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Read more about our travels around the former DDR
After a busy morning around the memorial prison, we hit the road from Berlin towards Stalinstadt, known today as Eisenhüttenstadt. This journey is about 1 hour and 30 minutes and gives you a chance to explore the beautiful East German countryside. Stalinstadt is a must for the Red Tourist in East Germany, a socialist planned city built around the local steel mill and conceived with the GDR’s sixteen principles of Urban Development at its heart. It was the first new German Town built after the war, with many people settling here during its development in the 50’s and 60’s (town plan from 1953 pictured below). It was built claiming to be the ‘first socialist city on German soil’.
During de-stalinisation in 1961, Stalinstadt was renamed Eisenhüttenstadt. Like much of East Germany, reunification led to privatisation of the steel mill where most of the 12,000 employees lost their jobs, leading to over 20 thousand people leaving the town in a short period of time. The Main Street has a variety of shops and restaurants as well as easy parking. Sadly, we missed out on the local museum, which is shut on Mondays.
Lindenallee, Eisenhuettenstadt still has original sculptures as part of the water fountain, as shown below.
Make sure you find the beautiful Produktion im Frieden (Production in Peace) created by Walter Womacka in 1965. This building was designed by Otto Lopp and Otto Schnabel and was constructed in 1958-1960 and has now houses a store and library, pictured below.
Whilst walking throughout the impressive housing blocks, we found the first of many soviet memorials across East Germany. This particular war cemetery contains the graves of 64 Soviet soldiers who fell fighting for Eisenhüttenstadt in 1945 as well as 4000 Soviet POWs who died in the camp Stalag III B, pictured below. For more information about the Soviet War memorials, we recommend using the 'Traces of War' website available here.
However, a lazy stroll around this impressive city allows you to take in the amazing housing blocks, murals as well as the soviet memorial. It was a stunning day when we got there, and so we treated ourselves to a delicious ice cream from Crema and Cioccolato on a bench near the local DIE LINKE office.
A fun fact to end our article about Stalinstadt (Eisenhüttenstadt), in 2011 Tom Hanks visited the town and subsequently this amusing video below was produced.
Loving this post on (Eisenhüttenstadt)? Read more about our Red Tourists road trip around the former DDR here.
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