Tour through the area monument Eisenhüttenstadt

Start / Finish Lindenallee 23, 15890 Eisenhüttenstadt
Length 4 kilometers
Duration approximately 1 hour
Arrival / departure RE1 to Eisenhüttenstadt, bus 453 to “Lindenallee” stop

This tour takes you through the historical and cultural highlights of this fascinating city. The tour starts in the picturesque linden avenue. The impressive Friedrich Wolf Theater, named after the famous writer, is located right here.

Then we continue to the Square of Remembrance. The square was originally called “Square of German-Soviet Friendship” (DSF). In the center of the square is the Soviet memorial for the prisoners of the Stalag III B prisoner of war camp. Below the obelisk there are three burial chambers with the bones of those who died.

The next stop is the Astrid Lindgren elementary school, which was called “1st Polytechnic High School “Georgi Dimitroff”” during GDR times. As the first school in the residential town and the only representative building in the new town standing in 1953, Walter Ulbricht named Stalinstadt from the balcony.

Beyond the school is also the first kindergarten in the city, which today houses a special needs school: the Pestalozzi School. In the center of the complex (which can only be accessed from Karl-Marx-Straße) is a fountain worth seeing, which is dedicated to Till Eulenspiegel in its elaborate mosaic decoration.

If you turn into Saarlouiser Straße, after a few meters you will reach the former large restaurant “Aktivist”. The house was the first HO restaurant to open on December 21, 1953, initially on a partial area. The building was completely completed in May 1954. In keeping with its character as a “large restaurant”, hundreds of warm dishes were served every day. The dance evenings on the upper floor became legendary, where the parquet was transformed into a dance floor every Wednesday evening.

Continuing along Erich-Weinert-Allee you reach the Utopia & Everyday Life Museum (formerly the DOK Center), which is located in the building of the former daycare center II. In a permanent exhibition on everyday GDR culture and history, as well as regular special exhibitions, the history and everyday life of the GDR can be discovered and experienced.

Today's Erich Weinert primary school at the top of the green belt was, as School II, the central school for WW II. What is striking is the light blue color scheme chosen as a contrast to the sandstone-colored residential buildings. The school interrupts the green corridor, which is later continued slightly offset in the former Ludmilla-Hypius-Weg further into WK V to Bertolt-Brecht-Allee and finally ends in the Diehloer Mountains as a local recreation area.

As you cross Poststrasse into the residential areas of Pawlowallee, you will see the city's monumental hospital. A detour to the site is worth it! The hospital was built in 1952 and opened in 1953 as a temporary hospital in what later became the “isolation house”. The building complex was completed in 1959. This also includes the park-like outdoor area with terraces, balustrades, works of art and fountain basins.

The tour through the area monument continues along the green corridor through the spacious residential courtyard to Fritz-Heckert-Straße and from there you reach Maxim-Gorki-Straße, past the former “sisters' dormitory” on the left, and finally the building of the former School III today serves as comprehensive school 3 with a high school level.

We are now in WW III, which, unlike WW II, was built in the “Heimatstyle”. Instead of flat roofs, you will find gable and hipped roofs throughout. The theme here was the “little German town” with bay windows, doorways and plaster cutting work on the facades. Characteristic facade elements are relief depictions with motifs from German fairy tales.

At the other end of Heinrich-Heine-Allee, already on Saarlouiser Straße, is the self-service shop for WW III. It was the first with the then new concept of “self-service” in the city. It was the first building in Stalinstadt in the “modern” style.

In the center of the planned city is the Central Square, where the originally planned city center was supposed to be located. The only actual building there is the city's town hall, which was built as a "house of parties and mass organizations".

The Hotel Lunik was built between 1960 and 1963. Unlike the residential complexes I - III in classic masonry construction and the residential complex IV in large block construction, the hotel is a skeleton building made of reinforced concrete, only the extension with the kitchen and café was built in classic brickwork.

At the end of the tour through the area monument you reach the Lindenzentrum, which was built between 1959 and 1960 as a textile department store. In the 1970s, textile department stores appeared across the country under the “Kaufhaus Magnet” brand. In the 1990s, the building was converted into what is now the “Lindenzentrum” office and business center. Today the main tenant is the city library.

The department store, like much of the Lindenallee, was once decorated with Meissen porcelain tiles. The color scheme was blue and yellow. The tiles fell off in the 1970s and were replaced during a renovation with today's red color accents.

On the top floor, where the department store café once was, there are mosaic columns by the mosaicist Heinrich Jungebloedt.