Baltic week
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The Baltic Sea Week was an international festival week held annually in the GDR from 1958 to 1975 . It usually took place at the beginning of July in the Rostock district and had the motto: "The Baltic Sea must be a sea of peace".
In 1957, at a friendship rally with the USSR in Rostock, Karl Mewis , who was then First Secretary of the Rostock district leadership of the SED , suggested that a so-called Baltic Sea Week be held in the Rostock district from 1958 onwards. At the end of November 1957, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the SED confirmed the Rostock proposals for the Baltic Sea Week.
A central "Baltic Sea Week" committee was founded with the participation of Karl Mewis, Herbert Warnke and Waldemar Verner . The Central Committee secretariat determined that not only delegations from the capitalist Baltic Sea countries, but also delegations from the USSR and Poland should be invited to the festival week. The event was declared a matter for the whole country. On January 30, 1958, the constituent meeting of the preparatory committee for the Baltic Sea week took place, at which Mewis formulated the principles of the event. A decision of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the GDR on February 13, 1958 transferred responsibility for the implementation of the Baltic Sea Week to the chairman of the Rostock District Council .
Since then there have been numerous political, cultural and sporting events every year in Rostock and other places on the Baltic Sea coast in competition with the traditional Kiel Week - rallies, symposiums and conferences as well as sailing regattas , concerts and exhibitions.
The organizer of the culture and sport festival was the trade union federation FDGB , which held the "Workers' Conference of the Baltic States, Norway and Iceland" in Rostock. The aim of this conference and the Baltic Sea Week was to develop relations between the GDR and the northern European countries and to promote state recognition of the GDR. The participants came from the Federal Republic of Germany , the other Baltic Sea states, Norway and Iceland .
On 20 December 1975, the representatives of the East German friendship societies of the Nordic countries in the Baltic Sea district had come to the 19th Baltic Week 1976 prepare, notified by the "Committee Baltic Sea Week" that the Baltic Sea week are set. The reason given was that the festival week had done its job. With the conclusion of the basic treaty and the admission of both German states to the United Nations , the purpose of the event no longer applies to the organizer.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael F. Scholz: The way to the first Baltic Sea week in Rostock 1958. In: Journal for historical science. 36, 4, 1988, p. 318.
- ↑ Michael F. Scholz: Scandinavian experiences desired ?: Post-exile and remigration: The former KPD emigrants in Scandinavia and their further fate in the Soviet Zone / GDR. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-515-07651-4 , p. 244.
- ↑ Landesarchiv Greifswald, Rep. 210/13, Presidium of the Council of Ministers: Decision on the implementation of the "Baltic Sea Week" of February 13, 1958 (copy)
- ↑ Alexander Muschik: Rostocker Ostseewoche versus Kieler Woche: The German-German festival week competition for the favor of the Nordic countries. In: Alexander Muschik: The two German states and the neutral Sweden. A triangular relationship in the shadow of the open German question. LIT-Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-9044-9 , pp. 231-244; Jürgen Elvert: A kind of new beginning. In: Robert Bohn , Jürgen Elvert , Karl Christian Lammers (eds.): German-Scandinavian relations after 1945. (= Historical communications of the Ranke Society. Supplement 31). Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-515-07320-5 , p. 19.
- ^ Nils Abraham: The GDR's political work abroad in Sweden: On the GDR's public diplomacy towards Sweden after diplomatic recognition (1972-1989). LIT Verlag, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-0268-4 , p. 372.