Device construction GmbH

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Remnants of the concrete wall around the former factory of Gerätebau GmbH in the Mühlhausen city forest (Oct. 2006)

The Gerätebau GmbH was an armaments company near Mühlhausen / Thuringia . The branch of the watch factory Gebr. Thiel from Ruhla , a "traditional supplier of the Reichswehr ", which was completed at the end of 1937, mainly produced time fuses - clockworks for flak - grenades in three shifts . The factory in the Mühlhausen city forest employed 4,231 workers (as of May 5, 1944).

history

The factories were built south of the Peterhof Inn in Margarethenholz in the Mühlhausen municipal forest on 22.5 hectares of land bought by the city on June 22, 1934, with funding from the Reichswehr Ministry. The plant consisted of several single-storey buildings with a basement and planted flat roofs and was surrounded by a 2.5 m high concrete wall. The main part of the system formed three reinforced concrete - skeleton structures : the two angled twice, about 300 m × 25 m large production halls and an administration building located in between, where there is also a testing and acceptance instead of the Army Ordnance Office was located. An asphalt road and a branch of the Mühlhausen tram led to the factory entrance.

Gerätebau GmbH, Diedorfer Stieg 1, manufactured precision instruments and detonators . Local skilled workers and later mostly were employed initially Ukrainian and Polish foreign or " Eastern workers " as well as Poland and Hungary coming Jewish forced laborers . These were from the Buchenwald concentration camp allocated and in the sub-camp " Martha II accommodated," one km eastern edge of the forest approximately 1.5 shantytown. The barracks also housed the foreign workers and the SS guards and are still known today as B camps among the Mühlhausen population . After the end of the war, around 1,700 soldiers of the Soviet Army ( GSSD from 1954 ) were stationed there.

Relics

The factories were blown up in 1947 on the orders of the Soviet major Korolev. Ruins and rubble of the building and the surrounding wall have been preserved to this day under the emerging ash pioneer forest. A horse chestnut avenue in the middle of the mixed beech forest and old curbs along the driveway also remind of the work . The reinforced concrete slabs of the privacy wall were used as floor slabs for the beach basin of the Mühlhausen outdoor swimming pool at the Schwanenteich.

literature

  • Frank Baranowski: The suppressed past. Arms production and forced labor in Northern Thuringia. Mecke, Duderstadt 2000, ISBN 3-932752-67-8
  • Rolf Barthel: Against forgetting. Fascist crimes on the Eichsfeld and in Mühlhausen. Thuringian Forum for Education and Science eV, Jena 2004, ISBN 3-935850-21-2
  • Karl-Heinz Cramer: Armaments factory equipment construction GmbH Mühlhausen / Thür. 1936–1945 , Rockstuhl Verlag, Bad Langensalza, 1st edition 2012, ISBN 978-3-86777-434-5
  • Frank Baranowski: Armaments production in the middle of Germany from 1923 to 1945 Rockstuhl Verlag, pp. 304-317, ISBN 978-3-86777-530-4

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Frank Baranowski: The suppressed past. Arms production and forced labor in Northern Thuringia. Mecke, Duderstadt 2000, ISBN 3-932752-67-8 , p. 82
  2. ↑ Jürgen Wand in Mühlhäuser Allgemeine of July 4, 2012, p. 1

Coordinates: 51 ° 11 ′ 49.4 "  N , 10 ° 22 ′ 35.1"  E