247:, Chris photographed a section of the border in lush countryside that belies the bitter memory of a young East German man, Heinz-Joseph Grosse. A maintenance worker entrusted with the operation of an excavator right at the border line, on 29 March 1982 Grosse noticed the absence of the border guards and drove his machine across the death strip and over the anti-vehicle ditch to the outer fence. By resting the excavator's bucket on the fence he was able to climb over. Ahead of him lay a steep incline of 50 metres (164 ft) up to the legal border, the near side of a West German road. However, just halfway up the incline, Grosse was shot dead by two guards at a range of 60 metres (197 ft). In 1996, the former guards were brought to trial for this incident, and in a controversial judgement were given only suspended sentences of 15 months. Chris says, "Part of the moral challenge for re-unified Germany lies in how to allocate blame: is it the managerial 'desk killers' who issued the orders or the front-line soldiers following those orders who should be punished? Many in eastern Germany see the border guards simply as conscripts who were doing their duty." Perhaps the eastern view is a pragmatic approach to the need to move on and forget, since a large proportion of the population found ways of surviving by cooperating with the regime, at least outwardly: are they all to feel guilt? Western Germans, who were always permitted to see and discuss the border, are less generous towards those who did the shooting. "This is another of the border's ironies, considering that easterners were the targets of the bullets."
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opportunity to make much of the border an international wildlife sanctuary, which has become a popular tourist attraction, especially for cyclists. "Much of the route is through gently undulating terrain, ideal for cycling, and I was lucky to have only one rainy day in my two and a half weeks; it was more a problem of guarding against sunburn." Excellent guide books are available, with maps showing the locations of the border museums, remnants of fortifications, and the remaining watchtowers. Some museums are set up like research centres, with professional archivists and curators. Others focus on exhibiting artefacts saved before the border was dismantled. Among them is the
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are and what perspective you're taking at a particular time". The ultimate fault-line between state and mixed economies, freedom and fascism, American and Soviet rivalry? Germany's punishment for the war? A moral dilemma for would-be escapers and border guards? We will continue to debate these issues for decades, but one thing most people agree on is that without the fortified border, the East German experiment would not have been possible.
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Next week, the German people will commemorate in their own ways the fall of the inner German border and the re-unification of their country. But what are
English-speakers to make of it all? Chris's view is that "there's no one way of seeing the border – there are so many angles, depending on who you
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How was Chris's interest in the border sparked? He says, "for anyone over the age of about 35, the world had been dominated by the confrontation between east and west, an apparently permanent threat of nuclear war hanging over our heads. The border was the front line in the Cold War, with an eerie
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like the bursting of a dam; young people standing on the wall and attacking it with any tool they could lay their hands on. These iconic moments changed the world and appeared to give a sense of closure to a brutal and chaotic century. However, they overshadowed the almost simultaneous fall of a
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in
Zicherie-Böckwitz, owned and run by a farmer from the Western border community. The kilometre-long path displays an original command watchtower and faithfully reconstructed stretches of the two border fences and the Berlin-style wall that divided the village of Zicherie from its neighbour
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Ironically, while the border left a deep physical scar across some of the most beautiful landscape in
Germany, it was protected from the industrial and urban development that compromised much of Europe's natural environment in the post-war period. Germans from east and west have seized the
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resemblance to the prison camps of World War II – the watch towers, the search lights, the dogs, the barbed wire, the double fences. I wanted to give young people a balanced account of what it was really like, and to fill in details that older people may not be aware of."
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process. "I was prepared for a lot of work, and it's just as well. The reviewers were generous in their praise, but brought up problems with images, citations, and lots of little stylistic matters. Then we realised it was far too large for an article in
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The killings started in 1945. Between then and 1989, more than a thousand people died trying to cross to the West – shot by East German border guards, or killed by mines or through drowning in rivers or the sea. In
Schifflersgrund,
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550:) ended with suspended sentences between 12 and 18 month, but a lot where even acquitted. Only a few cases had sentences of more than 5 years. Most trials outside of Berlin didn't get any media coverage at all. Regards, --
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Thank you for this nice article and the exceptional work on the inner border. Our German article doesn't measure up to this. I did a lot of work on the victims of the Berlin wall in de:wp. One little thing: You say
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Chris returned from
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Thank you, Blunt. Interesting points. I'll ask ChrisO now whether he thinks "highly" should be deleted, or whether a more major change is required.
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An annotated illustration of Heinz-Josef Grosse's attempted escape route; the scene is now part of the
Schifflersgrund Border Museum in Thuringia.
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and would have to be reduced by more than half, with excess content split off into daughter articles. Unusually, quite a few
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route followed the former inner German border (left side) from the Baltic Sea south to the border with
Czechoslovakia.
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Schematic plan of the killing, based on local mapping and display materials at the
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The judgment was not as controversial as one might think. Most trials against former border guards (called
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Böckwitz. Between wall and fences is a replica of what became known as "the death strip".
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Next Monday, 9 November, will mark 20 years to the day since the dramatic opening of the
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barrier that was more than ten times its length and considerably more elaborate: the
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because of a lack of reviews! Please consider reviewing one or two. :-)
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Gesetz über die
Staatsgrenze der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik
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The extraordinary events of
November 1989 are commemorated with a
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was broadcast to stunned audiences around the globe – footage of
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I'll echo the above, this was an *excellent* read, well done.
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interviewed the main author of the article, London editor
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job. Thank you for the pleasurable read. Regards, —
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188:West Berlin
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493:just today
477:WP:MILHIST
475:Regarding
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79:Share this
74:Contribute
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