Stalin city

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Granted the name Stalinstadt on May 7, 1953
Eisenhüttenkombinat Ost

Stalinstadt was the residential town of the newly established Eisenhüttenkombinat Ost (EKO) . It was built in the summer of 1950 when the iron and steel works were built . On February 1, 1953, the residential town was detached as an independent urban district from the Fürstenberg district .

The original plan was to name the “first socialist city on German soil” on March 14, 1953, on the 70th anniversary of Karl Marx's death, after the “greatest son of the German people”. The death of Josef Stalin on March 5, 1953, shortly before the planned naming, changed the situation. Therefore, on May 7, 1953, the residential town was named after his battle name "Stalinstadt". Instead, on May 10, 1953, Chemnitz was given the name Karl-Marx-Stadt.

The population increased from 2,400 inhabitants (1952) to 15,150 (1955).

In the course of the de-Stalinization , the name was deleted by the merger of Stalinstadt, Fürstenberg (Oder) and Schönfließ on November 13, 1961 Eisenhüttenstadt was founded.

Planning and development

After the Second World War , there was no significant steel production in the Soviet occupation zone , as the pre-war German locations were almost entirely in the western occupation zones. Originally there were plans to build a new steelworks on the Baltic Sea and operate it with iron ore imported from Sweden. After a conversation between Walter Ulbricht and Josef Stalin in Moscow, these plans were discarded in order to avoid dependence on a western country. Ulbricht then enforced the location near Fürstenberg (Oder) in a meeting with industry experts, because the relatively long distance to bases of the US armed forces in the FRG allowed a longer advance warning period for air strikes during the beginning of the Cold War . The official reason was that it would be a convenient location to operate with iron ore from Krivoy Rog and Polish hard coal from Silesia , which could be transported by ship across the Oder.

In the opinion of the SED, the high number of displaced people who lived there and were mostly unemployed and that there was no industry at all spoke in favor of Fürstenberg as a location . Ulbricht wanted a city "that was not contaminated with old working traditions".

The technology for the work was sent from the Soviet Union. These were largely plans that had been developed by American consultants in the 1930s for the Magnitogorsk steel combine in the Urals. They were therefore plans of “capitalist” origin, which in 1950 were technically out of date.

The urban architecture was political from the start. For the planners of socialist realism , planning a new city was an important experiment. There was especially close cooperation with architects in the newly planned workers' towns Nowa Huta (Stalinogród) in Poland and Sztálinváros in Hungary. Various values ​​of Stalinist culture came together in the planning: the cult of heavy industry, the cult of the shock worker, youth organizations and the aesthetics of socialist realism. With a final effort to raise the standard of living and to create “new people”, so many communists believed, one could legitimize the regime of the state parties.

From 1950, “ The 16 principles of urban development ” also applied to Stalinstadt with its residential buildings known as workers' palaces .

The vague specifications were of little practical help for the architects and planners involved. In the beginning they built straight, streamlined buildings in the tradition of the Bauhaus style because they had mastered this and the style had been considered non-conformist and left-wing before the Second World War. Walter Ulbricht visited the first finished apartments at the beginning of 1952 and criticized them as too small and plain. As a result, new plans were submitted several times and then rejected. Thereupon Kurt Walter Leucht was appointed chief architect, who began to enlarge the office for urban planning from 40 to 650 employees. As a goal he formulated that the city and the buildings "should be an expression of the growing wealth of the working class". In the following construction phase, monumental buildings with high arches and flanking columns were erected, which were supposed to be reminiscent of the classicist German tradition. Stalinstadt was planned around the factory, which could be seen from the end of the main streets. It was in keeping with the zeitgeist of the time that there was no church there until 1981. For this, Leucht designed a town hall with a tower top.

Both internally and externally, the city should promise a high standard of living. Most of the workers initially believed this propaganda, although they still lived in primitive barracks. Expectations were increased by the authorities and politicians. After Ulbricht's visit, the rooms were built higher and he demanded that building materials of above-average quality be used. Otto Grotewohl also visited some apartments in 1952 and then asked for factory-made furniture instead of the “primitive” furnishings that he had found. Only those who had proven to be worthy were able to enjoy these apartments. Since 80 percent of the apartments were owned by the ironworks combine, they were soon part of the remuneration, especially for "deserved shock workers ".

In the beginning it proved difficult to supply the city with everyday goods. After visiting the city on August 16, 1952, Minister of Commerce Kurt Gregor wrote to the local government that he had received reports of a very poor supply of fruit, vegetables and other goods, and that the shopping street that had been promised months earlier had not yet been completed. In response, the city administration organized “shopping fairs” and provided 740 bicycles, 5,000 buckets, 2,400 pairs of shoes and 10,000 meters of fabric for bed linen.

Another problem was spending time with the workers. Artists like Karl Gass , Karl Mundstock , Oskar Nerlinger u. a. lived and worked in Stalinstadt in order to process the success of socialism artistically and often had to find out that the workers were not satisfied with their works. The change in human behavior towards a more “cultural” life planned by the socialist leadership was difficult to implement.

Stalinstadt developed into a divided city. Those who got one of the new apartments were usually genuinely enthusiastic about the living conditions. Most of the workers, many of whom were young and without families and a third of whom consisted of displaced persons from former German territories, continued to live in barracks, often ten in shared rooms. Her main pastime was going to bars and drinking and fighting.

Major problems arose during the construction and operation of the iron and steel works. The plant, which is designed for 360 tons of pig iron , only had an output of 205 tons two months after it was first put into operation with constant repairs and adjustments. As long as the GDR existed, steel production processes had to be carried out in the USSR because the company did not contain a steel mill . This was only finally completed after reunification . One of the reasons was that in 1954, instead of the planned 110 million GDR marks, only 34 million could be invested in the plant.

Due to the inadequate production of the plant, the lack of supplies and the lack of living space for the workers, a meeting of the party leaders took place in Stalinstadt in 1952. Fritz Selbmann , Minister for Heavy Machinery and Plant Construction, was fined as the identified main culprit and a commission of experts was set up. The State Security also investigated and, at the suggestion of Soviet advisors, the responsible Minister Wilhelm Zaisser also suspected Selbmann as the culprit. At the time, there were indications of impending show trials against Selbmann and senior engineers at the plant. This was prevented by Soviet engineers who, during a review, praised the design of the blast furnaces and found the wrong mixture ratio of coal and ore to be the cause of the low productivity, which was attributed to the “lack of need” of those involved.

After the death of Stalin in December 1954 Nikita Khrushchev started a campaign for the "industrialization of construction". He called for standardized apartments made of prefabricated elements and reinforced concrete. At the same time, the monumental buildings of Socialist Realism were rejected by him. Such buildings would not promote the comfort of the residents, but only lead to difficult use and high costs. After the German translation of the speech was available to the Central Committee of the SED in February 1955 , all plans were also changed for Stalinstadt. The planned monumental town hall was never built and apartments were only built as prefabricated buildings , as in the entire GDR .

Because of the original propaganda as a model city, Stalinstadt remained of symbolic importance in the consciousness of the GDR population and politics even after the rather discreet renaming to Eisenhüttenstadt in 1961. Not least after reunification, when the then head of the EKO, Karl Döring , initially had a seat on the administrative board of the Treuhandanstalt .

In other Eastern Bloc countries too, cities were named after Stalin, the German equivalent of which was "Stalinstadt" or simply "Stalin". Several times there were places with ironworks, i.e. steel production.

meaning

Even when it was founded, the place had a special position as the “first socialist city” in the GDR, both in terms of news and propaganda as well as in everyday matters. The numerous reports in the media right from the start about the "founding of the city out of nowhere" and the artistic representations contributed to the creation of legends. Even after it was renamed Eisenhüttenstadt, Stalinstadt was the “built utopia of the early GDR years”. The socialist society should develop here without any remaining baggage from bygone times. "The new person should arise, the city and the factory show themselves as the laboratory of a future society, culture and way of life". In addition to the monumental buildings of the initial phase, there were also symbols here, such as B. the red stars on public and factory buildings, which glow at night when the plan is fulfilled.

What was unique about Stalinstadt was the complete lack of private ownership of land, houses and churches . It was also the only city in which there were no private craft or service companies. Even in neighboring Fürstenberg these were subject to stronger restrictions than in other parts of the GDR. The original ban on allotments could not be upheld, which was justified by the fact that they were bourgeois and kept the population away from the community. The residents had simply resorted to self-help outside the city gates and laid out gardens. At the beginning of the 1960s, Ulbricht declared allotment gardens to be a proletarian leisure activity.

The city was a "special supply area" in the GDR and the ironworks combine was a "priority operation", so that both were given preferential supplies. At the beginning of the 1960s, the supply of everyday items in Stalinstadt was considerably better than in comparable cities in the GDR.

Contemporary propaganda images

Pictures with original lettering
  • Bundesarchiv Bild 183-26012-0001, Eisenhüttenstadt, Stadtansicht.jpg
 1954 : Eisenhüttenstadt, city view

At the same time as the "J. W. Stalin" ironworks combine, the first socialist city of the German Democratic Republic, Stalinstadt, was built in the immediate vicinity of the plant. Working people who spend their vacation here look just as proud and admiration of what has been achieved here, as do the people who have found a new home here. A cafe restaurant will be opened shortly, part of which is already in operation, which can compete with the restaurants "Warsaw" and "Budapest" in Berlin. Shown here: vacationers look at Stalinstadt from a nearby hill.

  • Bundesarchiv Bild 183-18947-0009, Eisenhüttenstadt, blocks of flats.jpg
 1953 : Stalinstadt, the first socialist city in Germany. By decision of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the residential town of the Eisenhüttenkombinat Ost near Fürstenberg will be named "Stalinstadt" in honor and to the glory of J. W. Stalin. Shown here: view of a street on the northern edge of the city. These apartment blocks were built in 1951.
  • Bundesarchiv Bild 183-33308-0005, youth hour visit of Stalinstadt.jpg
 1955 : In preparation for the Youth Dedication Berlin participants of youth hours see the first socialist town in the GDR, Stalinstadt 48 (four eight) students of 15 and 16 primary schools in Berlin-Bohnsdorf , who have registered to participate in the Jugendweihe visited, at 5:10 .1955 as part of the youth hours Stalinstadt, the first socialist city of the GDR. The sponsoring company of these schools, the EAW "JW Stalin" , had made this trip possible for the students and made the factory bus available for it. Shown here: The youth class participants of the Bohnsdorf schools in Stalinstadt: The director of the large Friedrich Wolf Theater in Stalinstadt, colleague Haas, reports to the students: The cinema was equipped with the latest technology. Wide screen and 3D sound are a matter of course for the people of Stalin Town. After 11 months of construction, the beautiful theater was completed on March 6, 1955.
  • Bundesarchiv Bild 183-87126-0002, Eisenhüttenstadt, 12th anniversary of the founding of the GDR, Parade.jpg
 1961 : Republic Day in Eisenhüttenstadt

The march of members of the riot police and combat groups (our picture) to the official gallery in Stalinstadt on October 7, 1961, became a declaration of the solidarity of the population with the armed forces of our state .

Personalities who were born in Stalinstadt

  • Frank Schaffer (* 1958), track and field athlete and Olympic medalist

Stalin city in art and culture

The feature film The Silent Classroom (Germany, 2018) is set in Stalinstadt at the time of the Hungarian uprising in 1956.

See also

literature

  • Günter Fromm: The planning, construction and development of Stalinstadt (Eisenhüttenstadt) in the years 1950 to 1955 . Diploma thesis at the Humboldt University of Berlin, 1981.
  • Jochen Czerny : Stalinstadt - Germany's first socialist city. In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement. 38th year March 1996. 3K-Verlag Köschling, Berlin 1996, pp. 31-43.
  • Dagmar Semmelmann: On the June events of 1953 in Stalinstadt / Fürstenberg. In: Yearbook for research on the history of the labor movement . Issue II / 2004.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anne Applebaum : The iron curtain. Siedler-Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-8275-0030-4 , p. 430.
  2. ↑ Anne Applebaum: The iron curtain. P. 418/419.
  3. ↑ a b Anne Applebaum: The iron curtain. P. 419.
  4. ↑ Anne Applebaum: The iron curtain. P. 419/420.
  5. ↑ Anne Applebaum: The iron curtain. P. 421/422.
  6. ↑ Anne Applebaum: The iron curtain. Page 423.
  7. ↑ Anne Applebaum: The iron curtain. Page 424.
  8. ↑ Anne Applebaum: The iron curtain. Page 425-430.
  9. ↑ a b Anne Applebaum: The iron curtain. Page 434.
  10. ↑ a b Anne Applebaum: The iron curtain. Page 439.
  11. ↑ Anne Applebaum: The iron curtain. Page 435/436.
  12. ↑ Anne Applebaum: The iron curtain. Page 438.
  13. ↑ Michael Jürgs : Die Treuhänder: How heroes and scoundrels sell the GDR , Paul List Verlag, 1997, page 188.
  14. ^ German Institute for Urban Studies: Future of City and Region: Volume III: Dimensions of urban identity. Contributions to the research network “City 2030”. Springer-Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-531-15148-7 , page 63.
  15. ^ German Institute for Urban Studies: Future of City and Region: Volume III. Pages 66-68.
  16. ^ German Institute for Urban Studies: Future of City and Region: Volume III. Page 68.
  17. ↑ see Café Moscow, nationality restaurants

Coordinates: 52 ° 8 ′ 44 ″  N , 14 ° 37 ′ 52 ″  E