Germany Banknotes DDR 10 Mark banknote 1971 Clara Zetkin
State Bank of the GDR - Staatsbank der DDR
Obverse: Portrait of Clara Zetkin (1857-1933), German Marxist theorist, activist and advocate for women's rights & National Emblem of the GDR at upper left.
Reverse: Young female engineer with pen at control console inside the Rheinsberg Nuclear Power Plant & the National Emblem of the German Democratic Republic at left.
Watermark: portrait of Clara Zetkin.
Size 120 x 53 mm.
Printer: VEB Wertpapierdruckerei der DDR, Leipzig.
Texts: Staatsbank der DDR; Zehn Mark der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik.
Wer Banknoten nachmacht oder verfälscht oder nachgemachte oder verfälschte sich verschafft, um Sie in Verkehr zu bringen, wird bestraft.
German Democratic Republic Mark Banknotes
1971-1985 Issue
Upon adoption of the deutsche Mark in East Germany on 1 July 1990, the East German mark was converted at par for wages, prices and basic savings (up to a limit of 4000 Mark per person, except a smaller number for children and a larger number for pensioners). Larger amounts of savings, company debts and housing loans were converted at a 2:1 rate whilst so-called "speculative money", acquired shortly before unification, was converted at a rate of 3:1. These inflated exchange rates were intended by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany as a massive subsidy for eastern Germany.
5 Mark DDR 10 Mark DDR 20 Mark DDR 50 Mark DDR 100 Mark DDR
Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin (née Eissner; 5 July 1857 – 20 June 1933) was a German Marxist theorist, activist, and advocate for women's rights. In 1911, she organized the first International Women's Day.
Until 1917, she was active in the Social Democratic Party of Germany, then she joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and its far-left wing, the Spartacist League; this later became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which she represented in the Reichstag during the Weimar Republic from 1920 to 1933.
The eldest of three children, Clara Zetkin was born Clara Josephine Eissner in Wiederau, a peasant village in Saxony, now part of the municipality Königshain-Wiederau. Her father, Gottfried Eissner, was a schoolmaster and church organist who was a devout Protestant, while her mother, Josephine Vitale, had French roots and came from a middle-class family from Leipzig and was highly educated. Having studied to become a teacher, Zetkin developed connections with the women's movement and the labour movement in Germany from 1874. In 1878 she joined the Socialist Workers' Party (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei, SAP). This party had been founded in 1875 by merging two previous parties: the ADAV formed by Ferdinand Lassalle and the SDAP of August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht. In 1890 its name was changed to its modern version Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
Because of the ban placed on socialist activity in Germany by Bismarck in 1878, Zetkin left for Zurich in 1882 then went into exile in Paris. During her time in Paris she played an important role in the foundation of the Socialist International socialist group. She also adopted the name of her lover, the Russian-Jewish leftist Ossip Zetkin, with whom she had two sons, Kostantin (Kostja) and Maxim. Ossip Zetkin died in 1889. Later, Zetkin was married to the artist Georg Friedrich Zundel, eighteen years her junior, from 1899 to 1928.
In the SPD, Zetkin, along with Rosa Luxemburg, her close friend and confidante, was one of the main figures of the far-left wing of the party. In the debate on Revisionism at the turn of the 20th century they jointly attacked the reformist theses of Eduard Bernstein.
Zetkin was very interested in women's politics, including the fight for equal opportunities and women's suffrage. She developed the social-democratic women's movement in Germany; from 1891 to 1917 she edited the SPD women's newspaper Die Gleichheit[a] (Equality). In 1907 she became the leader of the newly founded "Women's Office" at the SPD. She established the first "International Women's Day" on 19 March 1911, launching the idea of it in Copenhagen, in what later became the Ungdomshuset.
During the First World War Zetkin, along with Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Luise Kähler and other influential SPD politicians, rejected the party's policy of Burgfrieden (a truce with the government, promising to refrain from any strikes during the war). Among other anti-war activities, Zetkin organised an international socialist women's anti-war conference in Berlin in 1915. Because of her anti-war opinions, she was arrested several times during the war, and in 1916 taken into "protective custody" (from which she was later released on account of illness)
In 1916 Zetkin was one of the co-founders of the Spartacist League and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) which had split off in 1917 from its mother party, the SPD, in protest at its pro-war stance. In January 1919, after the German Revolution in November of the previous year, the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) was founded; Zetkin also joined this and represented the party from 1920 to 1933 in the Reichstag. She interviewed Lenin on "The Women's Question" in 1920.
Until 1924 Zetkin was a member of the KPD's central office; from 1927 to 1929 she was a member of the party's central committee. She was also a member of the executive committee of the Communist International (Comintern) from 1921 to 1933. In 1925 she was elected president of the German left-wing solidarity organisation Rote Hilfe. In August 1932, as the chairwoman of the Reichstag by seniority, she was entitled to give the opening address, and used it to call for workers to unite in the struggle against fascism.
Recipient of the Order of Lenin (1932) and Order of the Red Banner (1927).
When Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party took over power, the Communist Party of Germany was banned, following the Reichstag fire in 1933. Zetkin went into exile for the last time, this time to the Soviet Union. She died there, at Arkhangelskoye, near Moscow, in 1933, aged nearly 76. Her ashes were placed in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, by the Moscow Kremlin Wall, near the Red Square.
Rheinsberg Nuclear Power Plant
Rheinsberg Nuclear Power Station was the second nuclear reactor in East Germany after the Rossendorf Research Reactor, and the first nuclear power reactor in East Germany. It was built close to the city of Rheinsberg on the Stechlinsee. The power station was one of the first generation of demonstration power reactors.
The project commenced in 1956, and construction began January 1, 1960. First criticality followed on March 11, 1966 (the reactor was not pressurised at that time however). Full start-up did not take place until May 9, and commercial power production didn't begin until October 11, 1966.
The single pressurized water reactor was of Soviet design - type VVER-210. Gross power of the station was 70 MWe, but 8 MWe was required to run plant systems, so net output to the grid was 62 MWe. Gross power output was subsequently raised to 75 MWe and then 80 MWe as operating experience increased. Cooling water was taken from the Nehmitzsee and by a special discharge channel was discharged into the Stechlinsee. The plant accumulated 130,000 hours of operating time.
Before German reunification in 1990 put an end to operations the power station was shut down due to safety problems. An end-of-life shutdown in 1992 had been scheduled in any case.
Since 1995 the plant has been undergoing decommissioning activities conducted by the company previously operating the plant during its active life (Energiewerke Nord GmbH). Radioactive materials are being moved to a temporary storage facility.
The area is under consideration for either site "greening" or conversion into an industrial complex once the plant has been dismantled. The worst accident occurring at the plant during operation was classified as an INES 2-level event. A tear in tubing in a cooling circuit was noticed quickly and was repaired. In 2011, Deutschlandradio Kultur produced a radioplay about this event. "Rheinsberger Restlaufzeit" combines a fictional story with original sound clips of the former spokesman of the nuclear power plant as he reconstructs the events of 1973.