Rubble woman

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As Trümmerfrauen women are called, which after the Second World War many German and Austrian helped cities to free them from the rubble of the bombed building. In addition to professional rubble clearers, prisoners of war and forced labor former National Socialists, you were a group of actors in the rubble clearance campaigns of the post-war period . The more recent research speaks of a targeted glorification of the rubble women who have nothing to do with reality. So many photos (some professionally) were staged.

In Germany

In contrast to what is usually spread with the myth of rubble women , it was both women and men who did the rubble work. In the beginning, they mostly didn't do it voluntarily. The emphasis on women’s work is nevertheless justified because, as a result of the war that has ended, a large number of men died in combat or were taken prisoner of war and were therefore not available for the labor market.

Berlin Rubble Women (ca.1947)

1945 and 1946

Berlin rubble women July 1945. Recording of the Special Film Project 186

Statistically, women from rubble were between 15 and 50 years old because the Allied occupying powers had issued orders that all women between 15 and 50 years of age had to report to this work. The Control Council Act No. 32 of July 10, 1946 partially repealed earlier labor protection provisions for women. According to population statistics from 1945, there were around 7 million more women than men in Germany.

During the war, around four million apartments in Germany had been destroyed by Allied air raids and numerous factories were in ruins. According to estimates, there were more than 400 million cubic meters of rubble in Germany after the end of the war .

Companies that received the orders to clear rubble in German cities listed the rubble women in the work book as construction workers , rubble workers , or clearing-out workers . The main work consisted of demolishing the remaining parts of the building with hand winches or pickaxes; heavier technology was rarely used. After the demolition, parts of the wall had to be shredded so that the bricks could be separated without damaging them so that they could be reused for repairs or new buildings. The bricks were passed from hand to hand from the ruins to the roadside in a chain of people. There they were placed on wooden trestles or other solid supports and the mortar residues were removed with a mason's hammer or cleaning hammer. Then the cleaned stones were piled up. The specifications were: 16 pieces in one area (4 × 4), 12 layers on top of each other and finally a middle pile of 8 pieces, so that stacks of 200 stones were created, the stability of which was guaranteed, and the billing of the service was clearly structured. Half bricks, beams, steel girders, stoves, sinks, toilets, pipes and other items were also used again. Rubble was removed by the women in wheelbarrows, horse-drawn carts, field railways (the rubble railways ), trucks or work trams. The brick fragments that were no longer usable were placed on large storage areas, where the mountains of rubble then grew, or they were crushed in brick mills (which were also called rubble processing plants, crusher plants, rubble recycling plants), which were often built near the ruins. The resulting flour or granulate was used to fill in bomb craters, to build roads, to build waterways or to make new bricks.

In addition to the working rubble woman, there were also volunteers who supported the rubble women in their work. They worked in groups of 10 to 20 people called columns , whatever the weather .

Debris removal

Rubble women in Berlin in 1946

Of 16 million apartments in Germany, around 25 percent were completely destroyed and roughly the same number were badly damaged. Half of all school buildings were unusable and around 40 percent of the traffic facilities were unusable.

In 1951, the National Reconstruction Agency was founded in the GDR to coordinate the work of the rubble women.

In the Federal Republic of Germany the clearing work was continued as emergency work.

In several German cities such as Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Leipzig, Magdeburg and Nuremberg, separate railway lines were built to clear rubble. These "rubble railways" transported hundreds of millions of cubic meters of war rubble from the centers to the outskirts so that they could be buried or piled up there. Debris women often had the task of loading these railways.

Debris women from 1945

Glorification

The tenor in more recent analyzes is that the rubble women were emphasized in the discourse of the second half of the 20th century, especially in the old Federal Republic (FRG), in order to divert attention from the negatively connoted National Socialist past. The research assistant at the Eastern European Institute of the Free University of Berlin , Anna-Sophia Pappai, writes: “The early FRG came to terms with the past with the aim of defending against guilt or projecting guilt onto a few primarily responsible. The repression of one's own guilt was made easier by concentrating on the 'heroic' performance of the ('innocent') 'rubble women'. "

Other research work of the 21st century see the emphasis on the work performed by the rubble women in propaganda that originated in the GDR .

Recognition of accomplishments or problems

Rubble women in Leipzig , 1949

The achievements of the rubble women, especially in East Germany, were honored in ceremonies, with the erection of monuments, the organization of exhibitions and the presentation of awards.

In the GDR , rubble women who had worked on a voluntary basis and who could prove several hundred “build-up shifts” were awarded the title of activist from the very beginning .

50 Pf. Piece (front and back)

One of the first appreciations was the design of the picture of the new 50-pfennig pieces in the Federal Republic when the German mark was introduced in 1949. It showed an oak planter , with whom both the forest workers active in reforestation and the rubble women should be remembered.

In a speech to the Bundestag on September 30, 1949, in which she urged massive aid for Berlin , Louise Schroeder demanded comprehensive recognition of these achievements:

“It was our women who with their bare hands freed the streets of the mortal danger and cleared up the rubble. […] And as a woman I have to say that here we have a downright duty of honor, a duty of honor to the women who have stood on the street with their white hair for the purpose of clearing the rubble and who are now suddenly unemployed because we no longer have them can pay."

On May 2, 1952, Theodor Heuss , Federal President of the Federal Republic, awarded 32 rubble women and 17 demolition workers with the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon .

In 1965, 20 years after the end of the war, East Berlin newspaper editors and associations such as the Nationale Front , the DFD and the FDJ published a call for rubble women to report. Around 1000 people followed this request and were able to present their photos, experiences and even objects to the public. The project organizers finally organized a state celebration for these activists in the congress hall on Alexanderplatz , at which the Lord Mayor Friedrich Ebert gave the speech. The motto of the celebration was A place of honor in the heart of Berlin . Around 100 businesses had made donations in kind and in cash, which were drawn to the guests of honor in a raffle during the event.

In 1986, the former Trümmerfrau Ruth Silvia Niendorf committed suicide in Berlin (West) suicide because they could not pay with their low pension of 700 marks a rent of 76 marks. The Graue Panther senior protection association, which existed from 1989 to 2008 , then established July 9th as a day of remembrance for the rubble women . Since 1987, living rubble workers have been meeting their relatives at Hermannplatz in Berlin and moving from there to the rubble women monument in the Hasenheide, where a flower arrangement is deposited.

Rubble women in German cities

The following important information is missing from this article or section:
partial information on the extent of the destruction This is only marginally part of the lemma. 44pinguine ☕ 09:23, Apr. 14, 2017 (CEST)
Sometimes only the retrospective appraisal is briefly described, there is often a lack of facts and figures as to whether and what the rubble women actually did and e.g. B. how many there were, how long the cleanup took. - House1630 ( discussion ) 21:17, Feb. 11, 2015 (CET)
Help Wikipedia by researching and pasting it .

Aachen

Memorial stone at the Katschhof on the back of the Aachen town hall

After the Second World War, around 65 percent of Aachen's living space was destroyed.

Memories of the rubble woman Elisabeth Stock (83) were published in a weekly newspaper on October 4, 2006, of which the following excerpts are reproduced:

“[…] It was mostly women who shoveled their way through the mountains of rubble in Aachen's completely destroyed center; For a soup from the Americans, stones were knocked and dragged all day long, even the pickaxe was part of our equipment, [...] probably also for this reason a plaque was placed on the back of the town hall for the Aachen rubble women [...] "

Berlin

Monument Trümmerfrau in Hasenheide Park , Berlin; by Katharina Szelinski-Singer
Rubble women monument in the district of Berlin-Weißensee
Memorial by Fritz Cremer in Berlin-Mitte

In the four sectors of Berlin around ten percent of the entire building stock was irreparably destroyed. In the inner city districts of Mitte , Kreuzberg , Friedrichshain , Prenzlauer Berg , Tiergarten and Wedding it was up to 30 percent. In total, only a quarter of all apartments remained undamaged. The use of rubble women was recognized with the following measures, especially the gradual erection of monuments:

  • In 1946 the Allied Command for the whole of Berlin issued a new series of stamps, the bear stamps. Here the graphic artists Alfred Goldhammer and Heinz Schwalbe designed four motifs with symbols of reconstruction such as bear with brick, bear with shovel, bear with beam and a young oak in front of the ruins of Belle-Alliance-Platz . This was to expressly honor the many nameless workers who were active in clearing the rubble.
  • On October 13, 1950, Friedrich Ebert , Lord Mayor of Berlin (East), handed over the first newly built apartment on what was then Stalinallee in one of the Zeilbauten ("Wohnzelle Friedrichshain") that had been planned by Hans Scharoun to a rubble woman for her tireless efforts .
  • The district mayor of Wedding , Erika Heß , suggested the establishment of a club for rubble women, which was invited to the town hall for coffee and cake once a year, the members of which received small support for official matters, and trips together were organized.
  • In 1952, in Volkspark Humboldthain , Wedding district, thanks for the emergency workers were engraved on the back of the memorial stone for Alexander von Humboldt.
  • On the advice of Bertolt Brecht and the architect Hermann Henselmann , the sculptor Gottfried Kohl made some sandstone figures in 1952, which were attached to houses number 24 and 131 in the new building on Stalinallee , since 1960 Karl-Marx-Allee . One figure represents a woman in ruins (quote from Brecht).
  • Around 1952, a small rubble women monument created by the sculptor Gertrud Claas was erected in the Pankow district in Ossietzkystraße. In 1990, after being dismantled in the 1970s, the memorial was put back on the brick base that was still there.
  • In 1952 the sculptor Katharina Szelinski-Singer received the order from the Berlin Senate to design a rubble women monument , which was unveiled on April 30, 1955 in the Hasenheide park .
  • For the Wedding district, the sculptor Gerhard Schultze-Seehof made a multi-colored, 12-meter-high rubble stele from old bricks, which was inaugurated on June 20, 1954 to commemorate the building work of the rubble women.
  • When the removal of the rubble from the former barracks in the Karree Rathenower, Krupp-, Lehrter- and Seydlitzstraße in the Tiergarten district was completed in 1955 and a new park (today's Fritz-Schloß-Park ) was created, a large piece of limestone was found during the clearance work and on which the sculptor Alfred Frenkel had created a relief entitled “Memorial for the Emergency Workers” was unveiled at the park entrance.
  • In 1958, two bronze statues by the sculptor Fritz Cremer were erected in front of Berlin's Red City Hall : the assembly assistant and the assembly assistant . These statues represent the many nameless evacuation and construction workers in East Berlin .
  • Since 1968 there has been a bronze sculpture in the Park am Weißen See in the district of Pankow, district of Weißensee (corner of Albertinenstrasse and Amalienstraße) depicting a young woman as a symbol of the rubble women; the sculptor was Eberhard Bachmann .
  • In 1969 a bronze sculpture was erected in the Treptow district (Johannisthal district) on Sterndamm to honor the rubble women. The sculpture comes from the sculptor Gerhard Thieme .
  • After a three-capped mountain had arisen from rubble and debris deposits in the Volkspark Prenzlauer Berg, a bronze frieze created by the sculptor Birgit Horota was attached to the entrance to the park in Oderbruchstrasse in 1975 . A section of it also pays tribute to the work of the rubble women with the themes of shoveling, knocking stones, and stacking stones.
  • The DEFA documentary Martha was devoted to the fate of a woman in ruins in 1978.

After the fall of the Wall , the Berlin employment office financed an ABM project for two years , which dealt with the compilation of the activities of the rubble women and the rubble railway.

Bremen

Around 65,000 apartments in Bremen were destroyed by the war , which corresponds to around 62 percent of the stock.

Under the motto Mother's Day - once different , the Bremen Peace Forum organized a two-hour meeting in May 2005, at which, in addition to varied events with music, discussions, etc., there was also a public meeting between a rubble woman and a schoolgirl. A book published in 2002 provides comprehensive information about the situation in this city after 1945 ( new beginning on ruins ).

Chemnitz

Rubble woman at the glockenspiel in Chemnitz

After the Allied air raid on March 5, 1945, the inner city of Chemnitz was 95 percent destroyed, the city area a total of two thirds.

In 2001, on the initiative of the association founded in 1998, figural glockenspiel in the old town hall tower of Chemnitz e. V. with the support of numerous donors put a carillon with a total of 25 bells into operation. Of the six figures, each about one meter tall, that are brought out three times a day, one is trained as a rubble woman. She holds a brick in her left hand, the cleaning hammer in her right hand and supports the stone on her knee. The figures were created by the sculptor Johannes (Hannes) Schulze (Plauen). The figures were cast by the Rudolf Perner bell foundry in Karlsruhe and Passau.

Dresden

Rubble Women Monument in Dresden

The Dresden city ​​center was almost completely destroyed by the air raids on Dresden by April 1945 on an area of ​​15 km². Of the 222,000 apartments in Dresden, 90,000 were completely destroyed at the end of the Second World War , only 21% remained undamaged. In what would later become the city ​​district of Mitte , there were only 800 undestroyed apartments. Initial estimates were around 25 million m³ of rubble, after the first residential areas had been cleared as planned, the total amount of rubble was assumed to be 12 million m³ in 1949. Of this, around 5 million m³ were rubble that was removed with rubble tracks.

During the second half of 1945 the first task was to make slightly damaged apartments winter-proof again and, above all, to make the main streets passable again. Scheduled clearing of rubble did not begin until 1946. From this point on, monthly reports were drawn up on the status of the rubble clearance, which were maintained until the mid-1950s. From this z. For example, for May 1946, 492 men (skilled workers, workers, unskilled workers ) and 512 women (so-called “construction workers ”) were deployed on three “construction sites” . For the end of 1946 the number is given as 690 men and 580 women. Taking into account that from 1946 onwards the majority of the existing factories and large parts of the infrastructure were dismantled and transported to the Soviet Union as reparations , the removal of debris was not sufficient.

From 1949 onwards, the Arbeitsskraft campaign began to deploy thousands of people - women and men - for clearing the rubble. With today's terms, this would be classified as a job creation measure. The number was limited by the loading and transport capacities and the areas released for clearing rubble. In addition, there were voluntary work by the population on the weekends. For 1950, therefore, 3500 additional workers already employed and required are given, with women among them being slightly overweight in percentage terms. From 1952 onwards, the voluntary clearing of rubble was carried out as part of the National Reconstruction Works (NAW).

However, women were more present in the cityscape, as they were mainly assigned salvage and (brick) plastering work as "unskilled workers" (= "rubble women", analogous to the construction workers as "rubble men"). The latter mainly took place in public streets. The main motive for employment for the women was not so much their pay, which for some years was 0.96 - 1.10 DM per hour, but rather their classification as "heavy workers" (category II) or in a few cases even "hard workers" (category I der Food cards ), which helped many single women feed their families.

Even if Lerm found in his investigation that the claim that women did the main job of clearing Dresden belonged to the realm of legend, their contribution cannot be underestimated. The clearing of rubble was only considered complete in 1957 - in this respect, Dresden was the last major German city for which this was the case (the last ruin of the war only disappeared from downtown Dresden in 2006/2008 with the reconstruction of the Kurländer Palais ): As a result, women were exceptionally long as "Trümmerfrauen" present in the Dresden public.

As early as 1952, the sculptor Walter Reinhold created a memorial for the rubble women from cast iron, for which Erika Hohlfeld was the model. The monument was erected on a base made of rubble brickwork in a green area in front of the New Town Hall on Town Hall Square. In 1967 the original had to be replaced by a bronze cast, after 1991 it was restored.

Frankfurt am Main

In Frankfurt am Main , around 25 percent of the residential buildings were completely destroyed and another 23,000 buildings were not habitable. In total, around 70 percent of the buildings, including almost the entire old and inner city, were destroyed. In 2005, a consortium of Frankfurt Citizens 'Associations, under the leading management of the Oberrad Citizens' Association, suggested the creation and installation of a rubble women monument that was to be placed in the Fahrgasse. The proposal was submitted to the city's magistrate, although there were neither concrete ideas about the appearance of the monument nor clarifications about the financing. The question about the progress of this idea in 2008 was answered by City Councilor Felix Semmelroth (CDU) as follows: A rubble woman with a headscarf and pickaxe was out of date, especially since women and men from the camp loyal to the regime were also employed in the war and post-war period .

Frankfurt (Oder)

As a result of the war, the inner city of Frankfurt (Oder) was 93 percent destroyed. A life-size sculpture of a rubble woman by the sculptor Edmund Neutert is inaugurated on May 1, 1955 at the Lichtspieltheater der Jugend.

Memorial for the rubble women of Halberstadt "In honor of our rubble women 08.04.2005"

Halberstadt

In 2003, Lord Mayor Hans-Georg Busch invited all women from Halberstadt who had done construction work after 1945 to a thank-you event in the town hall. Finally - at the instigation and through extensive economic support of the Roland initiative - the erection of a memorial for the rubble women was decided. The artist Egbert Broerken from Welver created a memorial stone that shows a bombed-out view of Halberstadt and was inaugurated on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the destruction in World War II - in April 2005 - in front of the west facade of the town hall on the Holzmarkt.

Hamburg

Of the almost 564,000 apartments in Hamburg before the war began, only around 20 percent remained undamaged. A book by Ilse Graßmann, Ausgebombt - Bernhard Thalacker Verlag, 1993, provides information about the survivors after the war and how the rubble was cleared away.

Hamm

The traces of the destruction in Hamm were still visible in the cityscape in the 1950s. A memorial to the Hammer rubble women has been standing in front of the old bunker at the fork of Widumstrasse and Marker Allee for several years.

Hanover

A women's forum organized a festival of 2000 women, at which the rubble woman Emma Fouguet (1910–1992) from Hanover was mentioned with honor .

Heilbronn

The artist Sabina Grzimek made a rubble women monument for the Heilbronn city ​​administration , which was erected in 2003.

Jülich

On May 14, 2005, the WDR broadcast a documentary about the rubble women in Jülich . After the city administration had called on women over the age of 18 to “scoop up”, these evacuation teams were assigned. The rubble women received proof of the work and with this a right to purchase ration cards.

kassel

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the state of Hesse , the Hessian Ministry of Culture called on schoolchildren to participate in a film and internet competition entitled "Tears, rubble, thirst for action".

Cologne

A quarter of Cologne's war rubble was cleared away by rubble women (and men). Because the work was not always voluntary, there have been problems in the city administration since 2004 to obtain approval for the construction of a monument on the heap of rubble in the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Park at the Aachener Weiher .
The women were already honored with music in 1994: the group Paveier performed with the title Trümmerfrau , composed by Ernst Stoklosa .

Koblenz

Rubble women in Koblenz

More than 90 percent of the inner city area of Koblenz was destroyed at the end of the war, and around 60 percent of the other residential areas. Here, too, women had to help clear up the debris.

Leipzig

Rubble woman in Leipzig , 1949

The work of the Leipzig rubble women, especially in the years 1945 to 1949, is presented in detail in an extensive book . A memorial plaque made of Meissen porcelain with the motif of construction worker, rubble woman and architect in front of the Leipzig Opera House , issued in 1961, pays tribute to the tenth anniversary of the National Development Organization (NAW).

Ludwigshafen am Rhein

The Lord Mayor of Ludwigshafen Eva Lohse honored a number of deserving personalities of the city on December 5, 2002 by handing out the citizenship medal . Among them was the 87-year-old rubble woman Ida Frey.

Magdeburg

In 1983 the Magdeburg city ​​administration commemorated the rubble women: The Magdeburg sculptor Heinrich Apel had made two small bronze sculptures: mother with child and rubble woman . These figures were placed in front of the portal of the parish and council church of St. Johannis .

In 1992, participants in a history project by the Office for Equal Opportunities began researching the life of the former rubble women in Magdeburg. Over 72 interviews with contemporary witnesses were made up to 1994, some texts have been published in the brochure It was sometimes difficult ... - Magdeburg rubble women report from their lives . Since then, the Office for Gender Equality has organized a celebration for former rubble women in the old town hall once a year.

Mannheim

Rubble women memorial stone in Mannheim

It is thanks to the private initiative of the artists Maritta Kaltenborn and Waltraud Suckow as well as numerous donors that a memorial stone for the rubble women was erected on Mannheim's Schillerplatz in 1995 .

Munich

The book How We Did It All. Single women tell about their lives after 1945 by Sibylle Meyer and Eva Schulze shows individual fates from this city . The Bavarian State Center for Political Education has been offering the magazine entitled Trümmerfrauen in Munich for several years . In an article in the online edition of Stern magazine , the then 80-year-old Johanna Amberger, who lived in poverty in old age, is presented.

When at the beginning of the 21st century (2003, 2007) the city administration discussed the erection of a monument for the rubble women, the majority refused. With reference to archive materials, the following reason was given: “The rubble women named in the application did not exist in Munich . As a rule, men who were able to work were used. It is particularly important to note that the removal of rubble was imposed on former National Socialists as an atonement directly after the war. ”On the occasion of a later application, the number of National Socialists called in for the removal of rubble - under threat of withdrawal of food stamps - was put at 1,330 men and 102 women. This procedure was also common in other cities, as can be seen, for example, from contemporary witness reports in Berlin. In addition, professional disposal companies were used from 1948, which effectively removed large amounts of rubble.

In May 2013, the Association of Thanks and Commemoration of the Building Generation, especially the Rubble Women, erected a memorial stone made of roughly hewn granite on a site made available by the Free State of Bavaria on Alfons-Goppel-Straße and Marstallplatz. It bears the inscription: “Thanks and appreciation to the rubble women of the building generation. Munich after 1945. Knowing about responsibility ”. In December 2013, the green members of the state parliament, Katharina Schulze and Sepp Dürr , covered the memorial in front of the camera with a brown sack that carried the slogan: “A memorial to the right people. Not the old Nazis ”. But the symbolic covering was only a short-term action. The Munich CSU boss and Minister Ludwig Spaenle condemned the action: "Tasteless and clumsy"; the text addition “Knowing about responsibility” was added “expressly” at his request. At the inauguration, he also expressly stated the German guilt for the Shoah . The Greens in the city are still calling for the monument to be removed.

Muenster

In the Münster administrative district , more than a fifth of all apartments were destroyed by the war. Professor Kirchhof from the diocese of Münster cites the case of a rubble woman who raised seven children as a single person and received a pension that was much too low at 273 marks, so that social assistance had to be paid for which the children were brought in.

Potsdam

Honorary grave of Ellen Paeth in Potsdam

At the end of the war, the historic city center of Potsdam was one big field of rubble. As in other cities, the removal of the worst damage was started, a lot of debris was disposed of in the city ​​canal and led to its disappearance. The women and men who remained in the city were used to work. At the beginning of the 21st century, the city administration advised on honoring the rubble women either with a plaque, a memorial stele or a memorial, for which an artist competition was even intended, for which around 10,000 euros would have to be made available. So it came about that residents gave the advice to use the sculpture of the construction worker , a bronze figure by the Berlin sculptor Eberhard Bachmann , erected in the residential area of ​​Burgstrasse at the end of the 1950s , as a memorial for the Potsdam rubble women of the post-war period. (A secondary cast is in Weissensee Park in Berlin.) In 2011, it was decided to examine whether that figure into the closer environment of the Old Market, about the former Blücherplatz behind the Old Town Hall , or in the Humboldt Street between Palace Hotel City Palace implemented can be. The closing date for this action was planned for April 14, 2012, the 67th anniversary of the destruction of Potsdam. The plan was not implemented until summer 2012. This prompted the Potsdam city councilor Karin Schröter ( Die Linke ) to make an official request to the mayor : "What suggestions has the city administration derived from the results of the examination for how to deal with the commemoration of the rubble women?"

Instead, the city's cultural committee advocates the erection of a stele in the inner city area to publicly honor the work of the rubble women. However, no further activities have become known from this idea either (as of May 2016).

At the Potsdam city cemetery, a grave of honor commemorates the rubble woman Ellen Paeth, who was active in the city (see picture).

Prüm

The city of Prüm was almost completely destroyed in the Second World War by air raids, artillery shelling and finally the 1949 explosion of an underground ammunition store . The erection of a women's memorial on Duppborn in an ensemble with a fountain was decided by the community in 2006, which was also intended to remind of the work of the rubble women. The executed fountain, however, shows the sculpture of a woman who is depicted as a farm worker / market woman.

Stralsund

In the report by the stateless person Cornelia Riedel from Russia it is shown that she had worked as a rubble woman in Stralsund in 1945/1946 .

Strasburg (Uckermark)

Rubble women monument in Strasburg

In 1959 the Strasburg city ​​fathers unveiled a statue created by the sculptor Herbert Köhnke for the numerous and nameless women in ruins in this small town.

Weimar

In the spring of 1989 an exhibition by the artist Hans Lück took place in the historic ACC house in Weimar , which presented the subject "Trümmerfrauen".

Wiesbaden

An application made in 2004 for a rubble women memorial was rejected by the Wiesbaden city ​​administration because it provided for a link with the identification of authentic locations of bombing attacks.

Under the motto Hessen - A strong story; 60 encounters with our country since 1945 , an exhibition with pictures, films and sound documents was shown in the Wiesbaden museum in 2005, which also duly presented the work of the rubble women.

Wurzburg

The Lore in Würzburg (2017)

A bomb attack on the city on March 16, 1945 destroyed around 89 percent of the inner city living space, almost all public buildings, most of the cultural monuments and 35 churches. After the end of the war, the women shoveled, carted and hammered, only of their own free will, from December 18, 1945 in the ordered general labor service, from March 8, 1946 in "honorary service"; A rubble railway with 30 km of track network was also used. A total of around 2.7 million cubic meters of rubble were transported to the banks of the Main on the Alter Kranen with lorries and removed there on Main barges. House by house, street by street were finally rebuilt.

A memorial plaque made of red sandstone on the flood protection wall between “Altes Kranen” and Kranenkai reminds of the rubble women and rubble men who made the reconstruction of Würzburg possible again. A cart with Keuper stones stood on the wall of the old crane as a reminder. However, it was not an original car from the rubble railway, but a former mining lore from Thuringia.

In 2009, the TV station BR 2 broadcast a documentary The Myth of the Rubble Women as part of the Bavarian State Exhibition Reconstruction and Economic Miracle in Würzburg .

At the end of 2011, it was reported in the Main-Post that the current lorry will be exchanged for an authentic one used in the removal of rubble. The initiative came from the former CSU City Councilor Rudolf Metzler. After an intensive search, an original cart was found in the Haas stone works in Winterhausen . This has been restored and should take the place of the old cart at the Alter Kranen by March 16, 2012 at the latest.

Zerbst

The city of Zerbst , which was first conquered by the Americans, had a badly damaged center; later the documents will indicate around 372,000 m³ of war rubble. First with bulldozers and then - under the Soviet occupation - with a rubble train and the use of rubble women, the city leaders had the rubble to body.

In Austria

In 2005, the Austrian federal government decided to pay a single premium of 300 euros to every Trümmerfrau who was still alive and was born before 1931 if she had given birth to at least one child by 1951 and was considered to be needy. In 2007, 44,000 Austrian women were paid this amount.

According to recent research, the transfigured image of the "rubble women" constructed in the GDR was adopted in Austria from the 1960s. While the “rubble women” did not appear in the press photos published in Austria in the immediate post-war period, they were finally integrated into the image repertoire here as well, in order to act as a symbol for a new beginning and as a creator of identity.

Vienna

In Vienna, a large part of the rubble on the streets of the inner city (around 20 percent of the entire building stock was destroyed) was professionally removed by men with machines, while women were mainly forced to cope with everyday life alone due to the absence of men due to the war . But they too were used for the stigmatized hard work of clearing rubble, but above all former judicially convicted National Socialists. In the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna , photographic works can be seen showing women in everyday life in 1945/1946 working in the destroyed city center. In the explanations it says: You "shoved ... by hand ... bricks". In a book from 1994 stories about rubble women are published.

In 2006 the sound, light and media installation Woman of the Ruins created a memorial to the memories of the "rubble woman" Dora. It was designed by the Viennese artists Mia Zabelka and Zahra Mani and the Serbian radio maker Arsenije Jovanović . The artist duo consider rubble women to be pioneers of feminism .

In September 2018, a monument for rubble women created by the sculptor Magnus Angermeier was unveiled on private property on the Mölker Bastei in the 1st district. The monument was erected against the will of the Vienna city government, which rejected it for historical reasons.

Graz

With reference to the construction of a private monument for “rubble women” in Vienna made possible with the support of the turquoise-blue federal government , the FPÖ demanded the erection of such a monument for Graz in 2018. A local scientific and historical assessment on this controversial topic is open.

In other countries

The centers had to be made habitable again in all of the countries and cities destroyed by the fighting in World War II. Here the situation of the existing workforce was hardly different than in Germany or Austria. If the men were in the minority through participation in the war, through forced labor or through imprisonment, more women than men were used. However, it is not known whether there was talk of rubble women in this context.

See also

literature

see also rubble literature

  • Trude Unruh (Ed.): Trümmerfrauen - Biographies of a generation betrayed. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 1987, ISBN 3-88474-420-8 .
  • Michael Lenk, Ralf Hauptvogel: The Dresden rubble railways . Historic Feldbahn Dresden e. V. (Ed.), Werkbahnreport, Special Issue B, August 1999. Without ISBN.
  • Angela M. Arnold (Ed.): Trümmerbahn and Trümmerfrauen. OMNIS Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-933175-57-7 .
  • Angela M. Arnold, Gabriele von Griesheim: rubble, railways and districts. Berlin 1945–1955. Self-published, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-00-009839-9 .
  • Heinrich Böll: Commitment to rubble literature. Essay. 1952 in: Essayist writings and speeches 1952–1963. Edited by Bernd Balzer. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1979, p. 31, ISBN 3-462-01312-2 .
  • Ursula Oehme (Ed.): Everyday Life in Ruins - Leipzig 1945–1949. (Documents, letters, diary entries and photographs from an eventful time), DZA Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, 1995, ISBN 3-9804226-3-1 .
  • Agnes-Marie Grisebach : A woman year 13 - novel of involuntary emancipation. Quell-Verlag, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-7918-1701-9 .
  • Agnes-Marie Grisebach: A woman in the west. Quell, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-7918-1704-3 .
  • Antonia Meiners : We have rebuilt: Telling women of the hour zero , Elisabeth Sandmann Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-938045-54-1 .
  • Peter Zumpf : Rubble dreamers. Wiener Neustadt 1946. merbod-Verlag, Wiener Neustadt 1996, ISBN 3-900844-43-7 .
  • Leonie Treber: The myth of rubble women. On the removal of rubble in the war and post-war period and the emergence of a German place of remembrance Klartext, Essen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8375-1178-9 (also dissertation at the University of Duisburg-Essen , 2013).
  • Maria Pohn-Weidinger: Heroized Victims: Processing and Action Structures of “Trümmerfrauen” in Vienna Springer-Verlag, 2nd edition 2013 ISBN 978-3-658-04220-2 . ( limited preview )
  • Birte Griesse: rubble - women - politics. A local historical study of the political participation of women after the Second World War (1945–1948) in the city of Cologne . In: Yearbook of the Cologne History Association . tape 76 , no. 1 , April 2015, ISSN  0341-9320 , p. 135-184 , doi : 10.7788 / jbkgv.2005.76.1.135 .
  • Marita Krauss : rubble women. Visual construct and reality , in: Gerhard Paul : The Century of Images. Picture atlas . Volume 1. 1900 to 1949 . Göttingen: V&R, 2009, pp. 738-745.

Web links

Commons : Trümmerfrau  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Trümmerfrau  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Trümmerfrau  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Jakob Wetzel: Debate about a memorial - The fairy tale of the Munich rubble women. In: sueddeutsche.de . December 9, 2013, accessed April 6, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Anna-Sophia Pappai: " Trümmerfrauen " and "Trümmermänner". Symbolic and real reconstruction work in Dresden and Warsaw after 1945 , in: Claudia Kraft (ed.): Gender relations in East Central Europe after the Second World War , Munich 2008 (= Bad Wiesseer Tagungen des Collegium Carolinum), pp. 43 and 55.
  3. ^ Robert Propst: Rubble women after the Second World War - An arranged German myth In: sueddeutsche.de . December 3, 2014, accessed April 19, 2020.
  4. ↑ Christian Frey: Hosts of rubble women were a myth. In: welt.de . November 20, 2014, accessed June 27, 2020.
  5. ↑ Andrea Lueg: Rubble Women - Others cleared away the war rubble. In: deutschlandfunk.de . January 8, 2015, accessed May 22, 2020.
  6. ↑ How socialist campaigns shaped the rubble women myth in: Süddeutsche Zeitung .
  7. ↑ Florian Huber: The ghosts are waiting behind the doors, The German family drama of the post-war period , p. 140.
  8. ↑ Anna-Sophia Pappai. In: oei.fu-berlin.de. Retrieved May 17, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Anna-Sophia Pappai: " Trümmerfrauen " and "Trümmermänner". Symbolic and real reconstruction work in Dresden and Warsaw after 1945 , in: Claudia Kraft (Ed.): Gender relations in East Central Europe after the Second World War , Munich 2008 (= Bad Wiesseer Tagungen des Collegium Carolinum), p. 55.
  10. ^ Post-war propaganda : Transfiguration of the rubble women came from GDR , in www.studium.at, accessed on October 5, 2018.
  11. ↑ Herbert Wehner (Ed.): Honorable Member, you have the floor! Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn 1980, ISBN 3-87831-329-2 , pp. 34–42.
  12. ↑ a b Ekkehard Schwerk: Women and rubble . In: Der Tagesspiegel . May 4, 2002, p. 7 ( online [accessed May 30, 2013]).
  13. ↑ Risen from the rubble and ruins . In: Berliner Zeitung , special supplement from May 1, 1965.
  14. ^ Frieder Reimold: Propaganda after the death of the rubble woman . In: Bonner General-Anzeiger . July 14, 1987, p. 3 .
  15. ↑ Christine Weber-Herfort: Gray panthers criticize: Old-age poverty is female . In: taz . July 9, 1990, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 5 .
  16. ↑ Aachen Week: Knocked stone by stone for a soup
  17. ^ Johannes Strempel: Berlin. End in ruins. In: GEO Epoche No. 44, Hamburg 2010, pp. 146–162, here p. 162.
  18. ↑ Friedrichshain living cell on Sharoun-gesellschaft.de; accessed on October 3, 2018.
  19. ↑ see literature
  20. ↑ Mother's Day - different. Press release. In: bremerfriedensforum.de. May 2, 2005, accessed January 8, 2018 .
  21. ^ Theodor Spitta, Ursula Büttner, Angelika Voss-Louis: New beginning on rubble. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1992, ISBN 3-486-55938-9 .
  22. ^ Olaf Groehler : Bomb war against Germany. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1990
  23. ↑ Figural glockenspiel celebrates its 10th birthday ( memento of the original from May 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , October 2012 on chemnitz.de ; accessed on May 10, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.chemnitz.de
  24. ↑ a b Matthias Lerm : Dresden between destruction and a new beginning . In: Dresdner Hefte , No. 110, 2/2012, pp. 19–29, the reference on p. 26.
  25. ↑ Lenk, main bird. P. 6.7.
  26. ↑ Lenk, Hauptvogel, pp. 14, 17.
  27. ↑ Lenk, Hauptvogel, p. 22.
  28. ↑ Lenk, Hauptvogel, pp. 22, 26.
  29. ↑ Gernot Gottwals: A monument for the rubble women. (Not available online.) In: fnp.de . March 26, 2013, archived from the original on June 27, 2018 ; accessed on January 9, 2020 .
  30. ↑ Unforgettable: The achievement of the rubble women. (No longer available online.) In: halberstadt.de. 2003, archived from the original on September 27, 2007 ; accessed on January 16, 2020 .
  31. ↑ Andreas Hilger: Reading project recalls the destruction of the city . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , April 8, 2005, accessed on August 26, 2011.
  32. ^ Photo of a rubble woman in Bockum-Hövel / Hamm, 1948
  33. ↑ List of memorial stones that remember women from Hanover ; accessed on May 10, 2016.
  34. ^ Exhibition of Grzimek works 2010 organized by the Berlin gallery Am Gendarmenmarkt ; Retrieved August 25, 2010
  35. ↑ Trümmerfrauen in Jülich ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  36. ↑ 60 proud years (PDF)
  37. ↑ Birte Griesse: rubble - women - politics . A local historical study of the political participation of women after the Second World War (1945–1948) in the city of Cologne. In: Yearbook of the Cologne History Association . tape 76 , no. 1 , April 2015, ISSN  0341-9320 , p. 135-184 , doi : 10.7788 / jbkgv.2005.76.1.135 .
  38. ↑ Clemens Schminke: A whole mountain full of work . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger August 20, 2004
  39. ^ Karl Heinz Kirchner: New Beginning: "Everyday Life" in post-war Germany. Dossier. In: bpb.de . April 27, 2005, accessed June 16, 2020.
  40. ↑ Speech by Mayor Dr. Eva Lohse at the ceremony for the award of the Maximilianstaler and the citizenship medal on Thursday, December 5, 2002, 6 p.m., Stadtraatssaal ( Memento from February 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  41. ^ Sibylle Meyer, Eva Schulze: How we did it all. Single women report on their life after 1945 , C. H. Beck Verlag, Munich, 1984.
  42. ↑ The fate of retirees: some are fine, others are not - Johanna Amberger. (No longer available online.) In: stern.de. Archived from the original on November 12, 2007 ; accessed on November 12, 2018 .
  43. ^ Question on democracy and civil rights, letter from a contemporary witness to Florian Ritter, member of the Bavarian State Parliament, dated October 18, 2009, and the corresponding answer dated October 23, 2009
  44. ↑ Angela M. Arnold, Gabriele von Griesheim: Trümmer, Bahnen und Bezirke, ... p. 114 (contemporary witness Gisela W.)
  45. ^ Felix Müller: Rubble Women Monument veiled . merkur.de, accessed on September 25, 2017
  46. ↑ Trümmerfrauen -Fall in Münster on bistummuenster.de
  47. ↑ Volker Oelschläger: MEMORIAL: Construction worker becomes rubble woman. Examination for the relocation of Eberhard Bachmann's bronze sculpture from Burgstrasse to the Alter Markt ( Memento from March 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), In: Märkische Allgemeine , 2011.
  48. ↑ Question 12_0603 (47th SVV): Remembrance of the rubble women . ( Memento of February 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved November 28, 2012.
  49. ↑ Stele welcomed for rubble women . In: Potsdam Latest News , November 27, 2010.
  50. ↑ Pictures from the state capital Potsdam - kat99 - Ehrengrab Potsdamer Trümmerfrau; the photo was part of a report about the diamond wedding of the couple in question. ( Memento from October 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: Potsdamer Latest News .
  51. ↑ Landesschau Rheinland-Pfalz on SWR television: Prüm. A portrait of Wolfgang Bartels' site accessed on October 27, 2017.
  52. ↑ The spirit of Olympus lives in the framework. […] The ACC Gallery, for example, has existed since March 1989. Its first exhibition was a multimedia presentation: “Trümmerfrauen” - with documents, photos, reports from experiences. ( Memento from April 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  53. ↑ Brief information on the exhibition Hessen - A Strong Story , accessed on April 10, 2015.
  54. ↑ They rebuilt Würzburg ( Memento from May 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), on: www.wuerzburgerleben.de; accessed on May 9, 2016.
  55. ↑ Memorial plaques on the flood protection wall by the old crane and by the cart
  56. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: The myth of the rubble women from May 10, 2009. ) BR-2 Documentation Brief description of the documentation; Retrieved July 28, 2009@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.ardmediathek.de
  57. ↑ An original for the rubble women monument. (No longer available online.) In: mainpost.de. Archived from the original on May 16, 2011 ; accessed on October 28, 2018 .
  58. ↑ The Zerbst Rubble Railway. In: alt-zerbst.de . Retrieved May 12, 2020.
  59. ↑ a b Trümmerfrauen: Transfiguration of the "heroines of the reconstruction" came from the GDR . derstandard.at, November 4, 2017
  60. ↑ Rubble Women. Historical pictures. In: austria-forum.org . Retrieved May 25, 2020.
  61. ^ Franz Severin Berger, Christiane Holler: Trümmerfrauen. Everyday life between hamsters and hope. Vienna 1994.
  62. ↑ "Woman of the Ruins" . Der Standard , May 24, 2006
  63. ↑ Olga Kronsteiner: FPÖ pays homage to the myth of rubble woman . derstandard.at, October 1, 2018.
  64. ↑ The Styrian blues would like to have a “bathing girl” . Der Standard , October 4, 2018; accessed on October 4, 2018.
  65. ↑ The first literary attempts of our generation after 1945 have been called rubble literature, they have tried to dismiss it. We did not defend ourselves against this designation because it rightly consisted of : Past Present (1930–1965) ( MS Word )
  66. ↑ Review on hsozkult
  67. ^ Regina Stötzel: media hit rubble woman. How the female construction workers became a 'cheated generation'. In: Neues Deutschland , July 4, 2015, p. 25.