Qualla: Treuenbrietzen

Treuenbrietzen: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scheibchen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Four men walked out of a sandpit near the village of Nichel on 23 April 1945. One hundred and twenty-seven did not. The 131 who had been marched into the woodland that day were Italian soldiers — men who, after Italy left the Axis in 1943, had refused to keep fighting for Germany and had been stripped of prisoner-of-war status and put to work instead. For two years they had made ammunition in the factories of Treuenbrietzen. The Red Army had taken the town two days earlier and then briefly lost it again; in the gap, German troops shot them. Four survived.

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Image: Scheibchen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Treuenbrietzen: Faithful Brietzen

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Schles. Lichtdruck- u. graph. Kunstanstalt Fabian & Co., Breslau, Public domain. The name is a medieval compliment that stuck. Brietzen appears in writing in 1217, and in 1348 an impostor claiming to be the long-dead Margrave Waldemar surfaced in Brandenburg and made a serious bid for the margraviate. Brietzen refused to let him inside its walls, holding inst...

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Image: Schles. Lichtdruck- u. graph. Kunstanstalt Fabian & Co., Breslau | Public domain

Treuenbrietzen: Werk A and Werk S

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Knut Arne Gjertsen, CC BY-SA 3.0. Arms manufacturing arrived in the 1930s and reshaped everything. Dr. Kroeber & Sohn, formerly a maker of steam and gas gauges and small engines, turned to aircraft engine parts for the Luftwaffe. Treuenbrietzener Metallwarenfabrik ran two cartridge factories — Werk Sebaldushof, k...

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Image: Knut Arne Gjertsen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Treuenbrietzen: The Week the Front Passed Twice

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0 de. Soviet troops of the 51st Guards Tank Regiment, part of the 1st Ukrainian Front, took Treuenbrietzen on 21 April 1945. During those first hours a Soviet officer was shot. German forces — Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS — pushed back into the town and held it briefly before retreating for...

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Image: Unknown author | CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Treuenbrietzen: Six Graves and a Date

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Krueger, CC BY-SA 3.0 de. The historic centre came through the war essentially intact, which gives Treuenbrietzen the disconcerting quality of a town whose worst week left no visible mark on its architecture. The evidence is in the cemeteries. Six mass graves lie at the Triftfriedhof. The Italian dead wer...

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Image: Krueger | CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Treuenbrietzen: Feldheim Makes Its Own

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, CC BY-SA 3.0. One of the villages inside the municipal boundary has become unexpectedly famous. Feldheim, among the smallest places in the municipality, built its own wind turbines and a biogas plant and then did the harder thing: it laid its own electricity and heating network rather than fee...

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Image: A.Savin | CC BY-SA 3.0