Rostock-Warnemünde: Von der Kreuzfahrtwerft zum Marinearsenal | Die Nordreportage | NDR Doku

It was one of the most modern shipyards in Europe. You can't thank God that this group of shipyards went bankrupt. Subtitle: Norddeutscher Rundfunk 2023 Now he no longer builds cruisers, but repairs the Gray Fleet. It is not a fact that a Defense Minister is going to buy a shipyard. Why does the Bundeswehr buy a shipyard and what does this mean for a city? 500 people return to work here, almost all of them from the region. We produce a lot more paper. The perspective is practically infinite. They wanted to build the largest cruise ships in the world here. At the MV shipyards in Stralsund, Rostock and Wismar.

The so-called Global class. Almost 10,000 passengers on a ship, for the Asian market. But it will end in January 2022. Insolvency. A half-finished cruise ship is docked in Wismar. After months of back and forth, a buyer was found for the Global Dream. He wants to finish the ship. Subsequently, submarines will be built in Wismar. The city took over the Stralsund location. They want to turn it into a maritime business park. The bankruptcy administrator's biggest problem: the Rostock-Warnemünde shipyard. 1,000 shipbuilders do not know what will happen next for a long time. They were busy building the second giant cruise ship.

In the huge dry dock are half-finished sections of Global 2: almost 8,000 tons of steel. At the beginning of summer 2022 came the news: the federal government is purchasing the Rostock shipyard. He wants to repair warships in the future. It will be cheaper in your own shipyard. The private sector fears for its orders. The director of the naval arsenal - Rainer Sacher. The reaction from Weften and our contractors was comparable to that of 20 years ago. When we introduced this approach in Wilhelmshaven. There were exactly those fears and apprehensions about what would change in the commissioning. But what finally didn't happen.

We continue to award contracts to the commercial sector, just in a different way, specifying a place of execution, as in this dry dock. The federal government paid almost 90 million euros for the Rostock shipyard. They can't start repairing warships right away. First of all, it's time to clean. Nobody wants the finished parts of the Global 2; The only option is to throw them away. At the request of the bankruptcy administrator, the profiles are cut into pieces suitable for blast furnaces. This takes months. 17,500 tons of steel are dismantled. For comparison: the Titanic weighed about that amount in its shell.

Most employees have experienced more than one shipyard bankruptcy. The new director of the sector "Basic services/Immediate repair" is Robert Höpfner. I started at the Wismar shipyard in 1996. At that time I was still up to the Bremen volcano or to the end of the Bremen volcano. After that came Aker Yards... Wadan Yards was there, Nordic Yards, then MV Shipyards and now Naval Arsenal. We look forward to the new projects to come. We already have the first project on the edge of the dock. And soon we will return to repairing gray ships. At the edge of the dock is the Gurnard, a floating dormitory for the German Navy with capacity for 200 people.

Before the blonde can enter the dock, Bundeswehr divers check the dry dock door. It hasn't opened for three years. And no one knows if it still works. Now 300 people return to work at the shipyard. The new jobs are now called service jobs. And for many former shipyard workers that means: lower wages. You will be paid at the utility rate and not at the IG Metall rate. In some cases, these were significantly higher. However, many shipyard workers stayed. First of all, it was important for me to participate in this transformation in this new company, the Arsenal company... ....

That's something completely different. You don't have this opportunity anywhere else and I am interested in the products. I haven't done it before, warships. Neither repaired nor rebuilt. So the decision to stay here was easy. And above all: the perspective is practically infinite. For all the colleagues we have hired, if you wish, this will be your last employer. The fact that a camera crew can accompany the conversion of a shipyard into a naval arsenal is something special. But, of course, there are no unaccompanied shoots or spontaneous interviews. It is early October 2022. Two months after the federal government took power, a large part of the Warnemünde dry dock has been vacated.

Much of it still remains in the covered part of the dock. A piece of the Global 2 fuselage. Workers cut it into four individual pieces that will be lifted through the pavilion roof today. The large gantry crane can lift more than 600 tons. One of the four pieces weighs around 250 tons. You should now quickly exit the shipbuilding room. Then, like the rest, it is cut into pieces suitable for blast furnaces. The new owners of the former MV shipyard finally need dock space. The inscription is still stamped on the gantry crane. He should go. As soon as possible he should say: “Marinearsenal Warnowwerft”.

Warnowwerft, that's what it was called here. A name that still makes many Rostock residents proud. The director also knows it: after all, he studied in Rostock. But in October 2022 there is something more important than the name: they want to open the dock door to completely renovate it later. After years of no movement, the exciting question was whether everything was still working. Strictly speaking, the dry dock door is a retractable floating box. A day earlier, workers had flooded the dock and pumped out the dock gate. It is now floating and two tugboats can drag it to the edge of the shipyard dock.

The Rostock shipyard is the third location of the naval arsenal, after Wilhelmshaven and Kiel. But it is the first place to work on warships with its own dry dock. Until now, the Bundeswehr had to rely on civilian shipyards that had dock capacity. This means: long waiting times, high costs and only one in three ships of the German Navy is operational. Our goal is to make two-thirds of the ships available to the Navy at all times. On the contrary, this means that a third of the ships would be under maintenance by us or contractors. It makes many things easier for us.

Whether in the preparation and awarding of individual orders or order packages. Especially in the context of European procurement law, because we determine the place of performance. That is, here in Warnemünde. This means the Navy has much more control over the work and processes. It is the end of November 2022. Gerd Siegel has been working in the naval arsenal for four weeks. Professional title: “Docks and Ports Manager”. His job today: bringing the liveaboard Gurnrahahn to the dock. He used to plan the construction processes of cruise ships. Now he has to dock a tiny little thing. This is a first sign.

A first task of its own. After many months of preparation, docking a boat that we can work on is like a starting point. The first military task of the shipyard workers was to carry out basic repairs on the blonde. One of the tugboats moves the barge away from the edge of the dock and pushes it toward it. The reason: another towing group passes by; The maneuver seems too risky and is cancelled. When there is room again in the shipping channel, the blond is taken to the dock with both tugs. The blond. When a Bundeswehr warship is in a shipyard, its crew lives in floating accommodation.

The blonde has room for about 200 soldiers and is 35 years old. She seems a little lost on the Warnow shipyard dock. Tied down, secured: that's how it remains today. And then we'll close the dock gate again. Tomorrow we will drain the water and put it in palungs. As of early January 2023, Warnowwerft is still not on the gantry crane. Today is a very important day for shipyard workers and the Bundeswehr. The Gurnard residential ship is now safely on pallets in dry dock. A Bundeswehr fleet service ship is located in the flooded area, but journalists do not know what it was used for.

Maybe just a backdrop for the VIPs arriving in front of the pier. Arsenal director Sacher with Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Prime Minister Schwesig. And a lot of press. Everyone is waiting for the then Minister of Defense, Christine Lambrecht. It is not a fact that, as Minister of Defense, one would buy a shipyard. But it was the right decision to take this path together. January 11, 2023: Opening ceremony of the new naval arsenal. If the State buys a shipyard in the short term, it has to do with the change in the world situation. Because of the war in Ukraine. We can't change the wind, but we can hoist the sails differently.

The shipyard's conversion from a site for cruise ship giants to military use of the shipyard has now been officially completed. No new ships will be built here in the future. It will be a repair shipyard for the Gray Fleet. But it will be months before the first real warship is repaired here. At the beginning of March 2023: The crane does not yet have new markings. The entrance area of ​​the Warnowwerft naval arsenal now looks a little more like the Bundeswehr. And a construction fence protects the area. It has been more than a year since the MV shipyards went bankrupt.

At the site, which occupies more than 70 hectares, there are still thousands of tons of steel from a cruise ship. Its construction began three years ago. The segments are still being dismantled and prepared for scrapping. But most of what was reminiscent of Global 2 is gone. Klaus Paschen is one of the men who helped build it. His new job is called: Task Area Manager, AF-3-3-2. Above all, new. Unusual. But in the end we are happy to have work. It's fun to deal with the things that come your way. We have 500 people working and no one would have believed that the shipyard could do that two years ago.

That we get so many people to work. Of course, new construction is different from repair or maintenance, but that is completely irrelevant. In the end it is work. They are boats that are made and that is the beauty. We can return to work in our work environment. Most of the hallways have already been evacuated. There are new tasks in the pipeline for this. We have the blonde here and we have our dock door. They are currently being shot blasted and coated. And I am very happy that our shipbuilders and other colleagues are back at work. Almost 500 people now work in the new arsenal.

Almost all positions have been filled. MV shipyards employ more than twice as many shipbuilders in Rostock. The fully scaffolded and clad blonde and the dock gate are only dry because the Warnow shipyard construction dock can be divided. They don't allow us to see the work, it's too dangerous, they say. The huge shipyard area has already been almost completely cleared. The 17,500 tons of steel for Global 2 have almost completely been crushed and transported. Shipbuilding Hall 11 is also almost empty. It is only five years old, is more than 400 meters long and cost more than 100 million euros. This is what it was like four years ago: a state-of-the-art semi-automatic panel welding line.

Entire sections of ships on the assembly line. But the bankruptcy administrator did not find a buyer for the facility. The machines have already been scrapped. Here was, at least for a time, the most modern shipbuilding vessel in the world. Built in 2019. And we have clear use plans for the warehouse: workshops will come here for everything that has nothing to do with metal working. This starts with carpentry and upholstery, through weapons systems and operating systems. To what extent will become clear in the coming weeks. This is planned in detail. And then I hope that in the coming years we will have created state-of-the-art workshops for the naval arsenal.

Early June 2023. As the technical jargon goes, the construction fence surrounding the new naval arsenal in Rostock has been improved. The barbed wire is intended to make the area safer. The newly repaired dock gate is back in place. Almost 13 meters high and 54 meters wide. And it goes up and down again. We completely renovated the dock door. New paint, corrosion protection, mechanics on the dock door, pumps and sensors replaced once. All this was commissioned by the MV shipyards in order to deliver a functional dock door to the naval arsenal. The dock door is our most important tool to be able to dock and repair boats.

In this sense: Tool No. 1. Relevance: Priority 1. It is assumed that it will be flooded today. A training boat for combat divers that has so far only been inspected and the blond, which is at least finished on the outside, should swim again. In the Arsenal the sound is similar to that of a shipyard, although very direct. Of course, we have to learn to communicate externally with hierarchies; We produce more paper than before. Sometimes the distances are much longer. Even in large companies, such as shipyards, bureaucracy was not insignificant. The capacityof the Warnow shipyard and the number of shipbuilders currently working in the public sector still exceeds orders.

But first they would have to get used to the new work processes in the German Navy. Pavilion 11 is now clean. And the bankruptcy administrator delivered it on time to the new owner, the Federal Republic of Germany. It will probably be years before workshops are set up here. A section of the Global2 cruise ship still lies at the shipyard site. It was purchased by a scientific institution so that students could become familiar with shipbuilding. It is June 7, 2023. Today they are undocking the Gurnard. Coordinate a little... Gerd Siegel and Klaus Paschen have to go to the inspection. From the outside, the 50-meter-long house looks new.

We have completely reviewed it. That means what you see is the exterior paint. But repair work was also carried out on the exterior cladding and panels were replaced. On board various plumbing systems, flooring, kitchen carpentry work, new kitchens - the whole range. There is still work to be done, but it will not be luxury accommodation. Not even for the commander of the living ship. In the dry dock they removed the ladder tower from the dock, through which the workers could climb to the deck of the blond. And then he says: Water march! In the next few hours, almost 140,000 cubic meters of water will flow into the 320-meter-long pier.

It remains a poignant moment for the dock and port manager. It's heartwarming to see all of this in progress here. I'm happy for the systems, for my colleagues, that everything works as we imagined. My shipbuilding heart is satisfied. And it is a stroke of luck for the Bundeswehr to finally have its own dry dock. We have been planning a dry dock in Wilhelmshaven for almost ten years. This was delayed due to various circumstances. According to current planning, it should be completed in 2031. With this acquisition of the Warnow shipyard we were able to anticipate the situation in the Baltic Sea region...

And that is another background: the changing security policy situation. ...secure a second dry dock. And the naval arsenal could immediately depend on shipbuilders and skilled workers. From our perspective, we can use these employees immediately to achieve diagnostic results. So that we have an overview of what is broken, what needs to be repaired and how much it costs. There is a debate about the lettering on the crane as to whether it is corrosion protection or advertising. For me it's definitely both. Advertising and protection against corrosion. When you move into a new house, screw on your nameplate. To place the order we depend on the Bundeswehr Service Center and the State Construction Administration.

The first order of the shipbuilders - the repair of the Gurnard residential ship - has been successfully completed. Navy officials estimate the repairs cost about half of what they would have paid at a private shipyard. 21 June 2023. A Royal Navy patrol vessel docks at the Naval Arsenal dock. The British Navy ship will be repaired in Rostock. At high speeds vibrations would occur in the drive shaft. The ship participates in a maneuver in the Baltic Sea. The security policy situation has changed dramatically in recent months. This leads to NATO navies being more present in the Baltic Sea to show presence and solidarity with their allies.

Surely in the future we will be able to periodically receive ships from friendly navies into our naval arsenal. The Arsenals, as shipbuilders are now called, must repair the English ship in just a few days. Filming military secrets is not allowed. The same applies to other ships and ships from NATO countries that have stopped in Warnemünde these days. July 19, 2023: A rainy summer day in Rostock. The dock opens again. The naval arsenal has not yet reached “active operation.” Therefore, no real warship can yet be repaired in a planned or unscheduled manner. But today an old frigate docks at the dock: the former Köln.

More than 100 meters long. The ship has served as a fire and leak defense training platform for more than 30 years. Thousands of soldiers train here under realistic conditions to fight fires and how to respond to water intrusion. The former Köln entered service in 1961, but inside she must resemble a modern frigate. She is not allowed to turn. For the head of the task area, Klaus Paschen, a real ship finally arrives at the dock today. This is the first time, he would say in three years, that there is a ship there. There are guidelines for what we have to do.

For this there is a list of jobs in the shipyard. And we will replace pieces of outer skin when necessary. See if necessary elsewhere. And then we repair whatever is necessary, apply coatings, stories like that. A few days later: the former Cologne is safely on the pallets of her in the dry dock. Work on the floating training platform is expected to last about nine months. It is mid-August 2023 and an evening reception is planned at the Naval Arsenal. The crane does not have the new letters yet. It is really a personal concern for me and if I can describe it like this: at the speed with which we bought the shipyard, we did not manage to label the crane.

Then we returned to our usual speed. The Rostock Naval Arsenal is a military security zone. Today there are a particularly high number of positions created. Several hundred guests from state politics and the regional business sector are invited to an evening reception. It's about making contacts. Since August 1, 2022, we have been part of the social, economic, political and social network of the Hanseatic and university city of Rostock. And the surrounding region. And that's what you want to show. In addition, the new naval arsenal must award contracts worth millions each year to external companies in the region. Maybe even at very short notice.

I would like nothing more than for the words “Marinearsenal Warnowwerft” to be written on it. But the Bundeswehr service center and the construction administration have to organize this. They're just big organizational structures. And they are also responsible for rebuilding the shipyard's dining room, which has been closed for years. After all, the building was repaired last year to provide the necessary firefighters for the factory. The new entrance area to the naval arsenal is also taking shape. It will probably be years before the former shipyard is fully converted into a naval arsenal. The first corvette, a true active warship, is scheduled to dock in spring 2024.

Copyright subtitles: NDR 2023