From the beer dream to bitterness: What happened to the GDR breweries?

From the beer dream to bitterness: What happened to the GDR breweries?

The beer culture in northeastern Germany tells an exciting story that goes back to the GDR era. The breweries in Neubrandenburg, Lübz and Schwerin in particular experienced a change that is closely linked to the political change and the founding of the Treuhandanstalt. Today it is clear how different the paths of these traditional companies were after the Wall came down.

The Northern Courier reports that the Treuhandanstalt was founded in 1990 to privatize GDR companies. During this time, it took over around 8,000 combines and companies that employed a total of four million people in the East. But the breweries faced special challenges: the sales market played a subordinate role in sales, which offered the various companies little stability.

From combine to GmbH

Neubrandenburg was a beer city until 1996 and had a long brewing tradition. As early as 1839 there were 13 small breweries there. The Janssen Brewery and the Bechly Brewery competed until the largest regional brewery was founded in 1912. Unfortunately, expropriation after the Second World War led to a realignment that gave rise to the Neubrandenburg Drinks Combine.

In March 1991, Peter Rothe was able to take over the beverage combine, but this was associated with massive losses. As the Four-gate city reported, the losses totaled 31.5 million DM. While the Treuhand provided 4 million DM in funding, economic reality meant that the Nordbräu brewery had to cease operations in 1996. This was a tragic example of the failure of the political structures of the time. The listed brewery building was demolished, marking the final end of an era.

The different paths of the breweries

In comparison, the breweries in Lübz and Schwerin operated more autonomously. While the Schwerin brewery was sold by the Treuhand to the Swedish company Blond AB in 1991, the Lübzer brewery found a partner in the Holsten brewery in 1991 and was able to modernize its technology. This led to the Lübz brewery eventually becoming the Mecklenburgische Brewery Lübz in 2004, which today belongs to the Carlsberg Group, and was able to produce around 950,000 hectoliters of beer in 2024. At the same time, the Schwerin brewery, which was converted into a new production facility in Wüstmark in 1994, did not achieve long-term success via the Oettinger Group, producing 500,000 hectoliters in 2009, and ceased operations in 2011.

The Treuhandanstalt, viewed by many East Germans as a symbol of economic disappointment and loss, played a key role in this context. It was dissolved in 1994 with a deficit of 260 billion German marks. Critics emphasize that the massive layoffs and closures that accompanied privatization severely affected the population and left many breweries in the region behind. Only the Stralsund brewery remains independent for so long and defies the challenges of the market, while many others have been taken over by large corporations.

The last decades have shown that the historiography of the breweries in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is closely linked to the upheavals of German unity. Even 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, trust remains an emotional and controversial topic. The different fates of the breweries remind us how closely politics and economics are intertwined. However, there are already hopes for investors in the future who could continue the art of brewing in Neubrandenburg in order to keep the tradition of beer alive in the region.