Bauen zwischen Vinh und Weimar

After studying structural engineering, Hans-Ulrich Mönnig (born 1943) became part of the Vietnam reconstruction team, a group of specialists from the GDR who planned the reconstruction of the war-ravaged city of Vinh from 1974. In the interview, he talks about how his experiences in Vietnam left a lasting impression on him. The images in the video are from a publication that former members of the reconstruction team produced many years later:

Vinh Working Group 1974–1980. Documentation with photographs based on the group’s own records and information provided by former members of the Vietnam Working Staff at the Ministry of Construction, Vinh Working Group, compiled by Dr.-Ing. Udo Purtak. Supported by the German-Vietnamese Society and the Solidarity Service on the occasion of the visit of specialists from Germany at the invitation of the Union of Friendship Organizations of Nghe An Province in November 2007.

In 1986, Hans-Ulrich Mönnig was appointed Professor of Tropical and Foreign Building at the Hochschule für Architektur und Bauwesen (HAB) in Weimar. He was appointed rector there and campaigned for a reform of the university in 1989/90, but left his post after long disputes with the Ministry of Science. Since then, Hans-Ulrich Mönnig has worked as a freelance engineer and expert consultant and was President of the Thuringian Chamber of Engineers until 2013. In various publications, he has dealt with the restructuring of the HAB into today's Bauhaus University after the "Wende" and collects the voices of former university members who remember their personal experiences as well as the social and political conflicts of the 1990s. Most recently, the reader "Porträts, Ansichten und Brüche" was published by Grünberg Verlag in 2022, based on interviews with over 80 former HAB employees.