New land without war? The conversion of military sites in Brandenburg. An interview and virtual exhibition project

The final withdrawal of the former Soviet armed forces from East Germany on 31 August 1994 symbolically marks the end of the Cold War and is an exceptional event in the history of armed conflict. After almost half a century of occupation, half a million military personnel and their equipment withdrew from East Germany without violence within just under four years. What remains are empty barracks, administrative buildings, military training areas, airports, various contaminated sites and a gap in German remembrance culture. This project aims to examine the social relevance and the political, economic and ecological consequences of this peaceful withdrawal and the conversion of the former military sites.

The project will involve interviews with people from politics, conversion practice and civil society groups on the withdrawal and subsequent civilian conversion of the former military sites. The aim is to explore not only the strategies used to cope with the conversion tasks, but also the personal experiences of the transformation period. The actors of the time will be interviewed both as experts and as contemporary witnesses about the sites and their activities against the backdrop of their biographies of change. The interviews recorded as part of the project will be presented in the form of an online exhibition. In order to obtain a differentiated picture of the significance of the converted areas for society, it will be possible to upload texts and images via the website and to share individual experiences and perceptions of the former military sites in the form of telephone surveys and to submit suggestions for their further use.

Research questions and project objectives

The relevance of Brandenburg's approach to conversion sites goes beyond the mere history of transformation and its local significance. What should be done with ‘military waste’? How are political, market-economic, societal and socio-ecological interests weighed up in the conversion process? Who gets to decide on future functions? How can a process of reconciliation be sustainably shaped after the end of the conflict, starting from the material evidence of the military, and by whom? Collecting the experiences of contemporary witnesses in Brandenburg and placing them in their historical context will be a valuable contribution to transformation research. Although embedded in their political and temporal contexts, the various strategies for coping with the disruptive consequences of the withdrawal also have universal elements and raise universal questions. They can serve as important comparative examples in other regions and post-conflict societies. In addition to its academic aspirations, the project aims to commemorate the peaceful legacy of the non-violent withdrawal of Allied troops from Germany in today's times of crisis through the planned online transfer products and their participatory nature.

The project is being carried out in cooperation with Dr. Irmgard Zündorf from the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam.