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Kurt Leucht, a Berlin-based architect, drew the original master plan for Stalinstadt (Eisenhüttenstadt’s original name until 1961) in 1950-51. His design followed the GDR’s Sechzehn Grundsätze des Städtebaus, a 1950 piece of legislation which mandated an official design style. As such, the city follows a vaguely radial design scheme. Its facades draw on broad references from both classical architecture and German history and mythology, albeit from sources deemed appropriate to the cultivation of a socialist identity. Leucht, Kurt W. Die Erste New Stadt in der DDR. Berlin: VEB Verlag Technik, 1957.
Stalinstadt was initially conceived as housing for workers at the nearby ironworks Eisenhüttenkombinat Ost “J.W. Stalin,” itself the first large-scale industrial plant to be constructed in the GDR. Instrumental in the construction of both the plant and the subsequent city were youth labor brigades like the Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth) brigade pictured here in 1950. Staatsmuseum Eisenhüttenstadt.
The completed EKO Stahl plant, pictured around 1955. Much of the workforce on both the EKO construction site and eventual ironworks were individuals who had been displaced during the War, who had come to the countryside eastern Brandenburg from destroyed cities like Cottbus, Dresden, and Berlin. Known as “Umsiedler,” or resettlers, these individuals played a central role in both the ideological and literal construction of the new GDR. Colditz, Heinz and Martin Lücke. Stalinstadt: Neues Leben - Neue Menschen. Berlin: Kongress Verlag, 1958.
Leucht’s original master plan included four Wohnkomplexe or “living complexes,” collections of apartment buildings interspersed with civic buildings such as primary schools, commerce centers, municipal offices, and spaces for recreation. In the early 2000s the city and Brandenburg state government financed the renovation of these four original complexes. The facade above belongs to Wohnkomplex II, pictured here in July 2019. Photo by the author.
While Eisenhüttenstadt’s original developments constitute an ambitious program for socialist daily life, the 1960s saw the SED party embrace new architectural styles and building technologies which had previously been dismissed as “Western” or “capitalist.” In this archival photo from 1963 the fifth living complex, the first in the city to adopt modes of prefabrication that would mark the last two decades of architectural design in the GDR. Staatsarchiv Eisenhüttenstadt.
The 1960s are sometimes considered the ‘Golden Age of the GDR’: a relatively prosperous decade of increased personal freedoms and moderate economic success. With the expansion of the local ironworks came the need for two new living complexes, represented in the model above by the white blocks in the top right (directly above the large oval, which was to be the city stadium). The distancing of the four original living complexes from the new developments constituted a physical rupture in the overall plan of the city, literally spacing those housed in the more expensive center of the community from their (often younger) fellow residents in the sixth and seventh “plattenbau” or prefabricated panel buildings. Ludwig, Andreas. Eisenhüttenstadt: Wandel einer industriellen Gründungsstadt in fünfzig Jahren. Potsdam: Brandenburgische Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2000.
The yellow building barely visible in the background is an Ankunftszentrum or “arrival center,” a reception facility for individuals who have filed a petition for political asylum in Germany and are awaiting a final decision. Located south of Eisenhüttenstadt’s central four living complexes, the Ankunftszentrum butts up against a steep hill. Image taken by the author, January 2019.
The Platz des Gedenkens in central Eisenhüttenstadt was included in the original city design by Kurt Leucht. Once the site of community gatherings, the open plaza is rarely used today. Buried under its paving stones are the remains of 4,109 soliders, many of them Soviets, who perished while interred at the nearby Nazi prisoner-of-war camp Stalag III-B. The monument was meant as a tribute to the Soviet sacrifice, and bears an inscription in both Russian and German. Photo taken January 2019 by the author.
Despite a sharp decline in employment at the EKO Stahl plant, steel production remains central to Eisenhüttenstadt’s economy. The sign reads: “This steel was made here. It will stay that way!” Photo taken by the author, January 2019.
A faded German flag hangs from the window of an apartment building in Eisenhüttenstadt’s third living complex. Given increased support for the far-right political party AfD, populist and nationalist rhetoric appears to resonate with Eisenhüttenstadt’s residents. Image taken by the author, July 2019.
Heimat im Wartezimmer: Architecture, Identity, and Migration in a Socialist Model City
Heiner Müller once described living through the last decades of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as perpetually being in a Wartezimmer (waiting room): a state of messianic anticipation, forever waiting for the train that would never arrive, for the construction of an socialist homeland that was never fully realized. Eisenhüttenstadt, the first planned city built in the GDR, was intended to exhibit the ideals of the governing SED party as a showcase for a novel architecture and urbanism that would cogently organize new modes of life for its proletarian residents. My thesis has examined 70-plus years of architecture in Eisenhüttenstadt, from its founding as an ideologically charged “prestige project,” through a decline into an affect of ‘Wartezimmer’ in the 1970s, and its current condition following the demise of the East German state. Eisenhüttenstadt today hosts the largest Ankunftszentrum in the state of Brandenburg, a facility which houses individuals awaiting decisions on applications for political asylum. It is also home to growing support for the far-right political party Alternativ für Deutschland or AfD, which has capitalized on the disenfranchisement of the former GDR citizen as a means of spreading its vitriolic messages of an imagined German identity in such communities. Today Müller’s Wartezimmer is still tangible - though the anticipated messiah is no longer the realization of an industrial utopia, but the fulfillment of the promises of a reunited Germany.