Pioneer house
Children's leisure centers of the socialist states were referred to as the pioneer house (or "house of the [young] pioneers") . Pioneer was the name given to members of the socialist children's organizations.
Pioneer houses in the GDR
After a study trip in July 1949 to the Soviet Union under the direction of Gerhard Heidenreich , the pioneer houses there, which had existed since the 1930s, were taken over by the GDR . In 1983 there were 142 pioneer houses in the GDR. They were often named after representatives of the communist movement and were maintained by the pioneer organization "Ernst Thälmann" . Some of the houses had so-called pioneer parks , some of which had extensive outdoor facilities.
The largest center of this kind was in East Berlin . Until the end of the 1970s it was the central building of the young pioneers “German Titow” in Berlin-Lichtenberg . With the opening of the "Ernst Thälmann" pioneer palace in the pioneering park in Wuhlheide in 1979, it became the largest center.
There were also local pioneer centers in all district capitals , with the pioneer centers Leipzig (House of Young Pioneers “ Georg Schwarz ”) and Dresden (Pioneer Palace “Walter Ulbricht” in Albrechtsberg Castle ) being the largest.
Much of the work with the children took place in free courses. The range of courses or working groups included B. painting, handicrafts, pottery or sewing, but also working groups such as young cosmonauts , young firefighters and young geographers . The relatively large number of offers of the pioneer houses represented an important factor in the leisure activities of the schoolchildren in the GDR.
Some of the pioneer houses were housed in historical buildings, such as Dessau , Erfurt , Halle (Saale) , Löbau , Magdeburg , Sondershausen , Stralsund and Zwickau .
Web links
- Statute of the pioneer organization "Ernst Thälmann" (PDF; 56 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lessons begin after an eventful vacation , Neues Deutschland from May 16, 1983, page 2