Waldsiedlung
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The Waldsiedlung (forest settlement) in Wandlitz (Barnim) north of Berlin was a secured housing area in which highest functionaries of the SED lived, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany that ruled East Germany from 1949 to 1989.
It was about two square kilometers in size and off-limits up to the German reunification. Because of geographical proximity to Wandlitz the area was colloquially called Wandlitz among general populace as a synonym for the Waldsiedlung, or later Volvograd after the Swedish cars used.
The area actually has always belonged to the city of Bernau. Waldsiedlung was built between 1958 to 1960 according to resolution of the SED Politbüro and was subordinated to the head department of protection of individuals of the Ministry for public security (Stasi). The members of the Politbüro could be secured in Waldsiedlung better than in the mansion at Berlin-Pankow's Majakowskiring. Cause of the settlement plans was the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
In 1960, American spy satellites spotted a new construction site about fifteen miles north of Berlin. The area appeared solidly walled off, and the way in which the rows of excavations were configured suggested that what was being built was a missile-launching site. CIA headquarters in Washington flogged the CIA team in Berlin to find out exactly what was going on. The site was exceptionally well guarded, and CIA Berlin was nearing despair when one of the thousands of refugees at Marienfelde disclosed that he was the architect of the project. From him the CIA learned that it wasn’t a missile site at all, it was Walter Ulbricht’s present to himself and his Politbüro colleagues: a self-contained residential compound near Lake Wandlitz, on the edge of the Bernau forest.
This was no rusticated park, with houses artfully scattered over the grounds. Like Levittown and its imitators in postwar America, the Wandlitz houses were lined up in strict rows (which is what the satellites had observed) and were identical in floor plan. They all had three stories (the third being for servants), a picture window in the living room, beige stucco on the outer walls. Communal amenities included a swimming pool with a retractable glass roof,a banquet hall, tennis courts, a rifle range, and special shops with items not available to ordinary East Germans. Not all of Ulbricht’s colleagues were pleased about moving fifteen miles out into the countryside. Erich Mielke, who as minister of state security was chief of the Stasi, did not like being separated so far from his drinking buddies in the Pankow district of Berlin, and he had enjoyed living in Hermann Göring’s old house. But Mielke was given no choice, and he found a consolation in the move. The basement of his new house was large enough to permit him his favorite recreation, besides drinking: pistol target shooting. If he could have managed to drink and shoot at the same time, one gathers he’d have been totally content. While Mielke was installing his target range, other Politburo members found more conventional ways of personalizing their homes. For Otto Grotewohl, who had been a colleague and rival of Ulbricht’s ever since the first post-WWII East German regime, it was expensive carpets and 16th and 17th century furnishings. Erich Honecker was Politburo member for security.
The whole thing was surrounded by a double concrete wall about 12 feet high and guarded by 160 carefully selected troops from the Free German Youth, the GDR’s version of Moscow’s Young Pioneers or the Hitler Jugend. Honecker was a generation younger than Ulbricht and Grotewohl, and his tastes were more modern. He had managed, on his Workers’ and Peasants’ salary, to acquire an impressive art collection, including a Picasso. Deputy Premier and Minister of Defense Willi Stoph, a former artillery man, covered his walls with antique swords and firearms. Ulbricht was the most modest and bourgeois of the lot, his taste running to comfortable up-holstered sofas and lace doilies on the tables, although he did have Venetian glass mosaics installed in his dining-room floor.
The area perimeter wasn't immediately recognizable from the outside. The outer ring consisted of a wire mesh fence, on which there were signs signifying a 'game research area'. The inner ring, which was however enclosed by the outer ring only partially, was surrounded with a two meter high green safeguard wall and could be entered only with special identification document. Three of the four gates were guarded by soldiers of the MfS and fourth by the Felix Dzerzhinsky Watch Regiment. 31 posts of the watch regiment secured from the inside the approx. 5 km long wall.
Waldsiedlung consisted in the inner ring of 23 single family houses with in each case 180 square meters surface area. There was among other things a swimming pool, a club house with cinema and restaurant, a sales office, in which beside high-quality products from GDR also western goods could be bought in a limited fashion in exchange for GDR currency, a market garden, a health center, a pistol shooting range, a sports field with tennis facilities as well as social building for employees and guard staff.
From 1970s on there was a four lane motorway connection to Waldsiedlung (however publicly usable). As the leader used stretch limos of the Volvo 200 Series, the "Waldsiedlung" compound was called Volvograd by the population.
In the era of Erich Honecker the cooks were required to produce Gourmet-level offerings. In addition to GDR food of highest quality also some products were imported such as Beaujolais and Seltzer water from West Berlin. An assortment of staff took care of all aspects of daily living.
In late 1989 the inhabitants had to leave the settlement according to the resolution of the GDR government under Prime Minister Hans Modrow. Since 1990 a rehabilitation clinic has occupied the area.
