Soviet garrison cemetery in Dresden
The Soviet garrison cemetery in Dresden was built in May 1945 as a war cemetery for the Red Army . From 1946 to 1987 it was officially used as the site cemetery for the soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army who died during the occupation, their family members and civilian employees of the military, and during this time the city of Dresden expanded it three times. From 1968, however, the occupancy was only sporadic. The Soviet garrison cemetery is a listed entity as a whole, cf. List of monument conservation issues in Dresden #Churches and cemeteries .
location
The cemetery is located to the left of Marienallee in Dresden's Albertstadt district and thus belongs to the Neustadt district . It is located northeast of the city center on the southwest edge of the Dresdner Heide . The north cemetery and the army officers' school are located in the vicinity of the cemetery area, which can be reached via Marienallee or the Kannenhenkel .
investment
The Soviet garrison cemetery is a typical forest cemetery and extends over around 2.3 hectares. It was embedded in terraces on the slope of the sloping terrain towards the Prießnitzgrund. The exact number of men, women and children buried here during the 49 years of occupation is unclear. Currently, 1175 individual and 246 collective graves are known. The Saxon Memorials Foundation and the city of Dresden have so far assumed 2268 deaths. However, the latest findings from archive research suggest at least 2300 people, 2268 of whom are only mentioned by name or with the note "unknown" on tombstones.
The city of Dresden has been responsible for the cemetery since the end of May 2019. Previously, the facility had been sponsored by the Free State of Saxony since 1994 in the form of the Saxon Real Estate and Construction Management (SIB), which had taken it over from the city of Dresden after the CIS troops had withdrawn. Since the cemetery was taken over by the administration of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1992, parts of the cemetery have been classified as war graves in accordance with the Graves Act and have been a listed building since then . A precise definition of this area is lacking, however, as the complex was never separated into the honor grove and the site cemetery, but was continuously occupied. Today the war cemetery therefore includes both war and non-war graves.
The two extensions (south-west, west and north wings) that were added to the cemetery from 1950 are a special case. Mainly non-war graves from the years 1952 to 1987 as well as about 100 war graves from the years 1941 to 1952 can be found here. While the west and south-west wings were classified as war cemeteries due to their territorial location and were placed under monument protection despite the complete lack of war graves, the north wing remained this was denied until 2011. In administrative German, that part with graves from the period from 1941 to 1987 was and is incorrectly referred to as the "civil part". More than two thirds of those buried there are members of the military. The Soviet civil cemetery in Dresden is a separate facility. It is located several hundred meters as the crow flies on an area in the southern part of the north cemetery . Since March the north wing of the Soviet garrison cemetery has also been under monument protection at the end of a citizens' initiative; the cemetery as a whole now forms a monumental entity.
There is still no externally visible signage at the cemetery. However, the city of Dresden declared such a goal when it took over the facility in May 2019. A few meters from the entrance, a stone plaque inside the cemetery vaguely identifies the location as the Dresden garrison cemetery. Originally there was a sign about 200 meters down Marienallee that drew attention to the remote cemetery. On the initiative of committed citizens, it was possible to secure the table. Since then it has been stored in the Dresden Lapidarium and awaits restoration.
history
On May 8, 1945 - the day the Wehrmacht surrendered and the official end of World War II - units of the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army under the leadership of Marshal Ivan Konew captured Dresden. Embedded in the last major operation "Prague" with the participation of more than two million Soviet soldiers from the 1st, 2nd and 4th Ukrainian fronts, troop units from the south and east marched towards Dresden, around the last Wehrmacht units still active in Saxony around field marshal Smash Ferdinand Schörner. Coming from Silesia, they advanced in the first days of May via Bautzen and Radeberg and in a second line from the Erzgebirge via Meißen and Radebeul to the Elbe metropolis. The battle for Dresden brought the Red Army comparatively few losses. Injured, sick and weak people from the last difficult months came in large numbers with the troops into the city. The army seized large parts of the largely intact barracks in Dresden's Albertstadt along the then Carola-, König-Georg- (now both Stauffenbergallee) and Marienallee. Due to the desperate medical and humanitarian supply situation in the devastated Dresden, many soldiers died in the local military hospital of the garrison on Marienallee (today the medical center of the Army Officers' School). Common causes of death were mainly firearms and explosives violations, but also diseases, above all tuberculosis , sepsis and lung and meningitis . As epidemics threatened, the burial of the dead began as soon as possible. Due to a lack of space and local knowledge, this initially took place in the first days and weeks mostly in ordinary city cemeteries, where many prisoners of war and forced laborers had previously been buried. Red Army soldiers who died during the last fighting were usually buried on the spot or in the closest civil cemetery, as far as possible. The grave sites were only partially documented. In the first days of May, in parallel in Dresden, the military members who died in the Dresden military hospital began to be buried in an area a few hundred meters further in the forest - the later Soviet garrison cemetery in Dresden.
These burials were initially disordered and provisional. Official burial lists were not kept during this time. Each commander at division, battalion or regimental level, on the other hand, kept a separate list of losses for his respective unit even after the end of the war. Only with the SMAD order No. 117 of April 15, 1946 was the creation of site cemeteries for Soviet military personnel in all of East Germany ordered in order to give the burials an orderly framework. As a result, the Soviet garrison cemetery on Marienallee was officially opened in October 1946. The burials were now carried out according to plan and according to a design concept that provided for different grave fields with uniform grave monuments arranged according to military hierarchies. From 1947 the landscape architecture design took place under the aegis of Duglore Goltdammer from the municipal office for green spaces. In the following years, former Soviet prisoners of war and forced laborers from other city cemeteries as well as dead people who were only found later in the course of construction work were increasingly reburied here.
As early as mid-1946, bottlenecks were becoming apparent in the originally planned field in the area of today's grove of honor around the obelisk. The first extension to the north was made - the central wing, now the monumental heart of the cemetery with hundreds of graves, was created. Between 1946 and 1954 around 1000 soldiers, officers and a few civilians found their final resting place here. Because the capacities here also ran out at some point, planning for a second major expansion began in the late 1940s - the construction of today's north, west and south-west wings. First of all, from 1949 a row of graves was built on the northern border of the previous cemetery. A collective grave for 71 prisoners of war and forced laborers was built on the far right edge of the row. Running to the west, there are three memorial groves for a total of 90 small children and a civil grove with graves of 35 women and young people from the years 1948 to 1964. The children's grove is also decorated with an obelisk made of polished red granite, about 3 meters high, with the inscription: "Here the children of the Soviet Union rest". The majority of the deceased civilians from the Soviet garrison were buried in the Soviet civil cemetery on Kannenhenkelweg (north cemetery) or in their home country.
In 1947, by order of the military administration on the part of the city of Dresden, the construction of a 16-meter-high obelisk crowned by a red star began in the south wing of the complex . More on this in the "Monuments" section.
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia , the city of Dresden donated another memorial for the cemetery to the Soviet garrison called "The Flag Bearer" in November 1957 .
From the mid-1960s, the number of soldiers buried in the cemetery gradually decreased, as, according to former military personnel, the dead were increasingly being brought back home and buried there. This was done by means of special trains and partly by sea. This turnaround coincided with the reform of the Soviet military in 1967/68, in the course of which, among other things, military service was shortened from three to two years. As a result of the closure of the registry offices in the Soviet garrisons as a result of the reform, the garrison cemeteries were usually also closed for burials. However, there were exceptions: In individual cases, soldiers and civilians continued to be buried on site until the 1970s and sometimes even the 1980s, if the repatriation caused problems or if officers or civilian employees who had been stationed in the GDR for years had their deceased relatives (mostly the Children) wanted to keep close to them.
Between 1973 and 1979 the Soviet garrison cemetery underwent its first major reconstruction and redesign. This went hand in hand with the removal of the sandstone surrounds with which each grave was originally framed. The sandstone plinths that served to raise the tombs were also demolished. The aim was to take the monumental aspect of "too much stone" away from the system and to bring in more light. For cost reasons, the complex triple planting, which changes twice a year, was reduced for each grave in favor of a simpler single planting. At the same time, the north wing became a model project of "contemporary" cemetery design, which was primarily oriented towards the cost saving factor. From 1978 onwards, all existing grave monuments, which had previously been kept in the style of the main complex, were removed and replaced by simple standing or reclining paintings made of resistant rhyolite with raised (and thus virtually indestructible) inscriptions. The Soviet headquarters had given their consent to this after the city had assured that no grave would be anonymized and that the new tombs would largely be placed over the respective grave. The condition achieved at that time has been preserved to this day.
In August 1973 the last two soldiers were buried in the garrison cemetery, their graves are in the north wing. In September 1987 the last funeral took place, a 1½ month old girl named Jana Borisova. His grave is also in the north wing.
After the reunification in 1990, the plant was initially in the hands of the city of Dresden, which transferred it to the Free State of Saxony in 1994.
Between 1998 and 2007 the entire cemetery was again extensively repaired and remained closed during this time. The federal government provided funds of 1,222,602 euros for the renovation measures. Here, primarily the tombs on the main complex (without the north wing) were further dismantled by removing the stone plinths. All of the stones in the main complex were also restored and the inscriptions renewed. Soil renovation work was carried out on the north wing and the grave field borders were renewed. Sunken tombs were realigned. In addition, almost all the standing marks were placed in a lying position. This had the positive effect that stability tests were no longer necessary. The negative consequence, however, was that the lying marks could be overgrown and buried more quickly. This developed into a problem mainly because there was no game protection fence on the entire site and there was massive infestation by wild boar that literally buried the tombs.
The Soviet Garrison Cemetery has been open to the public again since 2008. Today it is no longer used. The support is still provided by the Staatsbetrieb Sächsisches Immobilien- und Baumanagement (SIB).
In December 2010 the Saxon State Office for the Preservation of Monuments recognized the previously unprotected north wing as part of the cultural monument Soviet Garrison Cemetery.
In April 2013, at the insistence of committed citizens, the construction of the new game protection fence was completed. The measure cost the Free State of Saxony around 40,000 euros.
Main system
The main complex is around 1.9 hectares and has been a listed building since 1992, regardless of the irregular arrangement of war and non-war graves. The war graves of the Red Army are located in the south, east and mostly in the central wing. The German Graves Act refers to all resting places as war graves up to March 31, 1952 as a result of the Second World War. The law obliges the federal states to permanently preserve the graves. In addition to the graves of around 750 war dead according to Graves Act houses the main complex in the south-west and west wings and partly in the middle wing the graves of around 250 Soviet soldiers and officers who died between April 1, 1952 and 1967. The graves are consistently designed. Collective graves with uniform tombstones were mostly created for the ranks of the crews, while for officers and civilians mostly individual graves with largely uniform memorial stones.
In the south wing, on both sides of the obelisk , there are twelve rows of 170 graves of people who fell in May, civilian employees of the military and war victims who died of injuries, illnesses, violence and undersupply until 1946. There are also some graves of women and children here. The lower ranks and forced laborers without military rank were mostly buried in multiple graves of four to six people, while the higher ranks (mostly officers) were always buried in individual facilities. Their graves are in the front rows. Women were always buried separately from men. A total of around 500 to 600 people found their final resting place here. Archive research shows that considerably more people are likely to have been buried here than can be read on the gravestones. Apparently soldiers were reburied here in later years without putting their names on the gravestone that was already standing. The reasons for this are unknown.
In the central wing, on both sides of the Mittelweg, there are 14 rows of graves of soldiers and officers who died between 1946 and 1954 as well as a few women and children. Here the line between war graves and those who died during the occupation is fluid. In the front rows from the main path there are the individual graves of the officer ranks , occasionally also the sergeant ranks, in the back rows the double and multiple graves of the lower ranks or unknown deceased. These "unknowns" consist on the one hand of later recovered, unidentifiable war dead and anonymously buried soldiers from the occupation years. Here, too, the archives show that by no means all of the dead were named on the tombs.
In the east wing (at the fence to Marienallee) there are 72 graves spread over 14 rows, mostly of soldiers and military employees who died between 1948 and 1949. There are a few graves from 1945 - probably later reburial. Here, too, the division into higher and lower ranks persists. The background (origin, place of employment, cause of death) is known of a few dead.
There is also a west wing on the main complex with 133 tombs of young soldiers of simple ranks who died between 1955 and 1959. The average age of those buried here is 21 years, 85 percent of them are recruits ("Rjadowoj" = lowest military rank).
Finally, in the south-west wing there is a separate grove with 64 tombs of Soviet officers who died between 1945 and 1967, 61 of which date from 1954 to 1964.
In total, more than 1,600 people were buried in the main complex, almost all of them soldiers.
Tombs
The tombs of the simple ranks on the main complex are uniform in the form of a sandstone cube with a sandstone obelisk and an embossed Soviet star. The last names, initials and ranks of the deceased as well as (if known or released for publication) the year of birth and date of death were engraved on the cuboid in Cyrillic script. They can be found in all wings of the main complex in the back rows and exclusively in the west wing and once also shaped the north wing until it was redesigned in 1978. Sometimes portraits of the dead made of ceramic or enamel were attached, of which very few survive today are.
The tombs of the higher ranks consist of a sandstone stele with elaborate ornamentation in the form of crossed rifles and flags as well as a Soviet star. Some also have marble inscription plates on the front and ceramic portraits of the deceased. Name, rank and dates of life as well as, more rarely, last greetings and expressions of mourning from family members are engraved in Cyrillic script.
All of the tombstones used in the garrison cemetery before 1978 were made locally by the Dresden stonemason Ernst Burkhardt.
Monuments
The obelisk
From 1947 to 1949 the sculptor Friedrich Press created this monument on behalf of the city of Dresden. For Press, who actually primarily created church art, the memorials as a form of the art of the dead were a tiresome compromise between his actual subject and the cultural warfare mandate of the new socialist rulers. Many memorials in Soviet cemeteries in East Germany bear his signature. The Dresden obelisk was designed by the architect Emil Leibold, who was also responsible for the rebuilding of the Dresden theater after the war. Both creators have immortalized themselves with a lettering on the back left of the monument made of sandstone. Since its completion in 1949, it has been the central visual aspect of the cemetery. The design of the obelisk shows the typical symbols of Soviet victory iconography. In addition to the state coat of arms of the Soviet Union, there are reliefs of tank soldiers, a girl waving to the victorious troops and a Russian village, as well as an inscription in Russian with the wording:
- Eternal honor to the heroes who fell in the struggle for the freedom and independence of the Soviet homeland. 1941-1945. Events on the day of the end of the war on May 8, 1945 take place at the foot of the obelisk.
The standard bearer
Johannes Friedrich Rogge (1898-1983) designed this 3.50-meter-high bronze - sculpture in 1957 on behalf of the city of Dresden, which she made the Soviet garrison on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution to the present. It is located opposite the main entrance to the cemetery at the end of the main path and shows a worker with lowered eyes and rolled up shirt sleeves , who holds a lowered red flag . A German inscription next to it reads:
- Glory and thanks to the heroes of the Soviet Union who fell in the fight against fascism · We take up the flag they brought us · From now on we fight together with all progressive people for peace and friendship between peoples · The inhabitants of the city of Dresden November 1957 Im At the back of the sculpture is a sandstone wall that takes up the material of the tombs. The son of the Dresden Police President at the time, Stech, was the model for the work of art. Every year on November 7th, the Soviets held the military parade on the day of the October Revolution on the main path in front of the monument.
Controversy about the new memorial stone
In November 2014 the Soviet garrison cemetery received a new memorial stone. It was installed at the expense of the cemetery bearer on behalf of the War Cemetery Department of the Embassy of the Russian Federation and a second one was added in 2019. Both stones act as a pure monument, there is no grave underneath. The plates now bear the names of seven Red Army soldiers (as of 7/2019).
The first three names were put on the first plate in 2014: Captain Sergei Ilyich Vankov (1913 - April 25, 1945), soldier Alexander Ivanovich Minjuschin (1914 - April 26, 1945), Lieutenant Leontiy Ivanovich Vlasov (1919 - April 25, 1945). August 1945). The former two died in the fighting on the last days of the war near Bautzen and near Cottbus. Vlasov was killed on August 25, 1945 in a plane crash on the Großenhain airfield in which two fighter-bombers collided. The Russian Federation nevertheless suspects that all three were buried on a tombstone in the Soviet garrison cemetery in Dresden without being mentioned by name. There are no documents that conclusively confirm this, and the Russian embassy does not provide any information on request. The names of the two officers and the soldier do not appear in any of the burial lists in the cemetery. In the loss lists of their units, which can be viewed in the archives, it was noted that all three were buried in different places. The place names were apparently wrongly deciphered by the embassy. According to information from the Saxon real estate and construction management, it was assumed that the three must have been buried in Kötten in Saxony, in Lomnitz near Dresden and in Ottendorf-Okrilla near Dresden and later reburied in Dresden. In fact, however, there were references in the documents to burial sites on a garrison site in Köthen in Saxony-Anhalt (the stationing place Leontij Wlassows), on a civil cemetery in Brandenburg's Ottendorf near Cottbus (Wankow) and in the open field near the small town of Lomske north of Bautzen (Minjuschin) . It can therefore be assumed with a probability bordering on certainty that the three Red Army soldiers were not buried in the Soviet garrison cemetery in Dresden. There is currently no evidence for a later reburial to Dresden. In the case of Wlassow and Wankow in particular, the large Soviet site cemeteries in Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt would have been the much closer option for reburial. The stone was nevertheless erected at the request of the embassy. The costs amounted to 1500 euros for the construction as well as unknown follow-up costs for the continuous name engravings.
North wing
The north wing was built from 1949 as an extension to the main facility, mainly due to acute lack of space. It was fitted in terraces into the hillside of the upper Prießnitzgrund and ultimately extends into the Dresden Heath . It has a total size of about 0.4 hectares.
The transition to the north wing is behind the last rows of graves in the main complex at the level of the memorial columns for children and prisoners of war . Although almost half of the around 200 buried here are war dead according to the Graves Act, the civil row is officially part of the north wing or as part of the "civil part" and was therefore not a listed building until 2011. The first burials in the north wing took place in this area in 1950. Behind the civil row it goes down stairs to the various grave fields of the actual north wing. Stairways and grave field borders are made of sandstone .
The core area of the north wing is divided into two zones by a fence. In zone one on this side of the fence are the graves of soldiers who died between 1952 and 1955, almost exclusively of lower ranks, and in a few cases middle ranks. There are mainly recumbent tombs made of Löbejun quartz porphyry (rhyolite) with raised lettering with names and ranks in Cyrillic as well as dates of life and a Soviet star. The tombs are either square (smaller) or rectangular (larger). Almost 100 graves of young soldiers date from 1954 alone. Historians estimate that up to 3,000 Soviet soldiers lost their lives in peacetime in the GDR every year during the occupation.
On this side of the fence on level two, graves of Soviet soldiers who died between 1959 and 1973 extend to the edge of the heather. Here, too, the lower ranks and an average age of around 21 dominate. There is also another grove at the edge of the forest with 65 children's graves from 1960 to 1987 as well as around 50 graves of civilian military employees from the 1960s. A total of almost 685 people were buried in the north wing, around 400 of them soldiers and 285 civilians.
After reunification in 1990, the north wing, in contrast to the main complex, was not a listed building and was overgrown. This only changed in March 2011 at the endeavors of committed Dresden citizens who joined forces in February 2011 to form the Friends of the Soviet Garrison Cemetery in Dresden to fight for the preservation of the north wing.
Controversy over the future of the north wing
Neglect since 1996
After the handover of care responsibilities from the City of Dresden to the Free State of Saxony in 1996, the north wing was in a neglected condition for many years. The care that was originally provided by a married couple was discontinued by the Free State at the end of the 1990s. The responsible state company Sächsisches Immobilien- und Baumanagement (SIB) justified this with the legal situation and financial arguments. Since the north wing was not under monument protection like the war cemetery and, in the opinion of the Free State, the German Graves Act does not apply either, the Free State saw no reason to maintain it. Contrary to this assumption, there are 23 graves of a total of 100 war dead in the area of the civil row at the transition to the main complex. The repair work carried out on the north wing between 2002 and 2003 as part of the general renovation of the cemetery (1998–2007) fizzled out relatively quickly afterwards due to the lack of maintenance.
Because there was no stable fence for many years, especially in the area of the north wing, this part of the cemetery functioned as a "gateway" for wild boars. The consequences were severe devastation and damage from wild boars up to the erection of a game protection fence in 2013 - including at the main facility. On the north wing, the damage was not repaired for years. In many places gravestones were buried by wild boar swamps and completely overgrown with plants and moss. In many places grave monuments had grown into bushes and trees that had not been trimmed for years, so that they were no longer or only difficult to see and access. On the other hand, the degree of preservation of the new tomb substance erected in 1978/79 was and is extremely good.
Redesign plans from 2010
In the course of 2010, the SIB developed in coordination with the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. (VDK) and the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Leipzig plans to fundamentally redesign the north wing. This happened because years of efforts by the Free State of Saxony to cooperate on the issue of preserving Soviet post-war graves (there were no binding regulations for these, for example in the 2 + 4 treaties on German unity) with the Russian authorities were unsuccessful. The plans now envisaged the demolition of the above-ground grave complexes as well as the entire cemetery substance of the north wing. About 20 war graves in the area of the civil memorial series should also give way. Instead of the tombs, a small memorial area was provided at the level of the civil row at the transition to the main complex with three modern steles with the names of all the dead on them. The main driving force behind the project were cost reasons: the lying gravestones (some of which had been put in a lying position by the SIB eight years earlier) would require more complex lawn care, argued the authority. According to an internal estimate, their costs should be around 8,000 euros per year. As a result, the redesign should reduce these costs to 4,000 euros per year - with construction costs for the implementation of 250,000 euros.
Resistance of the Citizens - The Friends of the Soviet Garrison Cemetery
The plans met with rejection from culture enthusiasts and monument conservationists. They were and are of the opinion that the north wing, like the war cemetery, represents a historical, local, landscaping and cultural-historical asset and should therefore be preserved in its historical appearance, as it represents the presence and culture of another nation in Dresden during the the completed historical epoch of the Soviet occupation and the Cold War. The Soviet Garrison Cemetery Friends of the Soviet Union, founded in February 2011 and to which several citizens and members of the German-Russian Cultural Institute had come together, ran a storm against the plans. Attempts were made at various levels to stop the undertaking - much to the displeasure of the SIB, which had already suspended the funds in the state budget. The citizens turned on the monument protection authorities, wrote to Russian authorities, held vigils at the cemetery and carried out public relations work - also in Russia. In the course of 2012, active work was also carried out to revive an official, pluralistic and cosmopolitan commemoration for the city of Dresden on May 8th as the end of the war in Europe, in order to bring the cemetery back into the public eye. With success. For the first time since the fall of the Wall, official representatives from town and country returned to a commemorative event for the "Liberation Day". The fate of the north wing was always present.
In the course of the public pressure generated in this way, the SIB resumed maintenance work on the north wing, at least sporadically and primarily in the run-up to the celebrations on May 8, which were now expected to attract a lot of public traffic on the north wing.
According to its own account, the initiative never saw itself as an opponent, but rather as a partner of the SIB on the issue of preserving the north wing. Together with other civic initiatives and also with the nearby Army Officers' School, concepts had been drawn up on how to support the Free State in maintaining the north wing and thus help to save costs. Among other things, the Freundeskreis wanted to organize work assignments several times a year in order to carry out basic care measures on a voluntary basis.
2. Draft for remodeling
But there was also headwind from the Russian side. The complete demolition of all graves met with little enthusiasm in the newly established office for war graves care of the Russian embassy in Berlin. Behind closed doors, the responsible embassy secretary Wladimir Kukin, the SIB and selected representatives of the federal and Saxon regional associations of the German War Graves Commission negotiated an alternative plan in 2012. This still envisaged the demolition of the cemetery architecture, but at the request of the Russians replaced the planned central memorial area on the civil row with a total of 20 name steles, distributed over the grave fields of the north wing. With this variant, the construction costs rose to up to 350,000 euros. Citizens' participation in the planning for the north wing was still not planned. Instead, the work of the citizens' initiative was literally opposed. Organized and properly registered work assignments and events were not approved or canceled at the last minute.
Escalation in the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge
At the same time, however, bitter resistance to the restructuring plans arose in both the state and the Dresden municipal association of the Volksbund. Majority resolutions in both boards spoke out against the project. As a result, the SIB only negotiated with the then Saxon chairman of the board, Dieter Landgraf-Dietz, and the then federal chairman, Reinhard Führer - and through them, bypassing the democratic decision, got the Volksbund's approval for the plans.
Landgraf-Dietz's Saxon vice-deputy, the military historian Holger Hase (FDP), joined the Freundeskreis Soviet Garrison Cemetery in 2012 and from then on actively supported efforts to preserve the north wing. The dispute over the north wing led to considerable conflicts within the Volksbund. The cemetery dispute reached its climax in June 2013, when the federal board threw the "rebellious" rabbit out of the association. The Freundeskreis Soviet Garrison Cemetery then officially ended its cooperation with the Volksbund in December 2013, in whose Dresden city association the initiative had been integrated as a working group since January 2012 - due to "significant democratic deficits" within the Volksbund. A court ruling declared Hase's expulsion to be ineffective in April 2015, as the decision was not brought about in accordance with the statutes, specifically the board of the Saxon state association had not been heard before its chairman Landgraf-Dietz campaigned for Hase's expulsion on the federal board. Hase had sued against his exclusion and assumed that he was "politically motivated". An uncomfortable voice that openly addressed grievances within the Volksbund and generated majorities against the top management was simply to be switched off, said Hase.
MonumentFort! - The memory workshop Dresden eV
In April 2014, the Freundeskreis Soviet Garrison Cemetery gave itself a legal framework and went to the newly founded MonumentFort! The Remembrance Workshop Dresden eV. Holger Hase has been the chairman since then. The majority of the former Freundeskreis members seamlessly transferred to the association. This puts the focus on lobbying for historically and culturally relevant places in Dresden and the surrounding area. The commitment to the preservation of the Soviet garrison cemetery in Dresden, and especially the north wing, continues to be of great importance. The association continues to organize a commemorative event initiated by the Freundeskreis in 2011 on the north wing on the occasion of the Defenders of Homeland Day on February 23rd. In this way, a counterpoint to the hero cult, which is still widespread in large parts of the post-Soviet world, should be set and thought-provoking. On this day, especially those soldiers who were victims of totalitarian militarism in the Soviet Army during the Cold War in the Dresden area are remembered.
A cemetery tells
The Dresden journalist Jane Jannke, founding member of the Freundeskreis and a member of the DenkmalFort! Association until May 2014, set up a Facebook page in which the garrison cemetery appears as a first-person narrator due to the escalating conflict. The cemetery reports on the latest developments and tells stories about itself and its dead, not always factually, but rather pointedly. The site is still active.
Monument authorities reject plans
In March 2013, the upper and lower monuments authority also rejected the version of the redesign plans, which had been revised in coordination with the Russian side: The project could not be reconciled with aspects of monument protection, as large parts of the cemetery substance worth protecting would be destroyed in the process. The SIB then lodged an objection to the lower monument authority of the city of Dresden. The procedure has been running since July 2013 and, according to SIB, has now been suspended. A decision has not yet been made. Nevertheless, the rejection of the monument authorities is likely to have marked a turning point in the North Wing dispute, as it weakened the position of the SIB considerably. In addition, in September 2013 a whole alliance of several associations and personalities from the Dresden memorial landscape approached the then Minister of State for the Interior, Georg Unland (CDU), and the then Mayor Helma Orosz (CDU) with the request to initiate a dialogue to be held with the participation of the citizens on the subject of the north wing. At the same time, a petition was run in the Saxon state parliament, which a member of the Freundeskreis had submitted.
Round table March to July 2014
At the end of 2013, this pressure backdrop led the SIB to convene a round table as part of the "Commune in Dialogue" program of the State Center for Political Education, which it had prevented for years. From March to July 2014, SIB, Free State, the City of Dresden, Monument Protection, the Volksbund and representatives of several civic associations and initiatives sat around the table and explored possible options for the future of the north wing. In the course of the discussion rounds, which were generally perceived as objective and constructive, a massive rejection of the redesign plans emerged across the bourgeois camp. The monument protection also reiterated its concerns.
The memorialFort! During the dialogue, eV renewed the demand to return the entire Soviet garrison cemetery to the sponsorship of the City of Dresden and was supported in this by the other associations and initiatives. The main arguments for this were above all the existence of all the necessary offices for the maintenance of a cemetery as well as greater practical and citizen proximity of the city administration compared to the free state administration. The city of Dresden, on the other hand, sees a withdrawal of the sponsorship critically - mainly for cost reasons.
Vortex about sponsorship and status quo (summer 2015)
In July 2014, the talks were temporarily broken off without any results. The SIB announced a continuation "after the summer break", but this has not yet taken place. As a reason for this, the SIB stated in February 2015 that the question of sponsorship must first be clarified. According to its own information, the SIB now wants to hand over the cemetery to the city of Dresden. Since the city is apparently still refusing to do this, the once hot conflict turned into a smoldering process in 2014, which still (as of August 2015) has not found a final solution. Nonetheless, the likelihood that redesign plans will be implemented on the north wing in the short term is lower than ever at the moment. According to the city of Dresden, the maintenance of the north wing would no longer cost 8,000 euros per year, as estimated by the SIB, but 13,000 euros. Civic initiatives consider this to be far too high. To this day, neither the SIB nor the city of Dresden has commissioned an expert opinion on the measures actually required and the costs actually incurred for the maintenance of the north wing.
The SIB has suspended all maintenance activities on the north wing since May 2013 - with serious consequences. Only civic engagement through the Freundeskreis, its successor "DenkmalFort!" and individual initiatives have kept the north wing halfway in good shape since then. The DenkmalFort! -EV, together with the German-Russian Cultural Institute Dresden, continues to take care of the concerns of the cemetery and has so far organized two work assignments on the north wing in 2015. Jane Jannke continues to research the history of the cemetery and researches the fate of the people buried there. The knowledge gathered in this way is incorporated into cemetery tours several times a year.
Web links and sources
- dresdner-stadtteile.de: Cemetery history
- deutschefotothek.de: Photos 1
- Sozialistische-gedenkstaetten.de: Photos 2
- deutschefotothek.de: Photos 3
- Documentation Office Dresden, Foundation of Saxon Memorials: Graves in Saxony
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://sowjetischer-garnisonfriedhof-dresden.de/zahlen-fotos/
- ↑ https://www.dnn.de/Dresden/Lokales/Dresden-uebernnahm-die-Verresponsung-fuer-Garnisonfriedhof
- ↑ https://www.saechsische.de/stadt-uebernehmen-garnisionsfriedhof-5076587.html
- ↑ fdp-fraktion-dresden.de: Reopening ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Staatsbetrieb Sächsisches Immobilien- und Baumanagement: http://www.sib.sachsen.de
- ↑ Cf. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk , Stefan Wolle : Roter Stern über Deutschland. Soviet troops in the GDR. 2nd revised edition. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-584-3 , p. 132 ff.
Coordinates: 51 ° 4 ′ 42 ″ N , 13 ° 46 ′ 24 ″ E