Forest settlement Lehnitz-Nord
The Waldsiedlung Lehnitz-Nord is a listed group of settlements in Lehnitz , a district of Oranienburg in Brandenburg , north of Berlin.
Period of National Socialism 1938–1945
In the years of National Socialism, the Reich Air Force had a forest settlement with 20 single-family houses built for test pilots and officers of the Air Force in the Oranienburg Forest on an area of seven hectares between 1938 and 1943. The color of the individual houses, made up of red, brown and yellow clinker bricks, was adapted to the existing pine trees by the architect Klaus Heese .
Prisoners from the penal company of the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp were used to build this settlement . The clinker bricks for the construction of the houses were delivered from the SS clinker factory in Oranienburg , a sub-camp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Captain Karl Edmund Gartenfeld , Major Siegfried Kneymeyer and Captain Hans Götz as well as Colonel Theodor Rowehl lived in this residential park during the war .
In addition to their combat missions, these pilots performed various tasks at the test site for high-altitude flights at Oranienburg Airport.
Since the Air Force officers, predominantly knight's cross bearers , and their families were the users of these houses, this settlement was popularly called "Knight's Cross settlement".
The Lehnitz municipal administration approved the incorporation of this settlement area in 1943 on the condition that the intended fencing would be removed and that the paths would be accessible to the public.
Post-war years 1945–1955
After the liberation of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp by Polish and Soviet troops, the settlement was expropriated on May 16, 1945 by the new anti-fascist municipal council and partially made available to the victims of fascism (OdF). The appointed mayor of Lehnitz, Richard Müller, negotiated this in June 1945 with the Berlin chairman of the main committee OdF Ottomar Geschke and his secretary Karl Raddatz . Both were former political prisoners of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and members of the KPD . As a result, 16 houses were awarded to the OdF on July 1, 1945 under the name " Ernst Thälmann Foundation of the Lehnitz Community". This order of magnitude was thwarted by the Soviet military administration , which confiscated the entire settlement for its own purposes in June and left 6 houses to the OdF. In October 1945 the first 34 guests moved in, looked after by the director Dorothea Froebel on behalf of the Berlin magistrate. In mid-1947, 214 guests were counted. A total of thousands of former political prisoners from all parts of Germany visited the settlement in the post-war years. On the occasion of the 1st International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of National Socialism , delegations from France, Norway, Austria, Poland, Albania and Czechoslovakia stayed in the settlement. In 1950 the OdF home facility was closed. From now on the houses were available to the hospital and to the reception of displaced persons from the east, one house became a kindergarten for the next 30 years. In addition, at the beginning of the 1950s, after the houses were returned by the SMAD, the city of Berlin and the state government of Brandenburg made other residential buildings available to prominent scientists and artists, including the conductor Jürgen Hermann , the artistic director Hans Pitra , the writer Heiner Müller , the professor Marie Torhorst , the Professor Klaus Zweiling , the son of the architect Bruno Taut, Professor Heinrich Taut and the General Secretary of the VVN Karl Raddatz.
Friedrich Wolf 1948–1953
The writer Friedrich Wolf spent his twilight years in this settlement. After his death, his house was converted into the Friedrich Wolf Archive of the Academy of the Arts of the GDR . This house is very well preserved inside and out in its original condition and still completely contains the furniture commissioned by Friedrich Wolf, designed by the Dutch interior designer Ida Falkenberg-Liefrinck in 1948. On the occasion of his 100th birthday, a bust was placed in front of the house .
GDR 1956–1989
From 1956, the municipal administration began, in accordance with the new legal possibilities (sale of state- owned single-family houses), to sell some houses and to grant usage rights for the land.
At the beginning of the 1960s, the continuous house numbering 1–20 was abolished and the paths were given names such as Eichenweg, Kiefernweg, Waldring, Agnetenweg with corresponding house numbers.
In the course of construction hours , the residents and other citizens of the village paved the paths of the settlement.
The municipality made sure that no changes to the houses, outdoor facilities, fences, etc. were permitted so that the external appearance of the settlement was preserved.
In the early 1970s, a formal survey of the settlement area, which was previously considered a parcel, was carried out by dividing the 20 plots into two parcels.
After the end of the GDR 1990–2010
After the end of the GDR, the municipal administration pursued plans from 1990 to enable the construction of a further 26 to 30 houses between the 20 existing houses. A statute of February 28, 1991 adopted by the municipal administration, which came into being without the involvement of the residents and despite their contradictions, formally gave rise to the impression that the design and typical characteristics of the settlement should be preserved as part of a change ban, but left the In connection with a new development plan, the creation of a new statute that could enable individual building.
In this context, a citizens' initiative was formed in February 1991 that applied for monument protection for the entire settlement and campaigned for the preservation of the settlement in its typical design and original layout. Since 1996, the entire settlement has been protected by the “Statute for the Protection of the Monument Area of the Forest Settlement Lehnitz-Nord, former Ernst-Thälmann-Siedlung in Lehnitz”.
swell
The information in this article relates to sources from publications on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of Lehnitz in 1950, edited by W. Lehwort and Karl Raddatz and information from the historian Hans Biereigel (city historian Oranienburg, * 1933) and other citizens.
literature
- Susanne Willen: Architectural history report and creation of a monument conservation plan. Client: City of Oranienburg, City Planning Office, 2010.
- Norbert Rohde: Colonel Rowehl's flying eyes. Veltener Verlagsgesellschaft, Velten 2010, ISBN 978-3-9813649-3-4 , pp. 122-130.
Web links
- Susanne Willen, report on the forest settlement
- Datasheet of the Brandenburg State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and the State Archaeological Museum
- Experimental site for high-altitude flights in Oranienburg
Coordinates: 52 ° 45 ' N , 13 ° 16' E