Mamayev Hill
The Mamayev Hill ( Russian Мамаев курган , Mamajew kurgan , also altitude 102.0 ), located north of the city center of Volgograd , was a strategically important and fiercely contested point on the front line between the city center in the south and those in the north in the Battle of Stalingrad large factories (“Red October” steel mill, “Barricades” gun factory and “Dzerzhinsky” tractor factory ).
Today there is a monumental memorial in this area of the city of Volgograd . The hill was named after Mamai , an emir of the Golden Horde in the 14th century.
Chronicle of the fighting
The NKVD -Bataillon expected on September 13, 1942 a major attack of the German 295th Infantry Division in trenches and barbed wire. Chuikov's headquarters of the 62nd Army on Mamayev Hill came under heavy artillery fire and had to be moved to Tsaritsa . On September 15, 1942, Radio Berlin reported the capture of the hill. There was a counter-attack by the Red Army on Mamayev Hill and the Central Station. The Soviet defense received reinforcements from the 112th Rifle Division on September 19. Half of Mamayev Hill was in German hands on September 27, only the eastern slope was stubbornly defended by the 284th Rifle Division (Colonel Batjuk). With the surrender of the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, the fighting over the uprising also ended. It is believed that 30,000 soldiers died on Mamayev Hill.
“ After the end of the fight on September 27, 1942, the blood-soaked ground on the hill was full of craters and shrapnel: between 500 and 1250 metal splinters were found per square meter. During the winter, the ground stayed black and the snow melted in the fires and explosions. In the spring the hill remained black and no grass grew there. The formerly steep slopes were flattened by months of intense fire and air bombardment. "
memorial
The construction work on the memorial with the monumental statue , a personification of the Soviet homeland and embodiment of the triumph of the Red Army , began in 1959 and ended after eight years of construction with the inauguration on October 15, 1967. The figure is one of the tallest statues in the world .
The most visited memorial in Russia is open all year round. Admission is free. The tram stop Mamajew kurgan is located directly below the park area.
architecture
Already from a kilometer away is the statue that the name calling Motherland (Russian Родина-мать зовёт! , Rodina-mat sowjot! ) Which can be seen: a huge female figure in a flowing robe and stretched up sword . The statue faces the Volga flowing past the hill to the east , over which the hill towers over a relatively steep rise by more than 100 meters. The torso of the figure is turned halfway to the left (north); her mouth wide open calls the sons of the land to defense.
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The statue measures 82 meters to the tip of the 33-meter-long and 14-ton sword (52 meters to the head) and weighs about 8,000 tons. The design comes from Yevgeny Wuchetich . Further below the dome there is a park-like area with stone sculptures in a pathetic appearance and in one building a large eternal flame held by a stone hand .
Others
Marshal Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov , who was buried here after his death in 1982, is also located on the hill . Mother-homeland statues with similar symbolism can be found in Russia in Saint Petersburg in the Piskarjowskoje memorial cemetery and in Kaliningrad, as well as in other successor states of the Soviet Union in Yerevan ( Armenia ), Kiev ( Ukraine ) and Tbilisi ( Georgia ). The Mother Homeland statue on the grounds of the Kiev Museum of the Great Patriotic War is 68 meters high and stands on a 40-meter pedestal. It also exceeds the 46.5 meter high Statue of Liberty in New York without a base (the Statue of Liberty measures 93 meters with the base).
Web links
- Official memorial site from Volgograd on volgadmin.ru
- Mamayev Hill. In: Structurae
- Monument "Heimat" at the Ukrainian National Museum
Coordinates: 48 ° 44 ′ 33.4 " N , 44 ° 32 ′ 11.7" E
Individual evidence
- ↑ Will Fowler: Battle for Stalingrad. The conquest of the city - October 1942. Vienna 2006, p. 54.