Commemoration

A simple outlier carrying the inscription “February 13^th, 1945” marks this place, where the four-storeyed corner building of 2 Prießnitzstraße had stood until the bomb attacks of that night. It belonged to the society “Haus Wettin Albertinischer Linie e.V.”.

It is typical of the Wilhelminian time that the ground floor was used commercially. According to the directory of 1944, it accommodated hairdresser Alfred Uhlig, cigar merchant Walter Jäkel and basket maker Stoll. Moreover, the widows Käthe Horn and Margarethe Beugel ran the food shop and the plumber’s workshop of their husbands who had been killed in action. The directory doesn’t mention Gustav Schäfer’s butchery and Franz Maty’s shoemaker’s workshop any longer. Wilhelm Patterson’s  well-known “Schiller Coffeehouse” with a terrace opening to the Elbe-tributary Prießnitz was still there.

The words of eye-witness reports describe the impact of a large calibre bomb destroying the basement that served as air-raid shelter. The residents of the house, a wedding party, and the passengers of tram line 11, who had fled here after the alert, were killed in there.

Paul Pfund still recalls that his grandfather Max, who owned the creamery and lived in the adjacent building, “wept bitterly when recounting that back then 70 people had lost their lives and that many victims had been laid out on the pavement and at the driveway to his premises at 6 Prießnitzstraße [omit No. 4].”

It was probably construction workers in the 1950s levelling out the premises who put the outlier at the corner of the street. From the house residents, only Antonia Rosenkranz’s  son survived because he hadn’t been at home during the bomb attack. He lost his entire family in World War II. He, and after him Neustadt resident Hildegard Peukert cared for the memorial up to their deaths.

After the art project “Engravings of war” had marked the outlier with the reminder “Place 58” in the pavement, committed citizens spontaneously laid down flowers here and lit candles on the anniversary of the bomb attacks. Over the years, the bed became more and more littered and overgrown, the outlier was rolled away and smudged.

In 2019, the foundation “Äußere Neustadt” and the City District Council financed the mounting of the outlier and the skirting of the bed. The reminder disappeared in the course of the construction of “Pfunds Höfe” (Pfund’s yards).