The bottles from which millions of schoolchildren drank their break milk came from the glassworks in Lusatia. Today, the most modern glassworks in the socialist part of Germany - named - GDR is the setting for erotic photo shoots.
Germany - once the proud nation of high-tech industry and global-exporting factories - now finds itself fringed by tales of what might have been: abandoned innovation parks, ruined industrial halls, and ambitious visions lost to decay.
The box of products
At second break, the box of products from Haidemühl was placed in the classroom, all over the GDR, in thousands of schools and tens of thousands of school classes. Millions of children removed the tin foil lids from their break milk and drank strawberry, vanilla, or chocolate milk.
From bottles, all produced in a factory that was considered the most modern glassworks in the GDR at the time. 345,000 bottles rolled off the production lines at VEB Behälterglas Haidemühl, a ten-minute drive from the lignite-mining metropolis of Spremberg, every day, destined from Lusatia to the entire republic.
More than 1,200 employees ensured a steady supply of supplies for the break milk project, which the SED leadership subsidized with millions of euros annually. A prestige project for the GDR, it demonstrated how the workers' state cared for its youngest citizens.
Backlog in Plan Fulfillment
Until the fall of 1989, everything in Haidemühl continued along its socialist lines. The astonishingly well-preserved accounting system still lies in the extensive buildings of the bottle factory. The minutes of a management meeting from the fall of 1989 meticulously note a "backlog in fulfilling the investment plan" of 1.38 million East German marks.
Young visitors have ripped apart the folders and scattered construction drawings. Everything is damp because the roofs have leaked in the 30 years that the Milk Glass House has stood empty.
The bottle monopoly of GDR schools is so easily accessible through a narrow street corridor that not only a constant stream of tourists curiously wander through the spacious, bright halls, but also professional photographers with their models, posing in front of piles of broken glass for calendars and underwear catalogs.
Even the factory's internal documents are still there after 30 years.
The production hall resembles a nave with its large side windows, which are now missing their glazing, just as the roof is missing its covering. The building, however, still exudes the dignity of almost two centuries of industrial history, which began when entrepreneur Johann Christoph Greiner decided to build a glasswork here, conveniently located near the open-cast lignite mines.
Initially, Haidemühl supplied not only containers, but also lampshades, cylinders, and perfume bottles. These changed hands. Among others, the glassworks were run by Louis Bauermeister, a commercial councilor from Bitterfeld, before it was acquired by Adolf Schiller, a Jewish inventor, entrepreneur, and Berlin city councilor.
Expropriated in the Third Reich
From the outside, the factory still looks very well preserved. After Hitler's rise to power, Schiller was one of the first industrialists to lose his property. His glass factory was Aryanized in 1933, and Schiller was deported to Theresienstadt in January 1943. The collector of antique glassware died there on February 3, 1943, officially of stomach cancer.
His wife Emma also did not survive the concentration camp. The next expropriation followed just two years later. Now the glass factory, along with its extensive real estate, became public property. The GDR invested in it, building a kindergarten, a cultural center, and modern conveyor systems, each capable of producing 60 bottles per minute.
Remnants of former settlement in the ruins
Until 1992, the famous Treuhand sold the site despite outstanding applications for reversion from Adolf Schiller's heirs. The investor went bankrupt, and the approaching Welzow open-cast mine ultimately led to the relocation of the residents of Haidemühl to Spremberg.
What remains is a ruin seemingly from frozen time, broken glass and two chimneys that rise like a memorial. A field of rubble in a ghost town, of whose great past as the mother of GDR school milk bottles, no one remembers anymore.