Forest Workers’ Memorial near Oberhof

At the Rondell near Oberhof, where the Rennsteig trail crosses the road, stands the Waldarbeiterdenkmal (Forest Workers’ Memorial), today often also called the Forstarbeiterdenkmal. The sculptor Gerd Ullmann created it in 1981 on behalf of the East German state. It is dedicated to the helpers who removed the damage caused by windthrow and bark beetles between 1946 and 1949.

In June 1946 a severe storm had brought down around 1.6 million cubic metres of spruce in the high forests around Oberhof and Suhl. As forest workers, tractors and horses were in short supply after the war, thousands of volunteers were recruited: men from the surrounding villages, pensioners, women and young people, plus Soviet soldiers for the most dangerous tasks. They cleared the fallen timber, fought the beetles and replanted the bare areas. Strictly speaking, the memorial’s name is therefore inaccurate, as most of the helpers were not foresters.

In front of a kind of grandstand, two figures stand on a pedestal: a young woman holding a seedling and a Soviet soldier with a hoe over his shoulder. Behind them rises a relief panel with three bands of images: at the top the felling of the storm-damaged trees, in the middle the hauling of the timber, at the bottom the women planting. From the grandstand you look out over the forest that grew from this work. The memorial was restored in 2005 and given an information board.