History of the city of Gera
The history of the city of Gera goes back to the Paleolithic with the first human settlements . First mentioned as a landscape name in the 10th century, the city of Gera emerged as a colonial city at the beginning of the 13th century. From the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, the history of the city is closely connected with that of the House of Reuss , especially with that of the Reuss-Gera rule and line .
In the 19th century Gera developed into an industrial city in which textile production was dominant. At the end of World War II, the city was badly damaged by bombing. From 1952 to 1990 it was the capital of the GDR district of the same name . Gera has been an independent city in the state of Thuringia since 1990 .
etymology
The name Gera comes from the early Germanic ger-aha , which probably means "gurgling water" or "gurgling river". In the past, people tried to interpret the syllable ger as "wedge" or "spear". As a result, the name would have meant "wedge-shaped land on a river".
Originally the name Gera only referred to a stretch of land, it was not until the 12th century that a settlement of the same name emerged in its center .
Early history
The urban area of Geras has been populated since the Paleolithic . Significant prehistoric finds were made in the Lindenthal hyena cave in the 19th century. The oldest relic of human settlement in the urban area is an approx. 80,000 year old hand ax, found near Gera-Pforten.
Around the birth of Christ, Gera is a center for iron smelting . The iron ovens, which were discovered near Gera-Tinz in the 1920s and 1930s and are now in the Museum of Prehistory in Weimar , bear witness to this .
In the 6th century the Germanic Hermundurs left East Thuringia in the course of the migration of peoples , from the 8th century a Slavic settlement can be proven.
middle Ages
First mentions and beginning of the Quedlinburg monastery rule
On March 31, 995, Emperor Otto III. the Bishop of Naumburg the area Crossen an der Elster (north of Gera), in the border description the name Gera was mentioned for the first time. On April 26th, 999 Otto III. then the Gera area of his sister Adelheid , the abbess of the Quedlinburg monastery . After that, the name was not mentioned for over a century. Not until 1125 did a Luph von Gera and in 1148 a Sibert von Gehra appear in documents by name, and in 1121 and 1146 numerous villages in the north of today's urban area were first mentioned, which were then owned by the Naumburg bishops.
The bailiffs of Weida and the development of the city
In 1209, the governors of Weida were entrusted with control of the Gera area by the Quedlinburger Stift. The counts and princes of Reuss emerged from them and were to determine the history of the city over seven centuries. The quedlinburgische territory Gera included a located right the White Elster part of the old Sorbian Geragaues and was probably in the north of the Brahme and to the south by Zaufensgraben limited.
It is not known exactly when Gera received city rights. In a document dated October 25, 1237, the "citizens of the city of Gera" ( cives oppidi de Gera ) are mentioned for the first time . Since a document from Abbess Agnes II from around 1200 still speaks of the "village of Gera" ( villa ), the town was probably founded in the first third of the 13th century. 1237 is therefore often seen imprecisely as the year of the city charter, although it actually only represents the year of the first mention of the city.
The high medieval colonial city
Little is known about the city's first centuries. It was probably built around 1150 as a merchant settlement near a town castle and the Slavic village of Zschochern at the river crossing of the trade route from Leipzig to Nuremberg . There is evidence of a church in Gera since 1234. According to later sources, the first town hall was built in 1254, the city wall probably in the 14th century. The medieval city comprised - broken by five city gates - a wall square with a side length of about 350 meters. This ring of walls was never enlarged in the entire period of its existence, and the city grew little until the industrial age. In the Middle Ages, the town castle of the bailiffs was located in the southwest corner of the walled city.
Bailiffs become lords: Gera's development in the late Middle Ages
In 1306, the abbess Bertradis von Quedlinburg sold her sovereign rights over Gera to the Vogt , although she remained formally sovereign, even after Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian in 1329 granted the magistrates royal sovereignty such as excommunication, military exemption and the right to levy taxes. In 1358 the house and town of Gera finally fell to the Margraves of Meissen as Reichsafterlehen von Quedlinburg. From around 1370 the bailiffs began to call themselves "Lords of Gera".
On October 15, 1450 Gera was severely destroyed in the Saxon Civil War , from which the city recovered relatively quickly. Textile production, which was one of the most important branches of industry for the next centuries, became important. "Gerisch Tuch" was traded for the first time in Naumburg in 1401 and at the Leipzig Fair in 1436 . During this time the foundations were laid for the city to flourish in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Early modern age
During the German Peasant War in 1525, peasant heaps formed near Naulitz and on the Hungerberg near Großaga and Reichenbach , but there were no fighting. In 1533, at the instigation of the Wettin feudal lords - against the will of the Lords of Gera - the Reformation was introduced into the Gera reign.
In 1546 (with the Schmalkaldic War ) the Elector of Saxony and Margrave of Meissen ceded Gera to the Bohemian crown, but the Bohemian king had no influence over Gera. Nevertheless, the feudal relationship existed formally until 1806/07.
After the extinction of the Gera gentlemen's line in 1550, the rule of Gera fell in 1560/62 to the Reuss line from Plauen to Greiz , who expanded Osterstein Castle into their residence. The Reuss family had its most important representative at this time, Heinrich II Posthumus (1572–1635). In 1604, Heinrich Posthumus founded a consistory and a chancellery based in Gera for his lords . In 1608 he founded a stately state school with the Rutheneum grammar school in the city. Nicolaus de Smit (1541–1623), a Dutch cloth merchant who fled because of his Protestant faith, improved the methods used in Gera for producing cloth around 1600.
The Thirty Years' War also left its mark on Gera - in 1639 a fire started by plundering Swedish soldiers destroyed one third of the city. In 1673 Messrs. Reuss zu Gera were raised to the rank of imperial count.
In 1686 two thirds of the city burned down in a city fire caused by negligence. The fire catastrophe was exceeded by the fire on September 18, 1780, in which practically the entire old town was reduced to rubble.
1802 died with Heinrich XXX. the Count Line Reuss-Gera from. From now on, Gera was jointly administered by the three lines Reuss-Schleiz , Reuss-Ebersdorf and Reuss-Lobenstein . After the extinction of the Lobensteiner line (1824) and the Ebersdorfer line (1848), the principality of Reuss younger line emerged with Gera as the royal seat.
Later modern times
Napoleon stayed in Gera from October 11th to 13th, 1806 , he left it on the morning of October 13th in a westerly direction and won the battle of Jena and Auerstedt the next day .
After the Napoleonic Wars, industrialization quickly set in . The spinning machine was introduced in 1811, the first steam engine went into operation in 1833 and the first mechanical loom followed in 1836 . In 1859 the railway line to Weißenfels was inaugurated. The most important line of business in Gera remained textile production. A 1737 existing musical instruments specialized in the second half of the 19th century to the mass production of barrel organs , mouth and accordions .
In 1892 Gera was the second German city to have an electric tram . In 1893 the German Workers' Gymnastics Association was founded in Gera . With Bieblach (1905) and Debschwitz (1912), the first surrounding suburbs were also incorporated into the city in the first years of the 20th century.
Weimar Republic
In the course of the November Revolution , the last Prince of Reuss younger line had to abdicate in 1918, Gera became the capital of the People's State of Reuss and from May 1, 1920 was part of the newly founded state of Thuringia . From 1919 to 1924, for financial reasons, numerous places in the area were incorporated into Gera in quick succession, which increased the population to around 80,000.
As everywhere in Germany, the time of the Weimar Republic was marked by political instability in Gera. During the Kapp Putsch in 1920 riots broke out in the city, in which fifteen people were killed. In 1922 Gera became an independent city . The former Reuss Bezirksverband Gera and vast parts of the Weimar administrative district Neustadt an der Orla and the old burg District Office District Ronneburg which originated district Gera . Adolf Hitler spoke for the first time in Gera in 1925 .
National Socialism
"Seizure of power" and political development
When the National Socialists took power in the German Reich on January 30, 1933, this also had an impact on Gera. The previous Lord Mayor, Dr. Walter Arnold was forced into retirement (he died just a few weeks later) and replaced by the National Socialist Walter Kießling . The Heimvolkshochschule in Gera-Tinz , an educational institution of the SPD, was closed. Jews were threatened and persecuted. In the November pogrom, Jewish shops were demolished and Jews were brought to concentration camps. The synagogue and the Jewish community center were destroyed and the inventory was publicly burned. In the period that followed, numerous Jewish citizens were able to save themselves through emigration;
Second World War
Between 1939 and 1945 more than 3,000 prisoners of war as well as women and men from the countries occupied by Germany had to do forced labor , mainly in the city's armaments industry . The cenotaphs remind of the dead. a. in the east cemetery and in the kitchen garden. Towards the end of the war, murdered Jewish prisoners were cremated in the Ostfriedhof. A memorial stone was erected in 1949 for these 446 victims of National Socialism.
→ Main article: Air raids on Gera
After several American bombing raids began in May 1944 , the city was particularly badly attacked by the US Air Forces on April 6, 1945 . In the process, Osterstein Castle (except for the keep and lower courtyard buildings), the city museum (former breeding and orphanage), the old post office, the “Näglersche Haus”, the “Kutschenbachsche Haus” and the baroque building at Markt 6 were destroyed. The orangery was badly hit, while the Trinity Church, the town hall and numerous other individual buildings suffered minor damage. According to recent studies, the number of fatalities on April 6 is given as 142, that of the destroyed residential buildings as 300 and commercial enterprises as 54. In total, Gera suffered 514 fatalities in the bombing war. About 200 of the bomb victims rest in the east cemetery in a large and a smaller cemetery.
A death march by the Buchenwald prisoners also passed through Gera on April 13, 1945. Eight people were shot dead in the city.
At the end of the Second World War , the city was occupied by the Americans on April 14, 1945 after a military battle on the western city limits, low-level aircraft attacks and artillery bombardment in which thirteen people had lost their lives the day before. The Americans installed Rudolf Paul as the new Lord Mayor, who took office on May 7th.
Time of the Soviet Zone and GDR
Post-war period and Soviet occupation
Due to Allied agreements, Gera was occupied by Soviet troops on July 2, 1945 after the US troops withdrew. While the Soviets appointed Friedrich Bloch as a bourgeois mayor in autumn 1945 , he was succeeded in 1948 by Curt Böhme, an SED politician and anti-fascist.
At the end of 1945 and beginning of 1946 the Soviet secret police NKVD arrested 19 young people (15 to 17 years old) in Gera with the help of German police for alleged resistance activity. Four of them were shot, four more perished in the Soviet special camps in Bautzen and Sachsenhausen. Many adult citizens of Gera also suffered this fate.
In 1950 there was another large wave of incorporation, which affected Langenberg (town since 1933) and Liebschwitz as the largest communities .
Gera was a focus of the uprising on June 17, 1953 , with strikes in the large factories , thousands of demonstrators on the streets, supported by bismuth workers from Ronneburg (Thuringia) , siege and partial occupation of the council of the district, remand prison and prison of the MfS, disarmament by members of the barracked people's police . The storming of the district leadership of the SED was barely prevented by the intervention of Soviet troops, who imposed a state of emergency on the city from that afternoon .
Political, economic and cultural development
From 1952 to 1990 Gera was the capital of the Gera district . Since the 1950s, the development of uranium ore mining of SDAG Wismut around Ronneburg was decisive for the development of the region , in the course of which Gera became a major city in 1959. In the 1960s, a new building area was built with Bieblach. From 1972, the largest new building area in the district was built in the Lusan district; 45,000 residents lived there at the end of the 1980s . In the 1980s, Bieblach-Ost was the last of the city's major new development areas, which could no longer be completed due to the political change.
The textile industry, electronics industry, district administration and optical industry guaranteed thousands of jobs, and cultural life was also diverse - from the end of the 1970s the children's film and television festival Goldener Spatz took place in Gera every two years , the culture and congress center was inaugurated in 1981 and 1984 the GDR Workers' Festival took place in the Gera district . By 1989, the city's population rose to almost 135,000.
During his visit to Gera, Erich Honecker gave the “Gera Speech” on October 13, 1980 , in which he spoke about fundamental issues relating to the relationship between the GDR and the FRG . The four demands made by Honecker on the Federal Republic became known as the " Geraer demands ".
Opposition movement and political change
The opposition movement is never as strong in Gera as in other cities in the district, such as the industrial and university location Jena . The case of civil rights activist Matthias Domaschk from Jena, who died under unexplained circumstances in 1981 during pre-trial detention in the Gera headquarters of the MfS , gained notoriety .
After a failed action by the peace movement ( Aktion Kerze ) in November 1983, there were also movements against the GDR government in Gera in autumn 1989. As almost everywhere, it begins with prayers for peace. Following one of these prayers, a few hundred young people will come together for a spontaneous demonstration on October 22nd, and from October 26th there will be a demonstration every Thursday. The first secretary of the SED district leadership in Gera, Herbert Ziegenhahn , resigns on November 2nd. On January 4, 1990, the Gera headquarters of the MfS was one of the last in the GDR to be stormed by demonstrators. The Thursday demonstrations continued until March 1990.
Reunified Germany
Local elections were held in Gera on May 6, 1990, from which the CDU and top candidate Michael Galley emerged victorious. According to the Land Introduction Act of July 22nd of the same year, Gera became part of the new state of Thuringia as a result of German reunification . As the largest city of the "old" Thuringia in the borders before 1933, it also applied for the function of the state capital, but was defeated in the vote in the Thuringian state parliament , where on January 10, 1991 the final seat of the state parliament was decided, the former Prussian, but larger and centrally located Erfurt . Gera received ten of the 88 votes cast.
In 1994, numerous places, especially north and east of the city, were incorporated and the district of Gera was dissolved on July 1st and became part of the new district of Greiz . In addition, in 1994 the mayor was directly elected for the first time in Gera's history. Ralf Rauch won the election . In the course of the structural change, the opening of new shopping centers that are important beyond the city limits was successful. The settlement of new industrial companies, however, is still difficult. In 2006, after twelve years in office, Ralf Rauch lost the runoff election for the mayor's office against long-time GVB and municipal utility boss Norbert Vornehm .
The organization of the Federal Garden Show 2007 in Gera and Ronneburg provided an upswing for the development of the infrastructure . In the years 2006/07, numerous transport projects such as the tram line 1 from Zwötzen to Untermhaus or the eastern bypass of the city were implemented. In addition, important sights such as the theater and orangery were renovated. The Hofwiesenpark, designed from a redesigned sports complex, forms the Gera exhibition area .
Mayor and Lord Mayor
- 1795-1824: JCK Fürbringer
- 1832–1848: Ernst Senf
- 1848–1849: Oscar Hennig
- 1849–1865: Robert Fürbringer (from 1852 with the title of mayor )
- 1865–1872: Wilhelm Weber
- 1873–1877: Constantin Sorger
- 1877–1881: Robert Fischer
- 1881–1898: Kurt Alwin Lade called Ruick
- 1898–1918: Ludwig Ernst Huhn (independent)
- 1918–1925: Kurt Herrfurth (independent)
- 1925–1933: Walter Arnold (independent)
- 1933–1936: Walter Kießling (NSDAP)
- 1936–1945: Otto Zinn (NSDAP)
- 1945: Rudolf Paul (independent)
- 1945: Friedrich Giessner (KPD)
- 1945–1948: Friedrich Bloch (independent)
- 1948–1956: Curt Böhme (SED)
- 1956–1958: Otto Aßmann (SED)
- 1958–1962: Willi Weber (SED)
- 1962–1988: Horst Pohl (SED)
- 1988–1990: Horst Jäger (SED)
- 1990–1993: Michael Galley (CDU)
- 1993–1994: Andreas Mitzenheim (CDU)
- 1994–2006: Ralf Rauch (independent)
- 2006–2012: Norbert Vornehm (SPD)
- 2012–2018: Viola Hahn (independent)
- since 2018: Julian Vonarb (independent)
Chairman of the City Council
- 1990–1994: Bernhard Gantenbein ( New Forum )
- 1994-2004: Bernd Koob (CDU)
- 2004–2009: Petra Metzner (left)
- since 2009: Dieter Hausold (left)
literature
- Gera - history of the city in words and pictures , German publishing house of the sciences, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-326-00225-4
- Klaus Brodale / Heidrun Friedemann: That was the 20th century in Gera , Wartberg Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 2002, ISBN 3-8313-1273-7
- Thuringian Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime - Association of Antifascists and Study Group of German Resistance 1933–1945 (Ed.): Heimatgeschichtlicher Wegweiser to places of resistance and persecution 1933–1945, series: Heimatgeschichtliche Wegweiser Volume 8 Thüringen , Erfurt 2003, ISBN 3-88864 -343-0
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Manfred Bensing, Karlheinz Blaschke, Karl Czok, Gerhard Kehrer, Heinz Machatscheck: Lexicon cities and coats of arms of the GDR . Ed .: Heinz Göschel. 2. rework. and exp. Edition. Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig July 1984, p. 149 .
- ↑ Heimatgeschichtliche Wegweiser to places of resistance and persecution 1933–1945, series: Heimatgeschichtliche Wegweiser Volume 8 Thüringen, Erfurt 2003, ISBN 3-88864-343-0
- ↑ Rudolf Zießler: Gera . In Fate of German Monuments in World War II . Edited by Götz Eckardt, Henschel-Verlag Berlin, 1978. pp. 507-511
- ↑ Memory of Fatalities . Thuringian newspaper, April 6, 2011
- ^ Günter Sagan: East Thuringia in the bombing war 1939-1945. Michael-Imhof-Verlag, Petersberg 2013. p. 188. ISBN 978-3-86568-636-7
- ^ Benno Prieß: The young people from Gera / Thuringia in Shot at dawn . Self-published by Calw, 2002. Co-editor: State commissioner for the documents of the State Security Service of the GDR. ISBN 3-926802-36-7 . P. 96
- ↑ H. Mestrup: On the History of the district Gera (1952-1990). Sheets on regional studies of Thuringia. State Center for Political Education, 2004
- ↑ The cry for freedom. June 17, 1953 in Thuringia . Ettersberg Foundation , exhibition in the Thuringian Parliament, June 2012