CityWar

Björn Gogalla & Reiko Kammer

The Gefechtsübungszentrum (GÜZ) military base of the German army is located in the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide. On the military training ground is the construction site of the training compound “Urbaner Ballungsraum” Schnöggersburg. Soon, the German armed forces and their NATO allies will begin performing exercises here in house-to-house and street combat. To this purpose, a typical infrastructure of an urban metropolitan area will be built, complete with 520 buildings, streets, and plazas, as well as an industrial area including a waterworks, electrical power station, and an airport.

The enclosure simulates a normal small-sized city. The scenery, however, stands for a very real situation: war begins here! The artificial city is supposed to serve as a so-called “critical infrastructure” for the Federal Army, and is built to train for armed conflict in densely populated urban areas. There’s a risk that the Federal Army will increasingly become deployed in war missions and will eventually also be used domestically, to suppress social unrest.