The Pirna turbomachinery plant (Strömungsmaschinenwerk Pirna)
Pirna was chosen as the production site for aircraft engines in the GDR. Plant 802 (VEB Entwicklungsbau Pirna) was built for this purpose in Pirna-Sonnenstein from autumn 1954. The administrative and production facilities partly utilised the buildings of the old Sonnenstein sanatorium and nursing home, but large parts were newly built to the east of the castle park along Struppener Straße. Particularly striking were the huge engine test stands (not preserved), the construction building (preserved, Schlosspark 15 a - 15 c) and the dining hall (preserved, Dr.-Benno-Scholze-Straße 18).
At the same time, the neighbourhood south of Struppener Straße grew with flats for the plant employees. The first new jet engine, designated "Pirna 014", was already running on the test bench here in autumn 1956. After the GDR leadership decided to dissolve the aviation industry in 1961, the existing production facilities were mainly used to manufacture gas turbines, power transmitters for locomotives and fluid couplings in the following decades. The plant, which initially operated as VEB Gasturbinenbau und Energiemaschinenentwicklung Pirna and from 1970 as VEB Strömungsmaschinen Pirna, was the second largest industrial plant in Pirna until 1990 with around 2,000 employees. In the course of political change, the company was transformed into Strömungsmaschinen Pirna GmbH, but went bankrupt in 1995 as a result of the economic upheaval following German reunification. Large parts of the vacant buildings were then demolished. They made way for the new Pirna Clinical Centre, which opened in 2007.
The aviation industry in the GDR
During the Second World War, there was a veritable technological boom in the aviation industry. The East German aviation industry played a key role in the development of modern construction methods and the introduction of the first operational jet aeroplanes. After the end of the war in 1946, skilled workers from the aircraft construction industry and their families were taken to the Soviet Union as part of the reparations programme. They developed aircraft types primarily for military purposes and passed on their knowledge locally. From 1951, the aircraft manufacturers returned to Germany. In 1952, the GDR decided to set up aircraft production in the Dresden area. The cost-intensive prestige project was intended to demonstrate the superiority of the socialist economic idea on the one hand and to give highly qualified aircraft manufacturers the prospect of staying in the GDR on the other. One of the aims was to build the first German passenger jet aeroplane. The first of several prototypes of the "152" completed its maiden flight in Dresden at the end of 1958. Technical and organisational difficulties, a lack of profitability, the growing technological gap to aircraft production in Western countries and the crash of a prototype (1959) led to the dissolution of the aviation industry in 1961.