Rostock/Trassenheide (dpa/mv) – At an auction in Rostock this Saturday, a piece of GDR leisure history from the island of Usedom will go under the hammer. The site of the former pioneer camp on the Baltic Sea beach will be auctioned, as the mayor of Trassenheide (West Pomerania-Greifswald), Michael Dumke (electoral community), said on Wednesday. It covers around 10,000 square meters, which corresponds to one and a half soccer fields. “Such properties in the coastal forest have become rare on the Baltic Sea,” said Dumke. The municipality would like to continue to use it for tourism, perhaps with a hotel, as the development plan envisages.

Before 1990, thousands of children from East Germany spent their free time in the convalescent camp. The shack-like buildings have been modernized and still serve as a youth recreation center. According to Dumke, the site on the promenade belongs to a private individual who wants to give it up for reasons of age, and the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks. The minimum bid is given by the Rostocker Norddeutsche land auction AG with 900,000 euros.

According to Dumke, Trassenheide has the most overnight stays on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom after Heringsdorf and Zinnowitz. At the auction, 18 properties from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are to be called up, with minimum bids of around 5.8 million euros. These include real estate on Rügen and a commercial property in Stralsund costing almost three million euros.