Hartmannshain air ammunition plant
The air ammunition plant Hartmannshain was an ammunition plant of the German Air Force in the Oberwald near Grebenhain in the Vogelsberg district that existed between 1936 and 1945 . Mostly briefly referred to as Muna , it was one of 74 comparable institutions that emerged as part of the rearmament and war preparation by the Nazi regime in what was then the German Reich . It was primarily used for the completion ( ignition , assembly , packaging ) of air force ammunition of all calibres .
history
The area of the later Luftmuna Hartmannshain was used for agriculture by the farmers of the neighboring villages Grebenhain and Bermuthshain until the 1930s . Until the late Middle Ages, the village of Schershain, which had become deserted , was also located there . 1893 of the upper forest was built a hunting lodge on the edge, 1904, the Forest Villa as a retirement home of retired Frankfurt police president Wilhelm Freiherr von Müffling . The Vogelsbergbahn has also passed it since 1906 .
In 1933 the Reich Aviation Ministry acquired the forest villa and a large area belonging to it, which belonged to the Grebenhain district. In order to build the Muna, numerous local farmers were also forced to sell property under threat of expropriation. In April 1936, construction of the Muna began under great secrecy. It was not reported in the local press. Although the Muna was in the district of Grebenhain, it was named after the neighboring municipality of Hartmannshain for reasons that have not yet been clarified .
A total of around 2000 workers worked in three shifts on the construction site. During a major Wehrmacht maneuver in September 1936, Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking members of the government and officers visited the facility, which was still under construction. In 1937 the Muna was finally completed and operational.
In 1940, the expansion of the Muna site by building additional ammunition bunkers began. However, these were never fully completed. In August 1941, the Royal Air Force bombed the towns of Volkartshain and Herchenhain , killing several people and possibly the Muna. The existence and location of the facility was probably known to the Allied aerial reconnaissance before the end of the war, but no targeted attack took place until 1945, as industry and transport routes had a much higher priority among the military objectives.
In addition to the completion and storage of German aircraft bombs , drop containers and on-board weapon ammunition , French, British and Soviet booty ammunition was also deposited in the Muna as the war progressed. In addition, there were infantry ammunition and, finally, launching devices for flying bombs of the Fieseler Fi 103 ( V1 ) type . Towards the end of the war, the bunkers were full to the brim with ammunition, as German bombers were hardly ever used due to the overall situation and, moreover, the transport routes were interrupted by constant Allied air raids.
In 1942 a barrack in the neighboring Bermuthshain became the property of the Muna and from 1943 onwards it was used with other barracks to accommodate forced laborers from the Ukraine who had to work in the facility. When handling the dangerous ammunition, there were several explosion accidents with fatal results. Escape attempts and suicides by forced labor are also documented.
A few days before the approach of American troops, the pilots of eight American fighter-bombers , following the railway line, discovered a fully loaded ammunition train on the Muna grounds. This was attacked immediately and set on fire. The subsequent explosion destroyed several halls of the Muna and tore a huge crater in the earth. In Bermuthshain, Grebenhain and Crainfeld numerous window panes were crushed by the detonation and in the latter place a barn was set on fire by a flying fragment of a bomb.
In accordance with the Nero order , the bunkers in the Muna were prepared for demolition by the German armed forces before American units arrived. This took place from March 26, 1945 with the help of time fuses . Chunks of concrete and above all parts of ammunition were thrown far through the area and contaminated the Oberwald for many decades with dangerous ammunition residues.
On March 29, 1945, units of the 4th US Armored Division reached Grebenhain. On March 31, 1945, the Americans occupied Bermuthshain. Only a few weeks later the Muna grounds were also occupied. At first, however, the Muna was largely left to its own devices and was plundered on a large scale by residents of the neighboring communities. The American occupation of the Muna, during which further explosions were carried out, lasted until early 1947.
Facilities and infrastructure
In its final stage of expansion, the Hartmannshain air ammunition plant extended over an area of 176 hectares. Like all comparable air ammunition plants, it consisted of three functional areas. For the officers and the location management existed a separate settlement with the Homeland Security style kept houses, administrative buildings and a guard house with access from or to the national highway 275 .
At some distance from the residential and administrative complex, the work area, each with several ammunition workhouses, packing halls, garages and workshops, was connected. The largest part of the facility was taken up by the ammunition depot, with around 120 above-ground ammunition houses (bunkers) camouflaged by earth filling. There were also some fragmentation and air raid bunkers for the staff and bunkers for technical equipment ( transformer station , emergency generator ). The Muna also included an Eastern labor camp in Bermuthshain as accommodation for the majority of the foreign forced laborers. An originally planned workers' settlement for German civil workers on the outskirts of Grebenhain was not built.
The Muna had its own electricity, water, sewerage and telephone network and paved roads. There was an internal track network with a loading ramp and locomotive shed for its own diesel shunting locomotive as well as a modern fire brigade . The ammunition was mainly transported to and from the siding on the Vogelsbergbahn, but also by truck via the R 275. The main suppliers of the largely prefabricated ammunition were the explosives factories Allendorf and Herrenwald near Marburg and the explosives factory Hessisch Lichtenau . The filling of explosives was, as with the majority of all ammunition plants, at no point the purpose of the facility. Ammunition work mainly involved inserting the detonators into the bombs and populating dropping containers with fragmentation bombs . With the exception of large-caliber bombs, these were then packed in ammunition boxes in the Muna and stored in the bunkers until delivery.
For the anti-aircraft defense in the Muna itself, four twin FlaMG and three quadruple FlaMG were in expanded positions. In addition, three 2cm anti-aircraft guns were set up in the vicinity of the Muna . The operators of all guns were instructed to open fire only when attacks were detected, in order not to betray the facility. A warning station set up at the Hartmannshain air ammunition facility and the Giessen warning command was responsible for monitoring the airspace over the Vogelsberg. It had several wooden shelters with observation towers on the Maienberg near Crainfeld , on the Hoherodskopf and near Freiensteinau , most of which were occupied by locals.
A changing number of well over 200 (according to eyewitness reports at times up to 800) workers worked in the Muna. Most of them were conscripted men and especially women from the region. From 1943 onwards, the last 128 forced laborers from Ukraine and Russia as well as 14 Italian military internees made up a noticeable part of the staff. The Muna was guarded by a private security company from Friedberg , which also mainly employed locals.
Former barracks of the Muna in the Oberwald district
Former workshop building
Blown up bunker of the Muna in the Oberwald
Bunker in the former NATO depot
Exhibition in the Muna Museum
Use after 1945
→ Main article: Oberwald (Grebenhain)
The Muna housing estate escaped destruction and has largely been preserved to this day. It is the core of today's Grebenhain district of Oberwald . In the commercial and administrative buildings, which have also largely been preserved, small companies of expelled Sudeten Germans from Gablonz first settled . In the 1950s, several industrial companies, including a cloth factory, used these buildings. In 1966, the Stabernack packaging company set up shop on the Muna site. The Muna Hartmannshain thus became a starting point for industrialization in the Vogelsberg region, which was mainly characterized by agriculture before it was built .
The bunkers that had been blown up were largely preserved until the 1980s. In the years 1978-1982 then was developed as part of the NATO -Verteidigungskonzepts in Fulda Gap , a supply depot ( Forward Storage Site ) of the US Army , in public NATO camp called. This was cleared after the end of the Cold War in 1990 and used for civil purposes as a commercial area. In 1991, the systematic demmunitioning of the entire area began, which was completed in autumn 2013.
The former residential and administrative estate, the former work area and the site of the former ammunition storage facility including the former NATO depot are all listed as historical monuments. Furthermore, various individual buildings and structural relics of the former Muna are designated as cultural monuments (→ List of cultural monuments in Grebenhain ).
Muna Museum Grebenhain
→ Main article: Muna-Museum Grebenhain
A systematic review of the history of the Hartmannshain air ammunition facility began at the end of 2004, when the Muna Grebenhain working group was founded by interested citizens of the Grebenhain community . The remaining structural remains of the facility are to be preserved and, as far as justifiable, made accessible to the public. On the initiative of the working group, a museum with a permanent exhibition on the history of the Muna was created in the old school in Bermuthshain, which was opened on May 8, 2011 under the name Muna-Museum Grebenhain . The working group also offers guided tours through the Muna site in the Oberwald.
literature
- Berthold Pletsch: The influence of the state road and the Vogelsbergbahn on the structural development of the village Grebenhain in the 19th and early 20th centuries . Lauterbach 1992.
- Carsten Eigner: Bombs and forced labor in a rural idyll. On the history of the "Hartmannshain air ammunition facility" near Grebenhain in Vogelsberg 1936–1945 . In: Gießener Anzeiger , Kreis-Anzeiger , Lauterbacher Anzeiger (ed.): Heimat im Bild . tape 14/2012 . Giessen 2012.
- Carsten Eigner: In the autumn of 1936 the "Führer" visited the Muna. After the Nuremberg Party Congress, there was a great propaganda spectacle in the Hohen Vogelsberg . In: Gießener Anzeiger , Kreis-Anzeiger , Lauterbacher Anzeiger (ed.): Heimat im Bild . tape 15/2012 . Giessen 2012.
- Carsten Eigner: The Hartmannshain (Muna) air ammunition plant on the Vogelsbergbahn . In: Dieter Eckert, Carsten Eigner, Steffen Eigner, Bernhard Hager, Klaus-Dieter Rack, Eva Rödel, Jürgen Röhrig, Frank Trumpold, Clemens Uhlig, Ulrich Eisenbach, Stefan Klöppel, Bernd Vielsmeier, Andreas Christopher (eds.): Connection to the wide world. On the changeful development of the railway in Upper Hesse . Upper Hessian Utilities AG (OVAG), Friedberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-9815015-5-1 , p. 261-264 .
- Walter Krug: Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany, cultural monuments in Hesse, Vogelsbergkreis II . Ed .: State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen. Theiss, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-8062-3055-0 , pp. 186-189 .
- Carsten Eigner: "Muna in the forest, we'll find you soon!" The air ammunition plant Hartmannshain (Muna) near Grebenhain in Vogelsberg from 1936 to 1945 and the Muna site from 1946 to today . Ed .: Förderverein MUNA-Museum Grebenhain e. V. Grebenhain 2018, ISBN 978-3-00-059616-2 .
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 29 ′ 17.5 ″ N , 9 ° 18 ′ 6.3 ″ E