Why did East Germany place storage buildings on the A4 between Bautzen and Weissenberg?

[roadtester]

East Berlin in the 1980s was not as appalling as regularly portrayed by those who didn't visit there at all, there were many pleasant restaurants, and the bulk of those in there were locals from the city. They were of course cheaper than in West Berlin, which itself was getting more down-at-heel in this time.

The centre of East Berlin was indeed reasonably impressive in terms of the buildings, hotels, shops, restaurants and so on. There is a bit of a caveat though in that once you strayed outside the main central areas frequented by visitors from inside and outside the GDR - Unter den Linden, Alexanderplatz, Palast der Republik, Fernsehturm etc. - things rapidly got tattier and more typically Communist Eastern European.

[WHBM]

There was a lot more to East Berlin than Mitte. I got to know, in only those couple of visits, Treptower Park, out east and on the S-Bahn, nice eating places by the river. It still has its old character. The park contains the Soviet memorial to the Red Army who liberated Berlin, a typical Soviet sculpture with figures 50 feet tall. You might think it shunned nowadays, but still nicely maintained.

[Vierwielen]

A colleague of mine had a contract in GDR in the early 1970’s. He told me that he always left a 1DM coin on his dressing table when he left his room. His room was always spotlessly clean. He also told me that if he ever found himself alone in an office apart from a female colleague, then for her sake he was to leave the office for a few minutes otherwise she might well have the Stasi watching her more carefully.

[JosephA22]

Of course, there was massive migration to the West anyway, even with unification and huge amounts of what in the UK context would be called levelling up cash going East!

This is very noticeable in towns in the East of Germany near the border with Poland. There are towns with thousands of Poles living there, who actually still work in Poland, but live in Germany. The glut of empty properties meant they were (and probably still are) cheaper than homes in Poland, despite property prices overall being much lower in Poland.

From 2013:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pola ... IN20130515

[Berk]

When I was a student, I did become aware of the Sorbian minority in the easternmost districts. The language does seem much closer to Polish, than German. It is spoken widely too.

The community also has its own publishing house, and newspaper.

[trickstat]

There was a lot more to East Berlin than Mitte. I got to know, in only those couple of visits, Treptower Park, out east and on the S-Bahn, nice eating places by the river. It still has its old character. The park contains the Soviet memorial to the Red Army who liberated Berlin, a typical Soviet sculpture with figures 50 feet tall. You might think it shunned nowadays, but still nicely maintained.

I visited the Soviet War Memorial when I went to Berlin in 2009. It was quite impressive and a photo I took of the inside of one of the structures is I believe still on my profile on another website.

[Vierwielen]

Of course, there was massive migration to the West anyway, even with unification and huge amounts of what in the UK context would be called levelling up cash going East!

This is very noticeable in towns in the East of Germany near the border with Poland. There are towns with thousands of Poles living there, who actually still work in Poland, but live in Germany. The glut of empty properties meant they were (and probably still are) cheaper than homes in Poland, despite property prices overall being much lower in Poland.

From 2013:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pola ... IN20130515

When I looked at the map of the population density of Europe, I could not help noticing that there was a huge area in Western Poland where the population densit was lower than elsewhere. That area corresponded exactly with the pre-war boundary of Germany (Eastern Prussia). Durign the first six months of 2012 I had a contract in Farnkfurt and rented a bedsit. My landlord's wife related to me how, as a little girl, she and her mother who lived in what was then Eastern Prussia fled from the Russian army and ended up in Frankfurt.

[WHBM]

When I first drove east on the A15 from Berlin past towards Poland in 1984-1990, the old DDR signage around Cottbus, towards but not quite at the border, was bilingual, German and Polish, which I took to be quite a Polish diaspora in the border area.

[roadtester]

When I looked at the map of the population density of Europe, I could not help noticing that there was a huge area in Western Poland where the population densit was lower than elsewhere. That area corresponded exactly with the pre-war boundary of Germany (Eastern Prussia). Durign the first six months of 2012 I had a contract in Farnkfurt and rented a bedsit. My landlord's wife related to me how, as a little girl, she and her mother who lived in what was then Eastern Prussia fled from the Russian army and ended up in Frankfurt.

There were significant migration flows of this sort at the end of the Second World War as Germans in eastern regions headed west. The family of my best German friend were originally from Silesia. His dad headed west and then as a matter of choice went to work in East Germany before the border fences went up, although he saw the writing on the soon-to-be-built Wall, so to speak, and headed back west in time.

For many years these dispossessed migrants and their campaigning issues were an important factor in West German politics and were represented by an influential organisation, the Bund der Vertriebenen, which still maintained a large and fairly imposing office in Bonn, then still the German capital, when I worked there in the late nineties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Expellees

There were also later waves of inward migration, especially after unification, of ethnic Germans, not just from territory lost by Germany in 1945 but from countries such as Romania and some of the former Soviet states, the so-called Spätaussiedler (late emigrants). I think most of these were still fairly easily granted German citizenship even if e.g. they couldn’t really speak German.

[Chris Bertram]

When I was a student, I did become aware of the Sorbian minority in the easternmost districts. The language does seem much closer to Polish, than German. It is spoken widely too.

The community also has its own publishing house, and newspaper.

The Sorbs are an ethnic and linguistic minority concentrated in the SE corner of the former DDR. They are Slavic, and the language has two variants, Upper Sorbian, which is closer to Czech, and Lower Sorbian, which is closer to Polish. Whether there is mutual intelligibly between the languages I don't know. Cottbus is the main city for Lower Sorbian, Bautzen for Upper Sorbian, but the region as a whole is known as Lusatia (Lausitz in German).

[Chris Bertram]

When I first drove east on the A15 from Berlin past towards Poland in 1984-1990, the old DDR signage around Cottbus, towards but not quite at the border, was bilingual, German and Polish, which I took to be quite a Polish diaspora in the border area.

Might this not have been Lower Sorbian, which has some resemblance to Polish, and which linguistic community is centred around Cottbus?

[Vierwielen]

When I looked at the map of the population density of Europe, I could not help noticing that there was a huge area in Western Poland where the population densit was lower than elsewhere. That area corresponded exactly with the pre-war boundary of Germany (Eastern Prussia). Durign the first six months of 2012 I had a contract in Farnkfurt and rented a bedsit. My landlord's wife related to me how, as a little girl, she and her mother who lived in what was then Eastern Prussia fled from the Russian army and ended up in Frankfurt.

There were significant migration flows of this sort at the end of the Second World War as Germans in eastern regions headed west. The family of my best German friend were originally from Silesia. His dad headed west and then as a matter of choice went to work in East Germany before the border fences went up, although he saw the writing on the soon-to-be-built Wall, so to speak, and headed back west in time.

For many years these dispossessed migrants and their campaigning issues were an important factor in West German politics and were represented by an influential organisation, the Bund der Vertriebenen, which still maintained a large and fairly imposing office in Bonn, then still the German capital, when I worked there in the late nineties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Expellees

There were also later waves of inward migration, especially after unification, of ethnic Germans, not just from territory lost by Germany in 1945 but from countries such as Romania and some of the former Soviet states, the so-called Spätaussiedler (late emigrants). I think most of these were still fairly easily granted German citizenship even if e.g. they couldn’t really speak German.

In 1999 my daughter went on a school exchange visit to Germany. She stayed with a Jewish family who had emigrated from Romainia.

[RichardA626]

Of course, there was massive migration to the West anyway, even with unification and huge amounts of what in the UK context would be called levelling up cash going East!

This is very noticeable in towns in the East of Germany near the border with Poland. There are towns with thousands of Poles living there, who actually still work in Poland, but live in Germany. The glut of empty properties meant they were (and probably still are) cheaper than homes in Poland, despite property prices overall being much lower in Poland.

From 2013:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pola ... IN20130515

When I looked at the map of the population density of Europe, I could not help noticing that there was a huge area in Western Poland where the population densit was lower than elsewhere. That area corresponded exactly with the pre-war boundary of Germany (Eastern Prussia). Durign the first six months of 2012 I had a contract in Farnkfurt and rented a bedsit. My landlord's wife related to me how, as a little girl, she and her mother who lived in what was then Eastern Prussia fled from the Russian army and ended up in Frankfurt.

I've heard some Poles from the area around Lviv had to move after the border was redrawn to make it part of Ukraine, I did wonder if they settled in the areas of Poland that previously had been German populated.

[Berk]

Back to roads, and the truth is there weren’t that many good roads in the east. Statistics record there were 1400kms of Autobahn in 1965 - however 20 years later this had only risen by 400kms.

In 1984 there were just 12kms of D3 motorway, and a staggering 117kms of D1 motorway. That’s a truly awful figure, even by eastern standards. It makes one ask why those roads needed to be motorway at all, although I can imagine there being extenuating circumstances (such as (very) long-term defects and outstanding repairs).

Meanwhile, there were around 34 000 kms of trunk roads. However, speed limits were not good - on these roads the limit was just 80km/h (it had previously been 90km/h). The journey from Hamburg to Berlin (before the A24 was built) was said to take 5 hours, inclusive of border checks.

It’s little wonder that the DDR Government took advantage of western “help” to extend their motorway network. The roads programme seems to have slowed down after the economic crisis of 1981. Whilst there had been piecemeal improvements since the 1950s, they came at a much slower rate than we are used to. Other than transit routes, most were bypasses of major cities.

However, none of the East German Autobahnen have been downgraded, as they are still in use today. Curiously, they were not signed with numbers, although they were numbered (internally, at least) by the Ministry of Transport.

[Berk]

A quick look on German Wikipedia gives what I think is the story. The gist of it is that the bridge over the Spree river was blown up in the closing stages of the war, rendering that stretch of the autobahn useless for traffic - the GDR never got around to rebuilding the bridge so the redundant section had 66 grain storage buildings built on it.

Yes, here is the full story:

In the last months of the war, buildings along the route were destroyed. After an Allied bomb attack, the Rodenkirchen Bridge collapsed on 28 January 1945. Shortly before the end of the war, the Wehrmacht blew up the Saale Bridge near Jena on 11 April 1945 and the Spree Bridge near Bautzen on 19 April 1945 in order to prevent the advance of Allied troops. Since the Spree Bridge separated the only partially completed section between Bautzen and Weißenberg from the rest of the line coming from Dresden, its traffic importance was still relatively minor, which is why it was not initially rebuilt and the Bautzen–Weißenberg section was later permanently closed.

Because the Spree Bridge near Bautzen was not rebuilt, the Bautzen-Ost–Weißenberg section remained closed in GDR times. The GDR government decided in 1965 to make use of it. In the following year, 66 grain storage halls were erected along a total of 16 km of roadway, which were supposed to maintain the food supply of the GDR in the event of a crisis. The route was also cordoned off with fences. The reconstruction of the Spree Bridge in Bautzen was only carried out between 1973 and 1977 in order to avoid having to drive the trucks through the city to deliver concrete slabs for the Bautzen-Gesundbrunnen residential area.

Quite astonishing (to us) that a line of motorway could be put to a completely alternative use like that. That being said, there are also good reasons why.

The stretch in question is in the far east of the country, close to the Polish border. It was also a remnant of the Reichsautobahn programme, which the Government would not exactly have looked favourably on. We’ve established the DDR Government had very limited resources for postwar reconstruction.

In the late 1940s, very few East Germans I imagine would have had access to cars, unless they had been fortunate enough to acquire or own one already (whether pre-war, or through some other means). And extremely few of them would have had much reason to travel to Poland; I even believe the border was closed for some years. So abandoned it was.

However, something similar happened in Berlin near the Treptow Canal. Several kms of pre-war motorway were again abandoned, when a new border crossing was built further within eastern territory. The eastern side of the road was used as a caravan site.

[bothar]

I've heard some Poles from the area around Lviv had to move after the border was redrawn to make it part of Ukraine, I did wonder if they settled in the areas of Poland that previously had been German populated.

The Polish administration and people of Lwów (now Lviv) were moved to Breslau which became Wrocław, so things like Lviv university was recreated as Wrocław university etc. People from the countryside got farms in that area.

[RichardA626]

I've heard some Poles from the area around Lviv had to move after the border was redrawn to make it part of Ukraine, I did wonder if they settled in the areas of Poland that previously had been German populated.

The Polish administration and people of Lwów (now Lviv) were moved to Breslau which became Wrocław, so things like Lviv university was recreated as Wrocław university etc. People from the countryside got farms in that area.

Thanks for letting me know.

[RJDG14]

Back to roads, and the truth is there weren’t that many good roads in the east. Statistics record there were 1400kms of Autobahn in 1965 - however 20 years later this had only risen by 400kms.

In 1984 there were just 12kms of D3 motorway, and a staggering 117kms of D1 motorway. That’s a truly awful figure, even by eastern standards. It makes one ask why those roads needed to be motorway at all, although I can imagine there being extenuating circumstances (such as (very) long-term defects and outstanding repairs).

Meanwhile, there were around 34 000 kms of trunk roads. However, speed limits were not good - on these roads the limit was just 80km/h (it had previously been 90km/h). The journey from Hamburg to Berlin (before the A24 was built) was said to take 5 hours, inclusive of border checks.

It’s little wonder that the DDR Government took advantage of western “help” to extend their motorway network. The roads programme seems to have slowed down after the economic crisis of 1981. Whilst there had been piecemeal improvements since the 1950s, they came at a much slower rate than we are used to. Other than transit routes, most were bypasses of major cities.

However, none of the East German Autobahnen have been downgraded, as they are still in use today. Curiously, they were not signed with numbers, although they were numbered (internally, at least) by the Ministry of Transport.

What were East Germany's D1 Autobahn stretches like? I knew that they had some stretches of S2 Autobahn which were essentially contraflows with the other carriageway unbuilt or abandoned, but didn't know about D1, unless S2 is what you meant.

What were some of the stretches of Autobahn that were built by the East German government? I thought that they built very few stretches (aside from a few bridge rebuilds) and instead simply inherited the Nazi era Autobahns which were then mostly neglected aside from the transit routes.

I don't think West Germany had many stretches of D3 Autobahn prior to the early 1970s (though its D2 Autobahns were a lot better kept than those in the East) but definitely did by the 1980s. Many of modern Germany's rural Autobahns still only have 2 lanes in each direction and probably receive only M50 levels of traffic (due to many of them serving locations that would probably be served by A-roads in the UK) meaning that they don't need to be a higher standard.

[Berk]

I think the article I read may have meant S2 (wasn’t exactly clear). You need to remember that, ideological reasons aside, most social systems and programmes in the east (other than politics, health and education) resembled somewhat the prewar-era.

Most roads and their numbers continued the same pattern (including numbering) that they had in the 1930s. The signage slowly began to change, but continued to resemble the prewar standards more closely than in the west. The overwhelming majority were D2, the only D3 section was in the south of Berlin (in the 1970s).

I haven’t been able to uncover enough detail about what standards were planned, other than the routes and numbers themselves. As you say, most of the 1930s era Autobahnen were D2 standard, they would probably be more like expressways today (indeed, some Bundestrassen are D2).

It does seem that the Nazi-era Autobahnen did include some S2 stretches, particularly some of those built in Poland. We would normally regard these as S2 roads today. Some were (almost) built in full, whereas others were suspended during the war.

[JosephA22]

There were considerable stretches of S2 (which seems to be what the D1 reference actually meant). I recall the motorway south east of Berlin past Cottbus to the Polish border was mostly S2 until after reunification. That is how it was built before WW2 and it was never upgraded by the DDR.

This motorway continued in Poland as S2 as well, and was only dualled - up to near where the current A4 joins - in the early 2000s, by building the new carrigeway alongside the old one. The original concrete carriageway is only being replaced now, with the last bits due to open later this year. I believe this was the last remaining original Nazi-era concrete motorway of any length (in Germany and Poland at least), so a little bit of history has been lost with that. Not that drivers will complain...

As for the "new" population of western Poland (the ex German regions), a lot of these were indeed people from what is currently western Ukraine, as well as parts of Belarus, when these were taken over by the Soviet Union. Many came from other areas of Poland though, as people from large cities in particular were forced to move out when their homes were destroyed. Around 90% of Warsaw was completely destroyed, and many families chose to relocate to new territories in the West.

I have some distant family on my Polish side who moved from Warsaw into a villa in Wroclaw that had been vacated by a German family. The German family left most of their possessions that could not easily be taken with them, which included an impressive German piano that they still have.