Altengrabow military training area

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Altengrabow military training area

TrpÜbPlKdtr Altengrabow.jpg

Internal association badge
Lineup 1893
Country Flag of Germany.svg Germany
Armed forces armed forces
Organizational area Bundeswehr Logo Streitkraeftebasis with lettering.svg Force Base
Insinuation KdoTA.pngTerritorial Tasks Command of the Bundeswehr
Location Moan

The Altengrabow military training area is a military training area of over 9,000 hectares near Altengrabow in Fläming . It was created for the IV Corps of the Prussian Army ; Practice began in 1891. After the Second World War , the training area was occupied by Soviet / Russian troops in Germany from 1945 to 1994 . Since then, the area has been used by the Bundeswehr . Temporarily are also NATO - allies , especially troops from the Benelux -Staaten to guest. The military training area is mainly in Saxony-Anhalt , a smaller part in the east of the area is in Brandenburg .

geography

From a natural point of view, the military training area belongs almost entirely to the western Fläming plateau , a 421 km² main unit of the Fläming main unit group, which extends farthest to the west. Only the northern foothills of the square near Dörnitz belong to the Burg-Ziesarer Vorflaming and smaller peripheral areas on the eastern edge to the central Fläming , both landscapes also belong to the aforementioned main unit group of the Fläming. The highest elevations here are also the three highest in the district of Jerichower Land: Jerusalemberg ( 127  m above sea  level ), Müllerberg ( 123  m above sea  level ) and Platzberg ( 116  m above sea  level ).

The area borders on the Magdeburg Börde and is therefore also in the rain shadow of the Harz Mountains . This makes the area one of the driest in Germany.

The area is also known as the Gloine Valley.

history

Memorial site in memory of the POW camp STALAG XI-A at the approach to the military training area (2015)

In the autumn of 1891 the Berlin Guard Corps practiced in the Loburg , Schweinitz , Görzke and Steinberg area as far as Wüstenjerichow , Reesdorf , Tucheim , Paplitz and Ziesar . The exercise thus took place in large parts in what was then the district of Jerichow I and on the site of today's military training area. This happened at the same time as the highest military authority was looking for a cheap firing range. It was intended primarily for the IV Army Corps , whose general command was in Magdeburg . A little later, in the spring of 1893, a delegation from Berlin examined the area for its suitability as a practice area. In the same year, from July 25th to August 19th, the districts of Thümermark , Bomsdorf and Schweinitz were also fired for the first time with live ammunition as part of an exercise by Infantry Regiment No. 26. On March 23, 1894, the final decision was made for the construction and construction of the military training area. The negotiations on the purchase of towns and land had already been largely completed. With the first available funds amounting to one million Reichsmarks , the village of Gloine was bought up on May 10th of the same year and the residents who had previously lived there had to leave. On July 22nd the burger artillery fired again on the square, and in August the Altengrabow mill was bought.

Around 1895 it was first called Gloine shooting range and its current course limits were finally determined. The entire area now covered 48 km². Only a little later, under the leadership of the first commandant Major General Walther von Kalckstein , it was then called the Loburg military training area . The first start of regular shooting and practice operations took place in 1896. In July 1897, the first major exercise under the name “Siege War” was held on the exercise site. Departments of infantry , cavalry and heavy artillery took part, but an aeronautical department was also part of the training force. At the beginning of 1900, the former mill estate Altengrabow finally gave its name to the military training area.

During the First World War, several front-line combat divisions were housed on the military training area. New weapons, attack and defense methods were also tried out here. Outside the camp boundaries, close to Dörnitz, a prison camp was set up. Around 1200 prisoners were held here, including English, Scots, Irish, French, Belgians, Senegalese, Moroccans, Russians, Siberians, Caucasians, Armenians and Mongols.

With the end of the First World War, the prison camp was closed. The troops stationed in Altengrabow were demobilized after the peace agreement and the camp stood empty for a few months. With the expulsion of the Germans from the eastern provinces, the area became a refugee camp until 1921, before the Reichswehr repossessed it. The area was redesigned according to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty and used again as a training area. In 1933 a sports school for the Nazi storm department was set up on the site and in 1936 a training camp for the Hitler Youth in the Rosenkrug area followed. The training camp was not the only construction activity in 1936. The square no longer met the needs of the army and so the entire square was redesigned. On the one hand, shooting lanes for armored vehicles were laid out and, on the other hand, it also served as a training room for cavalry, horse artillery and pioneers. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, a labor camp was set up. These workers worked in the nearby munitions factory. In addition to the labor camp, the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag XI A was set up, which initially housed Polish prisoners.

The prison camp was liberated on April 13, 1945 by the 83rd US Infantry Division; the camp was then occupied by Soviet troops in May . Until August 1945, the accommodations on the site of the military training area were used as a collection and transit camp for Soviet prisoners of war before they could return to their homeland.

From August 1945, the Red Army officially took over the site and used it for target practice with projectiles and anti-tank guns. In 1946 the Altengrabow camp finally became a Soviet garrison for artillery, infantry and air defense. In 1959 a guard tank regiment and a tank training battalion were added to the Rosenkrug camp; In 1974 the 10th Guards Panzer Division of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army added to the garrison. As a result of the Cold War, the 36th Missile Brigade was also housed on the site in 1983. After the completion of German unity in 1990, the withdrawal of Soviet troops was ordered the following year. On April 9 and 19, 1991 soldiers of the Bundeswehr were shot at by Soviet guards. As members of an observation team, they had carried out military reconnaissance and approached the Soviet restricted area in the process. The Soviet soldiers then opened fire, and in the second incident on April 19, 1991, a major in the Bundeswehr was wounded. At the Altengrabow site there was a Soviet special weapons store that would have supplied the rocket troops of the 3rd Shock Army with nuclear resources. Presumably the last nuclear weapons were only withdrawn from Altengrabow in June 1991. In July 1994 the last Russian soldier left Altengrabow.

The Federal Minister of Defense decided in May 1994 that the Altengrabow military training area should be part of the Bundeswehr's departmental assets at the end of June. Extensive work began, such as the detection of contaminated sites and their removal, reconstruction measures, demolition and clearance work, but also reforestation in the context of nature and environmental protection. A total of 120 jobs were created by the end of 1995. From 1996 the practice area was available for shooting as well as for disaster control exercises. The first major civil protection exercise took place the following year. Around 250 members of the voluntary fire brigade, the German Red Cross , the German Life-Saving Society , emergency doctor teams and employees of the Office for Fire and Disaster Protection took part in this exercise. In 1999 the first tank shooting took place since it was taken over by the Bundeswehr. For this purpose, tanks of the Leopard 2 type were transported by rail to the military training area and unloaded on the newly built loading ramp. In 2000 there was an accident in which a soldier was killed by a dud. The soldier was deployed to extinguish the forest fire. In order to prevent such accidents in the future, special specialist companies started to dispose of ordnance in 2003 . The clearance work should be completed by the end of 2004. In just one week, 60 tons of highly explosive ammunition and ammunition scrap were unearthed. The military training areas Klietz , Lehnin and Altengrabow were combined in 2007 under the leadership of the military training area commandantur Klietz.

Since January 1, 2015, the Altengrabow military training area has been a military training area command center again. Together with the Jägerbrück, Klietz, Lehnin and Oberlausitz military training area commandos, it is subordinate to the OST military training area command center based in Klietz. With the increase in the number of asylum seekers, around 70% of the accommodation capacity of the military camp was converted into a reception center.

To this day, the space is used by different units of the Bundeswehr.

PFC contamination

A small ram drilling from May 2018 in the area of ​​use of the fire brigade showed that the amount of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) of 54.0 µg / L exceeds the limit of 0.4 µg / L for "Danger confirmed" by 135 times. Two further samples could be assigned to this category (not just PFOS, for all samples tested for PFC ). Five samples are suspected and two more do not meet the long-term minimum quality target. Only in two samples were no comparison values ​​exceeded.

literature

  • Stendal: The Alten-Grabow military training area, Jerichow I district . In: Pestalozziverein der Provinz Sachsen (Hrsg.): The Province of Saxony in words and pictures. With around 200 illustrations . Published by Julius Klinkhardt, Berlin 1900, ISBN 3-8289-3570-2 , p. 81-85 .
  • Richard Knöfel (ed.): The disappeared village of Gloine . Verlag Richard Knöfel, Altengrabow 1910 ( doernitz.beepworld.de [accessed on January 24, 2014]).
  • Walter Sens: Altengrabow deep in the sand ..! A history of the military training area. Verlag August Hopfer, Burg 1933.
  • Paul Kannmann: Das Stalag XI A Altengrabow 1939-1945. (= Scientific series of the Sachsen-Anhalt Memorials Foundation , Volume 2) Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle an der Saale 2015. ISBN 978-3-95462-545-1

Web links

Commons : Altengrabow military training area  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stendal: The Alten-Grabow military training area, Jerichow I district . 1900, p. 81 .
  2. ↑ Map services of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation ( information )
  3. ↑ a b c data sheet Altengrabow. (PDF; 344 kB) Chronicle. In: kommando.streitkraeftebasis.de. Bundeswehr, October 2016, pp. 2–4 , archived from the original on January 24, 2018 ; Retrieved January 19, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Dieter Hoffmann: The Magdeburg Division .: On the history of the 13th Infantry and 13th Panzer Division 1935 - 1945 . Ed .: Comradeship of the former Panzer Artillery Regiment 13 of the former 13th Panzer Division. Verlag Mittler ES + Sohn, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 2001, ISBN 978-3-8132-0746-0 , p. 32 ( Google Books [accessed January 24, 2014]).
  5. ^ Günter Wegner: Occupation of the German Armies 1815-1939 . tape 2 . Biblio Verlag, 1996, ISBN 978-3-7648-1779-4 , pp. 203 ( Google Books [accessed January 27, 2014]).
  6. ↑ Hartwig Lindner, Andreas Mangiras: . Wilhelm II rises in Loburg to - the window seat at the hotel costs 20 marks. In: The history of the Altengrabow firing and military training area began over 100 years ago. Retrieved January 27, 2014 .
  7. ^ Sascha Gunold: Shots in Altengrabow 1991. Soviet guards fire at Bundeswehr soldiers . In: Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr (Ed.): Military History. Journal for Historical Education: Edition 2/2017 . 2017, p. 14-17 .
  8. ↑ KVF 478: Area of ​​use of the fire brigade around building May 18 , 2018, accessed on June 10, 2019 .
  9. ↑ IHU geology and analysis: PFC analysis (perfluorocarbons). June 19, 2018, accessed on June 10, 2019 (The documents received as part of a UIG request funded by Wikimedia Germany may not be published. However, every person can access this data themselves at https://fragdenstaat.de/problem/ reports-and-measured-values-in-relation-to-pfc-contamination / inquiries )).
  10. ↑ a b c IHU Geologie und Analytik GmbH: Overview of the results of the PFC analysis (Appendix 4). Accessed on June 10, 2019 (The documents received as part of a UIG request funded by Wikimedia Germany may not be published. However, every person can access this data themselves at https://fragdenstaat.de/en/question/gutachten-und-messwerte -for-pfc-contamination / inquiries )).

Coordinates: 52 ° 9 '26.3 "  N , 12 ° 13' 17.4"  E