Inner German Border - Border Area Today

Border Area Today

Very little remains of the installations along the former inner German border. At least 30 public, private and municipal museums along the old line present displays of equipment and other artifacts relating to the border. Among the preserved sites are several dozen watchtowers, short stretches of the fence and associated installations (some of which have been reconstructed), sections of the wall still in situ at Hötensleben and Mödlareuth, and a number of buildings related to the border, such as the GDR crossing point at Marienborn.

Substantial sections of the Kolonnenweg remain in place to serve as farm and forestry access roads, though the accompanying anti-vehicles ditches, fences and other obstacles have been almost entirely removed. Artworks, commemorative stones, memorials and signs have been erected at many points along the former border to mark its opening, to remember its victims and to record the division and reunification of Germany.

The closure of the border region for nearly 40 years created a haven for wildlife in some places. Although parts of the East German side of the border were farmed, intensive farming of the kind practised elsewhere in Germany was absent and large areas were untouched by agriculture. Conservationists became aware as early as the 1970s that the border had become a refuge for rare species of animals and plants. Their findings led the Bavarian government to begin a programme of buying land along the border to ensure its protection from development.

In December 1989, only a month after the opening of the border, conservationists from East and West Germany met to work out a plan to establish a "German Green Belt" (Grünes Band Deutschland) stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Czech border. The Bundestag voted unanimously in December 2004 to extend federal protection to the Green Belt and incorporate it into a "European Green Belt" being developed along the entire 6,800-kilometre (4,200 mi) length of the former Iron Curtain. The German Green Belt now links 160 natural parks, 150 flora-and-fauna areas, three UNESCO biosphere reservations and the Harz Mountains National Park. It is home to a wide variety of species that are rare elsewhere in Germany, including the wild cat, black stork, otter and rare mosses and orchids. Most of Germany's Red Kites – more than half of the 25,000 that live in Europe – live along the former border. The Bund Naturschutz, one of Germany's largest conservation groups, is campaigning to extend the area within the Green Belt designated as nature conservation zones.