Found another good example what happened to old schützenhouses in eastern Germany. The schützengilde of Stendal (west of Berlin) was founded in 1483, but shooters can be proofed since 1305 to defend the town in case of an attack. Back then they used a crossbow. They were famous for their big schützenfests, each year in May/June. From 1698 till 1939 (begin of WWII) they celebrated the schützenfest, just with a break during the years of WWI (1914-1918). After WWI they restarted with the famous schützenfest in 1924, after the big inflation years. Like already reported, after WWII it was forbidden to shoot in the GDR era, no traditional schützen clubs. They used the building for decades as a youth club. The upper post card shows the situation ca. 1900, big place with ball room, beergarden restaurant and the range. I used a kind of magnifying glass and cropped and enlarged the main schützenhaus in the top picture. The bottom post card shows the same building in 1976, when it was used as a socialistic youth club. The house was torn down in 1998, after the Iron Curtain was gone. And now you ask why they destroyed so many old buildings over there? Well, the politics in the GDR was, when it came to old buildings, that they didn’t care for old buildings when the socialists took over all eastern Germany in 1945. They did not invest money to keep old buildings. They wanted to get rid of history, wasted the buildings and houses till there was no chance anymore to rescue the whole thing. So it was easy to run over with bulldozers and build modern housing areas afterwards. All this traditional shooting stuff, ranges for the privileged society, strange rituals of shooting kings, and, and, and, didn’t match the socialist ideas. So most of all the schützenhouses were in use for other events (if the building survived the bombs of WWII), clubs, companies, political party monuments – but never ever for this the range was built for decades ago.
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