[6] Station 6 - The community centre

Description

The community centre was built at a time when meetings and rallies were the order of the day.
On 12 February 1936, the digging of the foundations began with the ground-breaking ceremony. Under the guidance of foreman Lutz, the Wannweiler clubs moved 520 cubic metres of earth themselves in just 10 days. These included the choral society, sports club, rifle club, volunteer fire brigade, NSDAP formations and private individuals ‘that nobody would have thought of’. The building was inaugurated on 6 December 1936. Prior to this, meetings had to be held in the halls of the Zum Ochsen inn, the Linde or the Hirsch. In the invitation, which is signed by local group leader Bohnet and Mayor Zanzinger, the building is called the ‘Wannweil community centre’. The furnishings at that time have been forgotten over time and should be mentioned again here: The large hall measured 27.24 x10.24 metres and was 4.10 metres high. An infant school in two rooms totalling 122 m² was separated off in the large hall. The Hitler Youth and Jungvolk had 61 square metres in the basement. The Bund Deutscher Mädel and Jungmädelbund had 50 m². There was also a home economics school, an ironing and teaching room, a work classroom and a reading and meeting room. A new feature was a public bathroom with two single baths and a shower room. There was also an office for the Wannweil branch of the NSDAP and an office for the NSV (National Socialist People´s Welfare Organisation). Two children´s nurses‘ flats, a nurses’ flat and a caretaker´s flat were located on the upper floor. After deducting voluntary contributions totalling RM 11,213, the building costs still amounted to RM 102,973. The debt burden of RM 25,000 was covered by the company´s current income.

In the period up to the collapse of the National Socialist tyranny, our community centre was also known as the Adolf Hitler House. It saw many, far too many uniforms during these unfortunate years. Wehrmacht uniforms, for example, when the convalescing soldiers from the Reutlingen military hospitals were given a coffee or brown uniforms when ‘Goldfasane’ (NSDAP members with a golden party badge) met. But after 1945, uniforms were worn again. When senior French officers visited their occupying soldiers, there were of course representations and celebrations in the community centre. In 1948, the first family doctor to live here, Dr Kuno Strohm, set up his practice in the former party rooms. An alternative classroom for the primary school was also set up. From 1946, the kindergarten continued to be run by the Protestant church in the existing rooms. The children´s nurse Emma Schallenmüller, who had been dismissed in 1938, was reinstated. She had been dismissed because she was working for the church and not for the party in her free time. The kindergarten continued to operate here until 1971 and then moved to the neighbouring building newly built by the Protestant church. In the 1950s, a film projection room was added to the north gable. The ‘Filmbühne Wannweil’ was built and opened on 18 November 1950 with the film ‘Arabian Nights’. It was the first and only cinema in the town. It was run by the Gaiser and Mornhinweg families at weekends. With the demise of cinemas in the 1970s, this film theatre was also abandoned.
Master carpenter Albert Lentmaier´s topping-out speech from 1936 was harmless for the time, and the following verses can continue to accompany our community centre for us and future generations:
‘Yet we also created in association and spared not labour nor diligence,
the prize is not due to our hands, the blessing must come from above.
God gave the work the prosperity he may in his great goodness
continue to protect this house and be merciful to its inhabitants.

The house remained unchanged for almost 25 years. Under Mayor Rüdiger Scherret, the interior was thoroughly renovated and refurnished. The second reopening was celebrated on 15 April 1972. The first two caretaker couples should also be mentioned by name. For 31 years, until 1974, Karl and Berta Rein looked after the house, followed by Heinrich and Maria Hauerwas until 1982.

When the parish hall was inaugurated for the third time in 2006 following a major renovation and conversion project, the carefully modernised exterior of the building was certainly unrecognisable inside. 
The community centre, which was no longer named after a person, gradually became too small for large events organised by the growing community. The plans for a multi-purpose hall next to the Uhland School took shape with the start of construction in 1985 and the hall was inaugurated on 4 April 1987. It also became the gymnasium of the Uhland School and was available for sports events, clubs and private parties. It was an obvious and unobtrusive choice to call it the ‘Uhlandhalle’.

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