Oderland department store
The Oderland department store in Manschnow was a pilot project of the GDR consumer cooperative .
initial situation
In the course of the 1950s it became increasingly clear that the shopping opportunities in the rural areas of the GDR were unsatisfactory. According to surveys by the Institute for Commercial Information from 1961, rural residents had to plan an average of 30 minutes to travel to just to get to the nearest shop; an additional 50 minutes had to be spent on the futile journey from shop to shop in search of scarce goods . In addition, the country was far more poorly supplied with goods and services than the cities .
Planning
Since the poor supply and the thin retail - infrastructure was perceived among the rural population as neglect and indifference to their needs, by which the credibility of the SED leadership suffered the self-express themselves as representatives of the workers and peasants represented, and also the risk of unrest could not be ruled out, possible solutions were sought.
In 1959, the SED's trade conference decided that by 1965 rural areas should be opened up across the board through large-scale country sales outlets. These were modern service centers which, in addition to a comprehensive range of goods, should also offer laundries , repair and service facilities as well as hairdressing and cosmetic salons . The villages of Siedenbollentin , Mockrehna and Manschnow were intended for exemplary pilot projects .
implementation
Construction of the Oderland department store in Manschnow began in 1960. Difficulties quickly arose: It soon became apparent that the necessary capacities were difficult to find to implement this and the two sister projects. Construction materials , machines and workers had to be withdrawn from other construction sites, which resulted in stoppages there.
The equipment also caused problems, as devices of the desired high standard were hardly available. For example, the washing machines needed should be imported from West Germany , but this failed due to the lack of foreign currency . Thereupon attempts were made to procure comparable machines from the ČSSR ; but that was not possible either because the devices were not included in the import plans. The washing machines for the Siedenbollentiner Kaufhalle Oderland were finally withdrawn from another region of the GDR, where their lack caused a new defect.
Manschnow and the two other pilot projects remained the only large country sales outlets; plans to develop a comprehensive network of rural service centers have been abandoned in view of the clearly revealed difficulties in building only three such facilities. The construction capacities that would have been tied up in the construction of further centers were also required for the large-scale nationwide construction of cattle stalls.
range
Since the supply of consumer goods in the GDR always showed strong characteristics of a shortage economy , compromises had to be sought when putting together the range of large-scale country sales outlets. Since these were showcase projects, it was decided in the case of Kaufhalle Oderland not to offer a very limited full range of all types of goods, but instead to forego individual sub-ranges that were in low demand and to stock up on the other product groups more extensively. For example, no clothing , yard goods , furniture and room textiles were offered, with the intention of adding them to the offer at a later point in time when the supply situation improved, but this never happened.
The Oderland department store building still exists today; now it houses a Edeka - Supermarket .
literature
- Annette Kaminsky: Shopping frenzy. The history of the East German mail order companies. Links, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-86153-165-8 .
Web link
Coordinates: 52 ° 33 ′ 0.5 ″ N , 14 ° 33 ′ 13.9 ″ E