The withdrawal of the Soviet forces - who occupied East Germany from 1945 until 1991 - took three years to return half a million people in the former Soviet Union effectively putting an end to the Cold War.
They left behind them entire military deserted towns, airports, training camps, accommodations with schools, gyms, cinemas and theaters. Around the cities huge areas were left abandoned and over the last 20 years were partly absorbed again by the nature. Another part of these places was as instead reused, founding a new life and today it is often difficult to locate evidence of the Soviet presence. Some barracks have become apartments, many airports have become solar fields and in the universe of all the possible changes there are many unique cases, which this project wants to tell.
This project aims is to freeze the time 20 years after the withdrawal of the Red Army.
A part of the less known German history is presented in a photographic form, from the small watchtower on the border with the West of Schneekopf (Thüringen) to the port of Mukran (Rügen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), where a part of the Soviet Army left for Kaliningrad.
It is a matter of public interest to preserve this part of history that is crumbling, which gradually leaves fewer traces in people, which in the first years after 1994 has been completely neglected and now is in a state of decay, with the real risk of seeing completely erased the traces Soviet on German soil.
The inclination for the investigation and for the photographic and documentary research led first to explore the abandoned cities and then to document the other places associated with this story, the areas already restructured, but also the various monuments, documentation centers as well as the Soviet cemeteries scattered around the country.
For many years Germany has shown itself able to communicate with its past, including through strict self-criticisms, safeguarding in a very firm way the memory of the places of its history, as for the events around the Second World War as for those relating the Cold War.
We believe, for logistical, economical and structural difficulties, that unfortunately this will not be equally possible for the story of the Red Army in East Germany. Except for some exceptions and the institutionalized Documentation Centers, most of the places visited by this project in fact are already in an advanced state of decomposition, or has already been converted, erasing the traces of the Soviet Union.
EXHIBITION TOUR
Gedenkstätte Deutsche Teilung (Marienborn), Roter Ochse (Halle /Saale), Kröpeliner Tor - Geschichtswerkstatt (Rostock), Berlin Art Week | Mein Blau e.V. (Berlin), Festhausspiel Hellerau (Dresden), Prora Zentrum (Rügen)
BOOK
Independently published by ZED Fotografie e.V. (Am Friedrichshain 12, 10407 Berlin), 2015.
Hardcover, 96 Pages, 198 colour pictures. English and German Texts by Stefano Corso/ Dario-Jacopo Laganà, Dr. Sabine Kuder, Prof. Silke Satjukow. ISBN: 978-3-9817466-0-0
Hardcover, 96 Pages, 198 colour pictures. English and German Texts by Stefano Corso/ Dario-Jacopo Laganà, Dr. Sabine Kuder, Prof. Silke Satjukow. ISBN: 978-3-9817466-0-0
Project webiste: www.wewillforgetsoon.com
