Development of the Premises until 1958

After 1945, the SMAD initially used the premises on Lake Griebnitzsee. The GRC presidential building became the headquarters of the “Group of Soviet Armed Forces in Germany” High Command under Marshal Georgi K. Shukov, which later moved to Wünsdorf. The site was secured by picket fences and guards. Like most of the northern part of Babelsberg, it was inaccessible to civilians. After the Soviet army had left the premises in 1952, the “German Administration Academy Walter Ulbricht,” founded in Forst Zinna in 1948, moved in. One year later, the Academy was merged with the “Central School of Judges,” which had been established in Babelsberg Park in 1951 (as of 1952: “German Academy of Justice”) to become the German Academy for State and Law “Walter Ulbricht.” This teaching and research institution had its seat in the premises of the former GRC main depot and in Babelsberg Park. It was subordinated to the Council of Ministers of the GDR and trained the leadership class for the GDR state apparatus up to 1989. Students could not apply for enrollment; they were delegated to the Academy by the Council of Ministers. In April 1958 at the Babelsberg Conference, Walter Ulbricht accused the Academy, in its own buildings, of teaching legal studies under the influence of bourgeois ideology. As a consequence, administrative law, as well as state and legal history, were abolished as independent fields of study.