Schorfheide Documentary

I sat last night and watched a 90-minute documentary piece off RBB (the Berlin public-TV network).  The topic?  "Die Schorfheide" (The Hunting Ground of the Powerful).  You can click on the link and go and watch the video.  It is entirely in German (I wish they'd put sub-titles on it and ship it to the History Channel).

So, here is the basic story.  As WW II came to a close and Germany was divided up, East Germany was saddled up with the Communist Party.  The Party elite are strangely made up of....hunters.

About an hour's drive north of Berlin lays this heavily forested area....referred to as Schorfheide.  Size-wise...the region is about half the size of the entire city of Berlin.  You could probably stand in the middle of it (at least in 1965) and walk in any direction for three miles and not see much in terms of civilization.

Back prior to WW I....it was the official woods of the Kaiser (Wilhelm II).  He'd take groups of people out and hunt for an entire afternoon.

After WW I, it became the hunting region for the Nazis....well, mostly for Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring.  Most of the Nazi crowd weren't into hunting.  Goring kept a major house on the hunting grounds and spend a fair amount of time there.

After WW II.....it became part of DDR's state-supported hunting property, with Erich Honecker and Günter Mittag being noted a great deal as guests.

The documentary piece from RBB covers this period from the late 1940s, until the late 1980s, when DDR ended.  A lot of video covers the 'hunts' by the leadership of DDR.

At some point, it just kinda hit me....here were the top dozen leaders of DDR (Honecker in the middle), and they were all in hunter's clothing, with hunting rifles, and on a hunt.

It's an odd thing.  You can go to almost every country in the western world for the past sixty years and line up the top dozen leaders of that country....for any period....and the odds of all twelve being hunters?  Zero chance.  Yet, here was DDR.....run entirely for a forty-year period....by hunters.

If you look at most European leaders over the past fifty-odd years....some were golfers.....some were into swimming.  Some were into fishing.  Some had a passion for cars.  Some had a love for horseback riding.  But you just don't find anyone much that have a passion for hunting, except here in DDR, and with Erich Honecker and his crowd.

The video clip at the link is 90 minutes long and strictly in German, but is worth reviewing for the landscape and the historical video attached to it.  I find it odd....they had some PR guy with them and made video of the hunts, and the interaction of the hunters.  It's almost something out of a Nazi-propaganda rule-book.  It's worth watching.