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

[RJDG14]

Prior to German reunification, the A4 between Bautzen and Weissenberg, which looked to be the most eastern section of the road at the time, was in a terrible condition and I'm not sure if it was even open to traffic, because much of the road was taken up by agricultural storage buildings. I've had a look at a high resolution 1983 satellite image from the USGS EarthExplorer tool and there really were a lot of these warehouses placed on the road, 67 at the time if I counted correctly, over a several mile long stretch. I suspect they may have been used for grain storage. What I don't get is why the East German government decided to place these structures on the carriageways of this road when they could have built them in fields instead. An earlier KH9 satellite image from 1972 shows the exact same number of structures on the road.

I thought I should also mention that one carriageway of the Bautzen bypass was definitely open to traffic in 1983 (as you can see vehicles using it) but the other was not because there seemed to be a bridge over the river where only one carriageway had been built, with only foundations in place for the other. I don't know if the Nazis never finished it or if it was destroyed during WWII and never rebuilt due to a lack of funds.

[Bryn666]

Prior to German reunification, the A4 between Bautzen and Weissenberg, which looked to be the most eastern section of the road at the time, was in a terrible condition and I'm not sure if it was even open to traffic, because much of the road was taken up by agricultural storage buildings. I've had a look at a high resolution 1983 satellite image from the USGS EarthExplorer tool and there really were a lot of these warehouses placed on the road, 67 at the time if I counted correctly, over a several mile long stretch. I suspect they may have been used for grain storage. What I don't get is why the East German government decided to place these structures on the carriageways of this road when they could have built them in fields instead. An earlier KH9 satellite image from 1972 shows the exact same number of structures on the road.

I thought I should also mention that one carriageway of the Bautzen bypass was definitely open to traffic in 1983 (as you can see vehicles using it) but the other was not because there seemed to be a bridge over the river where only one carriageway had been built, with only foundations in place for the other. I don't know if the Nazis never finished it or if it was destroyed during WWII and never rebuilt due to a lack of funds.

Warehouses require level concrete foundations, and an unused motorway provides those at zero cost to the state. Quite a simple and sensible use of the corridor when applied in context.

[roadtester]

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.

[RJDG14]

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.

I had a look at two USGS KH9 satellite images that were available for download, one from 1972 and the other from 1983. The 1972 one shows both carriageways of the bridge as being destroyed, while the 1983 one shows that East Germany had by then partially reopened the bridge but only as a single carriageway, with the other half remaining in ruins.

[Chris5156]

Warehouses require level concrete foundations, and an unused motorway provides those at zero cost to the state. Quite a simple and sensible use of the corridor when applied in context.

It also avoided using up any agricultural land for the warehouses, instead using what would otherwise have been dead space, and gave the warehouses easy access for transport in and out without having to build any new roads or marshalling areas.

[RJDG14]

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.

I had a look at two USGS KH9 satellite images that were available for download, one from 1972 and the other from 1983. The 1972 one shows both carriageways of the bridge as being destroyed, while the 1983 one shows that East Germany had by then partially reopened the bridge but only as a single carriageway, with the other half remaining in ruins.

There were 66 on the main road and a further 1 building of some sort just to the side, which makes 67.

[WHBM]

It was like this on the early Autobahns throughout GDR times and early into the reunification, I recall driving in 1991 past Berlin into Poland, and there were a couple of bridges along the way where all traffic was routed across to one bridge, and the other just looked in disrepair. At the traffic levels they didn't need two lanes each way. At some other bridges (maybe the same ones, remaining side), the expansion joints appeared to have failed, and there were temporary 40 kph limits posted, which it was very wise to comply with !

[roadtester]

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.

I had a look at two USGS KH9 satellite images that were available for download, one from 1972 and the other from 1983. The 1972 one shows both carriageways of the bridge as being destroyed, while the 1983 one shows that East Germany had by then partially reopened the bridge but only as a single carriageway, with the other half remaining in ruins.

There were 66 on the main road and a further 1 building of some sort just to the side, which makes 67.

Thanks - I was wondering where that discrepancy came from!

[RJDG14]

i'd have thought that the money for the grain storage buildings could have been used to finance reconstruction of the bridge instead.

The old USGS satellite imagery that I've seen suggests that many of East Germany's main roads (aside from the transit ones to West Berlin) were a mess.

[Chris5156]

i'd have thought that the money for the grain storage buildings could have been used to finance reconstruction of the bridge instead.

The old USGS satellite imagery that I've seen suggests that many of East Germany's main roads (aside from the transit ones to West Berlin) were a mess.

Depends what your priorities are. In a country with very low car ownership and restrictions on travel, storing grain was probably more important.

[exiled]

i'd have thought that the money for the grain storage buildings could have been used to finance reconstruction of the bridge instead.

The old USGS satellite imagery that I've seen suggests that many of East Germany's main roads (aside from the transit ones to West Berlin) were a mess.

Food and the supply chain is always more of a priority for a regime than almost anything else.

[RJDG14]

i'd have thought that the money for the grain storage buildings could have been used to finance reconstruction of the bridge instead.

The old USGS satellite imagery that I've seen suggests that many of East Germany's main roads (aside from the transit ones to West Berlin) were a mess.

Depends what your priorities are. In a country with very low car ownership and restrictions on travel, storing grain was probably more important.

The communist countries generally had lower vehicle ownership than the West and had more problems with food shortages due to the failures of their planned economies (East Germany I believe had it better than most of them), so it may make sense that they wanted to prioritise grain storage in case imports became scarce or there was a domestic crop failure. I don't think East Germany had any significant shortages, at least not the sort that caused hunger, however there were definitely certain goods that were in scarce supply at certain points in its existence, such as coffee during about 1977 (the regime created an ersatz coffee product called Kaffee Mix to try and solve the problem).

Something I've noticed from the high resolution USGS satellite imagery of East Germany would be that while the number of vehicles on the roads of East Berlin looked roughly the same as that seen in West Germany (although most of the vehicles would have been poor quality Trabant type vehicles), the main roads in some of the more rural regions of East Germany were practically deserted, a little like the roads in North Korea today. I found this moderately surprising when I looked at these images because I had believed that private vehicle ownership in East Germany, unlike in a lot of the other communist countries such as the USSR, was relatively high, but this may have only been the case in cities.

[roadtester]

i'd have thought that the money for the grain storage buildings could have been used to finance reconstruction of the bridge instead.

The old USGS satellite imagery that I've seen suggests that many of East Germany's main roads (aside from the transit ones to West Berlin) were a mess.

Depends what your priorities are. In a country with very low car ownership and restrictions on travel, storing grain was probably more important.

The communist countries generally had lower vehicle ownership than the West and had more problems with food shortages due to the failures of their planned economies (East Germany I believe had it better than most of them), so it may make sense that they wanted to prioritise grain storage in case imports became scarce or there was a domestic crop failure. I don't think East Germany had any significant shortages, at least not the sort that caused hunger, however there were definitely certain goods that were in scarce supply at certain points in its existence, such as coffee during about 1977 (the regime created an ersatz coffee product called Kaffee Mix to try and solve the problem).

I think those are all likely considerations but another reason for not bothering with fixing the bridge was probably that as an east-west route cut off by the border, the A4 would have become less important in East Germany which would have been reorientating its transport networks around radials from Berlin.

Of course, it would have reachieved relevance with the dissolution of the inner German border.

[WHBM]

The communist countries generally had lower vehicle ownership than the West and had more problems with food shortages due to the failures of their planned economies (East Germany I believe had it better than most of them), so it may make sense that they wanted to prioritise grain storage in case imports became scarce or there was a domestic crop failure. I don't think East Germany had any significant shortages, at least not the sort that caused hunger, however there were definitely certain goods that were in scarce supply at certain points in its existence, such as coffee during about 1977 (the regime created an ersatz coffee product called Kaffee Mix to try and solve the problem).

Something I've noticed from the high resolution USGS satellite imagery of East Germany would be that while the number of vehicles on the roads of East Berlin looked roughly the same as that seen in West Germany (although most of the vehicles would have been poor quality Trabant type vehicles), the main roads in some of the more rural regions of East Germany were practically deserted, a little like the roads in North Korea today. I found this moderately surprising when I looked at these images because I had believed that private vehicle ownership in East Germany, unlike in a lot of the other communist countries such as the USSR, was relatively high, but this may have only been the case in cities.

The coffee thing I also experienced on that same road journey to Poland in 1990 described above. As I understand it, much of the socialist country's coffee supply came from Cuba, and there were periodic standoffs over payment in "hard" currency (only) for it. Despite Comecon and all that, and the annual Leipzig Trade Fair where much of this trade across Eastern Europe and beyond was negotiated, it was all done in US Dollars because that is what everyone wanted, still a feature of street pricing in Russia when I first went there in 2003. For some reason coffee was particularly a key thing that came and went - I remember with amusement my Polish colleagues' later excitement at the arrival on the open market there of ... Maxwell House ! When they came to the UK on business trips they had a substantial but extraordinary shopping list. Socks from M&S, in quantity for everyone at home, was one I remember.

Eastern Europe (I normally say Socialist Europe for those times) car usage was very different, for many reasons cars were mainly used on short trips within cities rather than daily drivers across rural areas. One bizarre aspect was garage blocks for the cars, built quite some distance from where owners might live, so they even had to take the tram there to get the car out ! Fuel was notably cheap (mainly because of little tax), but came and went in short supply like the coffee, so you needed to be certain you could get home. Installation of piped-in supplementary fuel tanks to overcome this was common, in the boot, which of course had zero protection in the event of a rear-end collision.

[Octaviadriver]

I've looked at some maps I had when I drove through East Germany to Poland and Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and the A4 autobahn going east ends in the middle of nowhere near Weissenberg and doesn't go on to Görlitz. This could explain why one carriageway was used for storage.

I assume it wasn't completed before the end of WWII and was left unfinished until much later. There's a very small section north of Görlitz that was constructed in 1944 according to the US Army Europe map of 1959 that doesn't seem connected to anything. I assume the intention was to connect the autobahn to Breslau when it was German, which is now Wroclaw in Poland.

[JosephA22]

I recall from family trips to Poland in the 1980s that apart from the motorways leading towards Berlin or the main route towards Poland (currently the A12), most motorways in East Germany were practically empty.

We once used what is now the A72 heading from Chemnitz (Karl Marx Stadt in those days...) to the south west, not realising the motorway route was incomplete in those days. After numerous single carriageway bridges the motorway was just permanently closed at one junction - although you could see the old motorway continuing further - and the official transit route took you a few miles along ordinary country roads.

This was the only time we ever came off the motorways in East Germany, and on a transit visa you could be fined or worse if you strayed from the permitted transit routes. My parents once took a wrong turning onto the wrong section of the Berliner RIng on their first trip to Poland in the 1970s and were stopped by the police within a couple of minutes. Possibly spotted from one of the observation towers dotted around the network. They got away with a ticking off and were escorted back to the correct junction, which involved the police turning round across the grass central reservation and my dad following them...

As mentioned, the section of A4 east of Bautzen was closed for much of East Germany's existence, and then only opened as one carriageway. The A4 east of Weissenberg was not built at all until almost 2000, and using the non-motorway route on that section was very unpleasant in the 90s due to the amount of cars and in particular trucks going to and from Poland, as well as locally in Germany.

[RJDG14]

I recall from family trips to Poland in the 1980s that apart from the motorways leading towards Berlin or the main route towards Poland (currently the A12), most motorways in East Germany were practically empty.

We once used what is now the A72 heading from Chemnitz (Karl Marx Stadt in those days...) to the south west, not realising the motorway route was incomplete in those days. After numerous single carriageway bridges the motorway was just permanently closed at one junction - although you could see the old motorway continuing further - and the official transit route took you a few miles along ordinary country roads.

This was the only time we ever came off the motorways in East Germany, and on a transit visa you could be fined or worse if you strayed from the permitted transit routes. My parents once took a wrong turning onto the wrong section of the Berliner RIng on their first trip to Poland in the 1970s and were stopped by the police within a couple of minutes. Possibly spotted from one of the observation towers dotted around the network. They got away with a ticking off and were escorted back to the correct junction, which involved the police turning round across the grass central reservation and my dad following them...

As mentioned, the section of A4 east of Bautzen was closed for much of East Germany's existence, and then only opened as one carriageway. The A4 east of Weissenberg was not built at all until almost 2000, and using the non-motorway route on that section was very unpleasant in the 90s due to the amount of cars and in particular trucks going to and from Poland, as well as locally in Germany.

If you were transiting from the Inner German Border to Poland as a Westerner during the 1980s, did the transit route involve driving in/out of West Berlin or was there an alternate way around that involved being within East Germany the whole time?

I don't think Poland was as repressive as East Germany although it was poorer.

[JosephA22]

I recall from family trips to Poland in the 1980s that apart from the motorways leading towards Berlin or the main route towards Poland (currently the A12), most motorways in East Germany were practically empty.

We once used what is now the A72 heading from Chemnitz (Karl Marx Stadt in those days...) to the south west, not realising the motorway route was incomplete in those days. After numerous single carriageway bridges the motorway was just permanently closed at one junction - although you could see the old motorway continuing further - and the official transit route took you a few miles along ordinary country roads.

This was the only time we ever came off the motorways in East Germany, and on a transit visa you could be fined or worse if you strayed from the permitted transit routes. My parents once took a wrong turning onto the wrong section of the Berliner RIng on their first trip to Poland in the 1970s and were stopped by the police within a couple of minutes. Possibly spotted from one of the observation towers dotted around the network. They got away with a ticking off and were escorted back to the correct junction, which involved the police turning round across the grass central reservation and my dad following them...

As mentioned, the section of A4 east of Bautzen was closed for much of East Germany's existence, and then only opened as one carriageway. The A4 east of Weissenberg was not built at all until almost 2000, and using the non-motorway route on that section was very unpleasant in the 90s due to the amount of cars and in particular trucks going to and from Poland, as well as locally in Germany.

If you were transiting from the Inner German Border to Poland as a Westerner during the 1980s, did the transit route involve driving in/out of West Berlin or was there an alternate way around that involved being within East Germany the whole time?

I don't think Poland was as repressive as East Germany although it was poorer.

No, the route went along the Berliner Ring south of Berlin itself. That section of the Ring was built before WW2. The current route is unchanged, i.e. A2, A10, A12 from West to East, and there was no need to come off the motorway anywhere.

We only ever took the most restrictive type of transit visa. I don't think it would even allow us to travel into Berlin itself, as we had to specify where we were travelling to and were not allowed to use any route other than the direct transit route to Poland. I recall there were "Transit" patches on the direction signs, although that did not stop my dad taking the wrong turning. I also think this type of transit visa was the only type that did not require you to convert a certain amount of western currency into East German marks for each day you would be in the country.

Poland was far less repressive than East Germany, and the number of people who were ideoligally "wedded" to communism or the party was much smaller. Stalin was quoted as saying that imposing Communism on Poland was akin to “fitting a saddle onto a cow.” Of course if you were a pain in the backside to the system, you could end up regretting it, but very few ordinary people chose to "cooperate" with the authorities to the extent so many did in East Germany.

[roadtester]

Poland was far less repressive than East Germany, and the number of people who were ideoligally "wedded" to communism or the party was much smaller. Stalin was quoted as saying that imposing Communism on Poland was akin to “fitting a saddle onto a cow.” Of course if you were a pain in the backside to the system, you could end up regretting it, but very few ordinary people chose to "cooperate" with the authorities to the extent so many did in East Germany.

When the journalist Anne McElvoy wrote her quite well known book about the GDR in the nineties, she chose a twist on Stalin’s assessment of Poland by titling it The Saddled Cow, presumably signifying the East Germans’ greater willingness to submit to communist orthodoxy in contrast to the Poles.

[RJDG14]

I recall from family trips to Poland in the 1980s that apart from the motorways leading towards Berlin or the main route towards Poland (currently the A12), most motorways in East Germany were practically empty.

We once used what is now the A72 heading from Chemnitz (Karl Marx Stadt in those days...) to the south west, not realising the motorway route was incomplete in those days. After numerous single carriageway bridges the motorway was just permanently closed at one junction - although you could see the old motorway continuing further - and the official transit route took you a few miles along ordinary country roads.

This was the only time we ever came off the motorways in East Germany, and on a transit visa you could be fined or worse if you strayed from the permitted transit routes. My parents once took a wrong turning onto the wrong section of the Berliner RIng on their first trip to Poland in the 1970s and were stopped by the police within a couple of minutes. Possibly spotted from one of the observation towers dotted around the network. They got away with a ticking off and were escorted back to the correct junction, which involved the police turning round across the grass central reservation and my dad following them...

As mentioned, the section of A4 east of Bautzen was closed for much of East Germany's existence, and then only opened as one carriageway. The A4 east of Weissenberg was not built at all until almost 2000, and using the non-motorway route on that section was very unpleasant in the 90s due to the amount of cars and in particular trucks going to and from Poland, as well as locally in Germany.

If you were transiting from the Inner German Border to Poland as a Westerner during the 1980s, did the transit route involve driving in/out of West Berlin or was there an alternate way around that involved being within East Germany the whole time?

I don't think Poland was as repressive as East Germany although it was poorer.

No, the route went along the Berliner Ring south of Berlin itself. That section of the Ring was built before WW2. The current route is unchanged, i.e. A2, A10, A12 from West to East, and there was no need to come off the motorway anywhere.

We only ever took the most restrictive type of transit visa. I don't think it would even allow us to travel into Berlin itself, as we had to specify where we were travelling to and were not allowed to use any route other than the direct transit route to Poland. I recall there were "Transit" patches on the direction signs, although that did not stop my dad taking the wrong turning. I also think this type of transit visa was the only type that did not require you to convert a certain amount of western currency into East German marks for each day you would be in the country.

Poland was far less repressive than East Germany, and the number of people who were ideoligally "wedded" to communism or the party was much smaller. Stalin was quoted as saying that imposing Communism on Poland was akin to “fitting a saddle onto a cow.” Of course if you were a pain in the backside to the system, you could end up regretting it, but very few ordinary people chose to "cooperate" with the authorities to the extent so many did in East Germany.

Did the East German authorities provide a map (potentially in exchange for hard currency which they were short of) to Western travellers detailing the transit routes?

I've had a look at some historic USGS imagery featuring the road in question (the modern A72) from 1979 and it looks like the proper Autobahn, which was probably in a poor state anyway, abruptly ended (if you were travelling towards the south west) as a two carriageway road just east of Zwickau, with all traffic shunted onto a two lane contraflow. There is then a viaduct at Zwickau, along with several other sections, where the other carriageway reappears although the road appears to still be only operating as a single lane contraflow. The imagery shows hardly any vehicles on the road at all. I'm skeptical as to whether the section around Zwickau was open to vehicles or not.

In the case of Poland there was the independent Soladarity movement in the early 1980s, and while the authorities tried to shut it down, they didn't find it the easiest job and they almost certainly didn't have anything like as sophisticated surveillance regime as the Stasi. The Catholic Church also still had a lot of influence on the people of Poland despite it having a communist government. Most of the Freedom In The World reports from the late 1970s and early 1980s placed Poland as 6/7 on political rights and 5/7 on civil liberties (with 1 being highest and 7 lowest). By comparison East Germany was usually ranked the worst possible score of 7/7 on both. Poland scored roughly where Yugoslavia did, although Yugoslavians did have certain additional freedoms such as travel to the West since their country was not part of the Warsaw Pact.