Gedenkstätte/ Museum Seelower Höhen

Description

The Seelower Höhen Memorial is located in the Brandenburg county town of Seelow in the district of Märkisch-Oderland and commemorates the Battle of the Seelower Heights in spring 1945. The site combines a museum, a memorial sculpture and a war cemetery and thus plays a central role in regional memory culture.

The bronze sculpture on the hill was erected in 1945 on the orders of the Soviet commander-in-chief for the Battle for Berlin; sculptors Lew Kerbel and Wladimir Zigal created the figure within a few months. Below the sculpture a single-storey building was constructed in 1972 as part of the Gedenkstätte der Befreiung, whose façade design refers to the memory of the command bunker on the Reitweiner Höhe. The forecourt was laid out at the same time and equipped with heavy military equipment; in the upper section burial fields with the characteristic red gravestones were established.

During the GDR period the exhibition predominantly presented the Soviet view of history: the heroic actions of the Red Army and the severity of the fighting were central, while German soldiers were portrayed largely anonymously. In the 1970s and 1980s official commemorative events, joint military activities and school visits shaped the scene. With the political changes after 1990 the concept was revised; since the mid-1990s perspectives of civilian victims and the role of the Wehrmacht have come more into focus. A Russian Orthodox cross was placed on the edge of the site in 2003; a viewpoint opens the view across the Oderbruch.

The cemetery contains the graves of over 7,000 soldiers of the Red Army. Maintenance was gradually transferred to the municipal administration following an SMAD order of 1946; from 1949 responsibility lay with the mayor of Seelow, at times supported by school projects that also addressed individual biographies.

The museum covers approximately 200 m² and is organised thematically: „Von der Oder nach Berlin“ treats the combat operations, „Das Ehrenmal und die Gedenkstätte an“ the history of the site, and „Nach dem politischen Umbruch“ the changes since the political upheaval. The exhibits are complemented by a documentary film, a three-dimensional map of the Seelower Heights, interactive stations as well as an archive and a reference library. Together with two further memorials erected on the orders of the Soviet High Command along Reichsstraße 1, the memorial forms a chain of remembrance from the Oder floodplain to Berlin.