Forest workers memorial
The forest workers monument , now often Loggers monument called, is a monument near the town of Oberhof in the Thuringian Forest . The location chosen by the client is on Landesstraße L 3247, at the Rondell parking and rest area (with the obelisk to commemorate the road construction), on the Rennsteig .
history
The memorial was created in 1981 by the GDR sculptor Gerd Ullmann on behalf of the state and was dedicated “as a memorial to all construction workers for the removal of windbreak and bark beetle damage 1946–1949…”.
The designation "forest workers monument" or "forest workers monument" used today is incorrect in both cases: the majority of the auxiliary workers deployed to repair the storm damage were men recruited from the neighboring communities, including pensioners, women and young people, as well as those involved in the particularly dangerous removal of broken wood Soviet soldiers.
On June 13 and 14, 1946, the passage of a storm front in the area of southern Thuringia, but especially around Oberhof and Suhl, had thrown 1.6 million solid cubic meters of spruce in the steep elevations of the Rennsteig. At that time, the local forest administration had only a small number of forest workers, tractors and back horses in the Oberhof area, also due to the war. The extent of this natural disaster was recognized in a surrounding area that was still destroyed by the war. Forestry experts warned that this first natural disaster would be followed by a huge bark beetle plague due to the warm and dry summer of 1947 , so emergency measures had to be taken immediately . The Thuringian Parliament adopted on 11 September 1947, a special law for the provision of manpower and resources. Thousands of volunteers could be recruited for clean-up work and beetle control in the daily newspapers and through leaflets. It was necessary to clear 21,000 hectares, 16,000 hectares of which were mountain forest with steep slopes, to salvage the 4.7 million cubic meters of broken wood lying there and to use them commercially. Fighting bark beetles was the second focus of the work and cost 20 million marks. For the reforestation of the fallow land, seedlings had to be procured from all parts of the country. The forest administration was able to report the completion of the emergency work to the GDR government at the turn of the year 1949–1950. Further afforestation and maintenance of the forests could be managed by the responsible forest offices in the following years.
In 1981 the inauguration of the monument, prepared for propaganda, was intended to commemorate the events of 35 years ago in the sense of heroic deeds. The memorial was inaugurated on June 21, 1981 for what was then the “ Day of Cooperative Farmers and Workers in Socialist Agriculture and Forestry ”. In the summer of 2005, renovation work was carried out in a restoration workshop on the cultural monument, which had already deteriorated in its dignified appearance due to corrosion. An additional explanatory board was put up on this occasion.
description
The monument was placed in an exposed location on a busy main road. The visitor finds a kind of grandstand in front of a strip of spruce forest that was then planted. A young woman with a sapling in her outstretched hand and a Soviet soldier with a shouldered hoe were placed as full sculptures on a pedestal, symbolizing the assistants recruited at the time. The hardships and dangers of the work are represented by a relief plaque in the center of the monument in three image strips arranged one above the other. The upper plaque shows the lumberjacks in the dangerous removal of the storm damage. The middle panel was dedicated to the transport workers who removed the wood from the mountain slopes. The bottom panel shows the work of the planters. The grandstand also allows visitors to see the successes of this work - the new forest - up close and in the mountain panorama.
Web links
- Press release from the Thuringian Ministry of Agriculture, Forests, Environment and Nature Conservation : Forest workers' monument on the Rondell near Oberhof renovated , November 16, 2005. Accessed on October 21, 2012
Individual evidence
- ↑ www.kunst-am-wege.de
- ↑ a b c Wolfgang Zimmermann: Thuringian Forest . Little nature guide. Ed .: Museums of the City of Gotha. 1990, ISSN 0138-1857 , pp. 50-51 .
- ↑ Handbook of German Art Monuments by Georg Dehio, Volume 16, Page 924, Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2003
- ↑ AFZ Der Wald, 23/2005: Forest workers monument near Oberhof renovated p. 1277
Coordinates: 50 ° 41 ′ 42.7 " N , 10 ° 43 ′ 9.8" E