Via Romea Germanica Day 16: Hornburg - Veckenstedt

A clique which calls itself a government has to try to fence in its own population. The concrete columns, the barbed wire, the death strips, the watch towers and the machine guns, those are the hallmarks of a concentration camp. It will not stand.

- Willy Brandt, 13 August 1961

Two kilometres out of Hornburg, we came to the former border between West and East Germany. 

The Potsdam Agreement of 1 August 1945 established the boundary between the parts of Germany occupied by Western and Soviet troops.  From 1949 until 1990, the innerdeutsche Grenze or deutsch–deutsche Grenze separated the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). This became one of the world's most heavily fortified frontiers, defined on the Eastern side by a continuous line of high metal fences and walls, barbed wire, alarms, anti-vehicle ditches, watchtowers, automatic booby traps and minefields. It was patrolled by 50,000 armed East German border guards, facing tens of thousands of West German, British and US guards and soldiers on the western side. 

A guard tower in 1976...

...and today

The East German government built the fortifications in stages between 1952 and the late 1980s to stop the massive emigration of East German citizens to the West; an East German who succeeded in escaping to the West was automatically granted West German rights, including residence and the right to work. In 1957, Republikflucht became a crime punishable by heavy fines and up to three years' imprisonment. An average of seven people a day were imprisoned for attempting to cross the border; about 1,000 people died attempting to cross the border during its 45-year existence. 

But the traffic was not one-way; thousands of people migrated from West Germany to the east every year, to get away from problems with their spouse or family, or with the law, or because they had moved from the East and were homesick. A number of Allied military personnel, including British, French, West German and United States troops, also defected to the East.

The wall caused widespread economic and social disruption on both sides; East Germans living nearby suffered particularly strict restrictions. My hosts in Braunschweig, who grew up in East Germany, reported that relatives of theirs who owned fields within the restricted zone on the East German side of the border had to apply for a pass every single time they went to work on their field. Each pass was valid for only one day. One of them had a mother who had relations on the Western side of the wall; she was granted a pass to go and visit them, but her children could not go with her - so that she would be forced to come back, if she wanted to see them again!

A pass to go into the restricted area on the eastern side of the border

Expanded metal fence, impossible to climb

Remnant of fence left standing as a monument 

The deutsch–deutsche Grenze fell quite suddenly, and unexpectedly, in November 1989. In May of that year the reformist communist government in Hungary began to take down its border fortifications, and West German television broadcast images of these events into East Germany. In September hundreds of thousands of East Germans began crossing into Hungary, and mass demonstrations took place all over the country. 

In a live press conference held on the evening of 9 November 1989, it was announced that the border would be opened "immediately and without delay". Hundreds of thousands of people flocked to border crossing points all along the border as well as to the Berlin Wall. Unsure what to do and fearing a stampede, the border guards opened the gates. The photos below, posted on information boards at the point where we crossed the former border, were taken that night.

The wall was a curse for people, but a blessing for nature. The area that was kept clear of trees to give border guards a clear line of sight on the Eastern side of the border is, where we crossed, now a forest of beech trees that have grown spontaneously since 1990. And the site of the wall itself is a green belt running right across Europe; an Iron Curtain cycling route following its course is currently under development. 

A few kilometres further down the trail we came to our first "East German" town, Osterwieck. 

Osterwieck

Around the year 780, in course of the Saxon Wars, Charlemagne  crossed the Oker river and had a church dedicated to Saint Stephen erected at a place then called Salingenstede. This church became a centre of the Christian mission among the pagan Saxons. Destroyed in a fire in 1511, the town was rebuilt with the 400 Fachwerkor or half-timbered buildings still standing today.

We stopped at the tourist information office to stamp our pilgrim passports and pick up some free Via Romea stickers 😀. We asked if there was a café in the town, but there were no places of business, other than a supermarket with an in-store café on the outskirts of the town. - And a shoemaker, who invited us into his workshop and proudly showed us a photo of himself with the German president, taken in 2018, when he was invited to an official banquet as the representative of a national association of people affected by dwarfism. 

We left Osterwieck behind and strode out into the fields, stopping to eat our lunches on a bench in the village of Berßel. In the next town, Wasserleben, we would gladly have sat down for a drink in a café, but there wasn't one: only a supermarket, a kebab place, and a bakery, which sold drinks but had nowhere to sit; we settled for perching on a block of stone outside. My impression so far is that eastern German towns are less socially and economically lively, though that could be because we are in the area that suffered particular setbacks due to its vicinity to the former border.

After Wasserleben, we continued along a beautiful trail through the woods beside a stream, with wild garlic in bloom.

Finally we came to the village of Veckenstedt and our accommodations at Kunstmühle Veckenstedt, an art and dance studio and event venue in a big old farmstead. We had walked 26 kilometres, though it didn't feel like it: the kilometres go by faster when walking in company!

Hornburg - Veckenstedt 26 km