: New exhibition at the historic site (Flyer)
  8. ↑ Plate No. 4 “Headlights” at the memorial

Coordinates: 52 ° 32 '5.6 "  N , 14 ° 23" 44.6 "  E