Horst Baeseler was born in
Dresden in the southern part of what was then central Germany. His father was a pharmacist. He attended school at the city's prestigious
King George Gymnasium, but his school days were prematurely terminated in February 1945 when the school
was destroyed. The
war ended in May 1945 and Dresden found itself in the
Soviet occupation zone of what remained of Germany, controlled by the
Soviet military. Four years later the entire "zone" was subsequently relaunched as a stand-alone East German state under
Soviet sponsorship, the
German Democratic Republic formally founded in October 1949. Baeseler trained between 1945 and 1948 as a gardener at the
Paul Hauber Tree School in
Dresden-Tolkewitz. He then started work as a gardener, focusing on herbaceous shrubs and trees. He also continued to train, now with Johann Greiner at the Horticultural Academy in
Pillnitz. In 1951 he took a part in a machinery training course for gardeners in
Quedlinburg. Greiner and Baseler later worked together on the Stalinstadt Arts and Sports centre in
Eisenhüttenstadt. Between 1952 and 1955 Baeseler studied at the
Humboldt University of Berlin, emerging with an
engineering degree in
Landscape planning. For the next three decades he was involved in a series of high-profile East German construction projects. ==References==