"STALIN CITY," THE CITY THAT DISAPPEARED: In Die Zeit this week, in an attempt to make sense of the 50th anniversary of Stalin's death, Michael Allmaier has a fantastic story on the East Germann town formerly known as Stalinstadt. The article is called "The Forbidden City." What follows is a series of highlights from Allmaier's excellent article.

Built from the ground up after the war as a vast residential complex for workers in the iron industry, Stalin City received its name on May 7th, 1953, two months after Stalin's death. East Germany's tardiness in honoring their "liberator" was so embarrassing, however, that a newspaper account resurrected him for a ceremony in honor of the new name. "The (usual) solemn seriousness of his countenance gives way to a generous, fatherly appearance. The wind gently plays with the grey streaks of his hair. Green-ringed spring flowers lift their heads toward him, etc." Allmaier claims that everyone knew he was already dead, but this didn't stop the officially ardent atheists from channeling his ghost for the ceremony.

In 1956, when Kruschev secretly criticized the "personality cult" surrounding the late dictator, the name "Stalin" became a burden in communist circles. But Stalin City flourished. Culturally and architecturally, it became the pride of East Germany. Allmaier records a poem written by a cultural attache from the People's Republic of North Vietnam (not much better in German than in my choppy translation):

I sing to you of Stalin City,
I announce a golden age: what is once attained
Shall not be wrested from human hands.

At the 22nd Party Congress in Moscow in 1961, a decision is made to erase Stalin from communist memory, and on the night of November 7, teams of party functionaries fan out to remove all traces of the name of the "liberator" from public buildings and offices. Stalin City was combined with the older neighboring town of Fuerstenberg and given the name it carries today, Eisenhuettenstadt, or "Iron Foundry City." A slight improvement.

Allmaier tells several stories that are particularly poignant: on November 11, while he was making a beer delivery, Hans Lang made a joke related to the sudden erasure of the city's name by saying that if the Party keeps going in the same direction, the city will be renamed once more as "City of the Great Criminal." His discussion partner told the state security police (Stasi) about the remark, and Lang spent almost three years in jail. Attempts to uncover the city's history ruined the career of one Iron Foundry City resident in the 1980s.

Today, Iron Foundry City is as depressed as the rest of East Germany: 20% unemployment, decaying buildings, an exodus of young people. In the end, Allmaier argues, the crumbling city pays a grim tribute to Stalin himself.

Pictures of Eisenhuettenstadt can be found at the city's official website, here. This map shows you where the city is (ESE of Berlin, on the Polish border, just south of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder). This page shows you the leaders of the CDU in the city, and this page gives you some nice pictures of buildings on the river.