The GDR shines most brightly on a barren field near Löbichau, not far from the A4 exit Ronneburg in East Thuringia.
Here, in the middle of a meadow, stands a monumental mural in the sky: heroically looking, naked muscle men on a kind of industrial spaceship. They drill, call, wave; a woman waves a red flag, another nurses her child. In its center hovers the model of an atomic nucleus.
"Peaceful use of atomic energy" is the name of the 192 square meter enamel work of art, created by Werner Petzold in 1974. Originally, the picture hung on a building gable of the "Wismut" mining company in Paitzdorf. For decades, Uranerz was mined here for the "Big Brother" Soviet Union, thousands of people died painfully.
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"East Places": concrete elephant, Kummerkasten and a holey Lenin1990 was the end of the "bismuth" Mining - the huge mural but survived the turn. It is one of around 500 GDR relics that journalist and photographer Andreas Metz has gathered in the recently published illustrated book "Ost Places: On the Disappearance and Recovery of the GDR".
"Where in the world is there a region that has changed so fundamentally in such a short time?" Asks the Eastern Europe expert. For years, Metz spent his free time cruising the so-called new federal states and shooting 15,000 pictures - of a cosmos that gradually falls apart when nobody cares. "It's a race against time," says the election Berliner Metz, 49. "East Places are gradually becoming lost places."
Lenin with leaves in the head
Some of the motifs are long since demolished, his neighborhood also changes constantly. The Kaufhalle in Winsstraße in Prenzlauer Berg? Just demolished. The gigantic neon cassette at Volkspark Friedrichshain, a GDR neon sign for Kombinat Stern-Radio? Dismounted. "If it hurts me that things disappear, how are the people who were born and raised here?" Metz asks.
Many of the GDR relics are prominent, which often - but not necessarily - protects them from demolition. Everyone knows the Berlin Alexanderplatz with its television tower, the world clock, the well-known "Nuttenbrosche" fountain of international friendship. The "Sunflower House" in Rostock-Lichtenhagen also gained notoriety: Images of the burning prefabricated block construction went around the world in 1992 when the right-wing mob attacked the asylum seekers housed there.
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Andreas Metz
East Places: The disappearance and recovery of the GDR
Publishing company:
New life
Pages:
208
Price:
EUR 19.99
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Other testimonies recorded by Metz in the picture are less well-known and modern slow-moving. The Lenin head with the battered nose, for example, which Metz found near Peetscher Höhe in Fürstenberg / Havel. The stone Despot ducks behind bushes, foliage fills his holey head. As a symbol of a failed state form, Lenin weathers as well as the many testimonies of the planned economy in the country.
"Silent cathedrals of work" Metz calls the factory ruins, trees grow from their roofs, weeds decompose the walls. "All the power of the Five-Year Plan!", It roars defiantly from the facade of a factory in Bad Lausick, Saxony. After the fall of the Wall, it was wound up like all the other state-owned enterprises - out of four million jobs, almost three million were lost within 20 months.
The illustrated book tells the story as well as GDR-specific art pearls. These include the numerous wall mosaics, which paid homage to the workers and peasants in dazzling colors. The so-called concrete blocks as fences or façade decorations - in waves or lozenges, sometimes brutalistic, sometimes filigree. Or the visionary concrete shell buildings of East German star engineer Ulrich Müther. According to Metz, 30 of these were demolished after the fall of communism, others are in desolate condition.
Journey to the center of the GDR
"I'm not saying that we have to get everything," says the journalist. But so much had already disappeared that one had to thoroughly discuss what else could be saved. Giving the GDR to the museum is not enough for him - especially as the focus is often too limited. "Stasi prisons and wall memorial sites only depict one side of the coin," says Metz. There was also the other one: with soft ice and vision bars, the bright red W50 fire engines, elephant slides on playgrounds.
Ostalgia is far from the native Hessen. Metz had first entered the GDR in 1987 on a school trip, and that against his will - the places for the desired Rome excursion were all already taken. What worries him is the desire to sensitize the West Germans in particular to what is left of the GDR in everyday life.
The smallest GDR relic in his photo collection is only two inches tall and lies in the middle of the woods near Bad Belzig on the ground. Right here, about 80 kilometers away from the Alexanderplatz, is the geographical center of the GDR - a small marking, embedded in concrete, reminiscent of a project from 1974.
At that time, geophysicists of the TU Dresden, where the navel of the GDR is located, had commissioned a team from the TV series "Outsider Front Runner" (with the beautiful subtitle "Customer Service for the Curious"). In April 1974, moderator Hans-Joachim Wolfram proudly announced at which point the center of the socialist state was located: "12 degrees 31 minutes in eastern longitude and 52 degrees 12 minutes northern latitude". And exactly in the field of a training area.
The GDR has long gone - her navel can still be admired. Even a refuge was built after the turn, so that the hiker can settle for a picnic in the rain. "Go, be curious, deal with the negative and the positive GDR heritage before much disappears!", Demands Andreas Metz. Even though, as in the case of the midpoint, sometimes it goes over hill and dale.
