Eisenhüttenstadt

Eisenhüttenstadt lies in the Berlin-Warsaw glacial valley and it is surrounded by pine forests and terminal moraine hills.

The town of Eisenhüttenstadt (literally "ironworks town") was founded on November 13, 1961 by merging the small town of Fürstenberg, the village of Schönfließ and Stalinstadt. Stalinstadt was founded in in 1950 as the living area for a newly erected steel works.

The quarter of Fürstenberg was founded around 1250 by the Wettin Marktgraf[?] Heinrich der Erlauchte[?]. At the beginning of the 19th century the development of Fürstenberg gained momentum because of the connection to the railway line from Berlin to Breslau and the construction of the Oder-Spree-Channel[?]. In the Nazi era armament works and chemical plants were built around Fürstenberg. The necessary workforce was recuited from the POW camp STALAG III B. The town was liberated in 1945 by Soviet troops. After the war the industrial developmet was stopped because of the disassembly of the armament works and the shipping of the machines to the Soviet Union as war reparations.

As a result of the Cold War the construction of an iron works started in 1950. Together with the iron works the living area was erected. It was advertised as the "first socialist city of Germany". In the first years the architecture was strongly influenced by the Stalinistic town construction principles. The architecture is characterised by the concrete slab style. These original flats are under listed as historic monuments today.

After the German reunification, closure of the ironworks was discussed. This was averted. The state-run ironworks became the private company EKO Stahl AG[?], now EKO Stahl GmbH, which is now a member of the Arcelor Group [1] (http://www.arcelor.com), the world's largest steel company.

Links

• http://www.eisenhuettenstadt.de

(inofficial sites)

• http://www.ehsnet.de
• http://www.eisenhuettenstadt-direkt.de