East of the Border (Leisure Western)

The government of East Germany had control over a large number of military and paramilitary organisations through various ministries. Chief among these was the Ministry of National Defence. Because of East Germany's proximity to the West during the Cold War —92 , its military forces were among the most advanced of the Warsaw Pact. Defining what was a military force and what was not is a matter of some dispute. It was an all volunteer force until an eighteen-month conscription period was introduced in The border troops of the Eastern sector were originally organised as a police force, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei, similar to the Bundesgrenzschutz in West Germany.

It was controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. Following the remilitarisation of East Germany in , the Deutsche Grenzpolizei was transformed into a military force in , modeled after the Soviet Border Troops , and transferred to the Ministry of National Defense, as part of the National People's Army.

In , it was separated from the NVA, but it remained under the same ministry. At its peak, it numbered approximately 47, men. These units were, like the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, equipped as motorised infantry, and they numbered between 12, and 15, men. The Ministry of State Security Stasi included the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment , which was mainly involved with facilities security and plain clothes events security.

They were the only part of the feared Stasi that was visible to the public, and so were very unpopular within the population. The Stasi numbered around 90, men, the Guards Regiment around 11,, men. The Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse combat groups of the working class numbered around , for much of their existence, and were organised around factories. They received their training from the Volkspolizei and the Ministry of the Interior. Membership was voluntary, but SED members were required to join as part of their membership obligation. Every man was required to serve eighteen months of compulsory military service ; for the medically unqualified and conscientious objector , there were the Baueinheiten construction units , established in , two years after the introduction of conscription, in response to political pressure by the national Lutheran Protestant Church upon the GDR's government.

In the s, East German leaders acknowledged that former construction soldiers were at a disadvantage when they rejoined the civilian sphere. The East German state promoted an anti-imperialist line that was reflected in all its media and all the schools. Popular reaction to these measures was mixed, and Western media penetrated the country both through cross-border television and radio broadcasts from West Germany and from the American propaganda network Radio Free Europe.

Dissidents, particularly professionals, sometimes fled to West Germany, which was relatively easy before the construction of the Berlin Wall in After receiving wider international diplomatic recognition in —73, the GDR began active cooperation with Third World socialist governments and national liberation movements. While the USSR was in control of the overall strategy and Cuban armed forces were involved in the actual combat mostly in the People's Republic of Angola and socialist Ethiopia , the GDR provided experts for military hardware maintenance and personnel training, and oversaw creation of secret security agencies based on its own Stasi model.

In the s official cooperation was established with other self-proclaimed socialist governments and people's republics: The first military agreement was signed in with the People's Republic of the Congo.

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In friendship treaties were signed with Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia. It was estimated that altogether, — DDR military and security experts were dispatched to Africa. In addition, representatives from African and Arab countries and liberation movements underwent military training in the GDR. The East German economy began poorly because of the devastation caused by the Second World War; the loss of so many young soldiers, the disruption of business and transportation, and finally reparations owed to the USSR. The Red Army dismantled and transported to Russia the infrastructure and industrial plants of the Soviet Zone of Occupation.

By the early s, the reparations were paid in agricultural and industrial products; and Lower Silesia , with its coal mines and Szczecin , an important natural port, were given to Poland by the decision of Stalin. In , collective state enterprises earned In , the average annual growth of the GDP was approximately five percent. This made East German economy the richest in all of the Soviet Bloc until after the fall of Communism in the country. Notable East German exports were photographic cameras , under the Praktica brand; automobiles under the Trabant , Wartburg , and the IFA brands; hunting rifles, sextants , typewriters and wristwatches.

Until the s, East Germans endured shortages of basic foodstuffs such as sugar and coffee. East Germans with friends or relatives in the West or with any access to a hard currency and the necessary Staatsbank foreign currency account could afford Western products and export-quality East German products via Intershop. Consumer goods also were available, by post, from the Danish Jauerfood , and Genex companies. The government used money and prices as political devices, providing highly subsidised prices for a wide range of basic goods and services, in what was known as "the second pay packet".

For the consumer, it led to the substitution of GDR money with time, barter, and hard currencies. The socialist economy became steadily more dependent on financial infusions from hard-currency loans from West Germany. East Germans, meanwhile, came to see their soft currency as worthless relative to the Deutsche Mark DM. Many western commentators have maintained that loyalty to the SED was a primary criterion for getting a good job, and that professionalism was secondary to political criteria in personnel recruitment and development.

They numbered more than , by Many, such as future politician Zeca Schall who emigrated from Angola in as a contract worker stayed in Germany after the Wende. Religion became contested ground in the GDR, with the governing Communists promoting state atheism , although some people remained loyal to Christian communities. In , the renowned philosophical theologian, Paul Tillich , claimed that the Protestant population in East Germany had the most admirable Church in Protestantism, because the Communists there had not been able to win a spiritual victory over them. When it first came to power, the Communist party asserted the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism and sought Christian participation in the building of socialism.

At first the promotion of Marxist-Leninist atheism received little official attention. In the mids, as the Cold War heated up, atheism became a topic of major interest for the state, in both domestic and foreign contexts. University chairs and departments devoted to the study of scientific atheism were founded and much literature scholarly and popular on the subject was produced. Official and scholarly attention to atheism renewed beginning in , though this time with more emphasis on scholarship and on the training of cadres than on propaganda.

Throughout, the attention paid to atheism in East Germany was never intended to jeopardise the cooperation that was desired from those East Germans who were religious. East Germany, historically, was majority Protestant primarily Lutheran from the early stages of the Protestant Reformation onwards. Between and the leadership of the East German Lutheran churches gradually changed its relations with the state from hostility to cooperation. The church adopted an attitude of confrontation and distance toward the state. Around this began to develop into a more neutral stance accommodating conditional loyalty.

The government was no longer regarded as illegitimate; instead, the church leaders started viewing the authorities as installed by God and, therefore, deserving of obedience by Christians. But on matters where the state demanded something which the churches felt was not in accordance with the will of God, the churches reserved their right to say no.

There were both structural and intentional causes behind this development. Structural causes included the hardening of Cold War tensions in Europe in the mids, which made it clear that the East German state was not temporary. The loss of church members also made it clear to the leaders of the church that they had to come into some kind of dialogue with the state.

The intentions behind the change of attitude varied from a traditional liberal Lutheran acceptance of secular power to a positive attitude toward socialist ideas. Manfred Stolpe became a lawyer for the Brandenburg Protestant Church in before taking up a position at church headquarters in Berlin. In he helped found the Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR BEK , where he negotiated with the government while at the same time working within the institutions of this Protestant body.

He won the regional elections for the Brandenburg state assembly at the head of the SPD list in Stolpe remained in the Brandenburg government until he joined the federal government in Apart from the Protestant state churches German: The smaller Roman Catholic Church in eastern Germany had a fully functioning episcopal hierarchy that was in full accord with the Vatican. During the early postwar years, tensions were high. The Catholic Church as a whole and particularly the bishops resisted both the East German state and Marxist ideology.

The state allowed the bishops to lodge protests, which they did on issues such as abortion. After the Church did fairly well in integrating Catholic exiles from lands to the east which mostly became part of Poland and in adjusting its institutional structures to meet the needs of a church within an officially atheist society. This meant an increasingly hierarchical church structure, whereas in the area of religious education, press, and youth organisations, a system of temporary staff was developed, one that took into account the special situation of Caritas , a Catholic charity organisation.

By , therefore, there existed a Catholic subsociety that was well adjusted to prevailing specific conditions and capable of maintaining Catholic identity. With a generational change in the episcopacy taking place in the early s, the state hoped for better relations with the new bishops, but the new bishops instead began holding unauthorised mass meetings, promoting international ties in discussions with theologians abroad, and hosting ecumenical conferences.

The new bishops became less politically oriented and more involved in pastoral care and attention to spiritual concerns. The government responded by limiting international contacts for bishops. East Germany's culture was strongly influenced by communist thought and was marked by an attempt to define itself in opposition to the west, particularly West Germany and the United States.

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Critics of the East German state have claimed that the state's commitment to Communism was a hollow and cynical tool [ who? However, Pence and Betts argue, the majority of East Germans over time increasingly regarded the state's ideals to be hollow, though there was also a substantial number of East Germans who regarded their culture as having a healthier, more authentic mentality than that of West Germany. GDR culture and politics were limited by the harsh censorship. The Puhdys and Karat were some of the most popular mainstream bands in East Germany. Like most mainstream acts, they appeared in popular youth magazines such as Neues Leben and Magazin.

Schlager , which was very popular in the west, also gained a foothold early on in East Germany, and numerous musicians, such as Gerd Christian , Uwe Jensen , and Hartmut Schulze-Gerlach gained national fame. From to , an international schlager festival was held in Rostock , garnering participants from between 18 and 22 countries each year.

Bands and singers from other Communist countries were popular, e. Czerwone Gitary from Poland known as the Rote Gitarren. West German television and radio could be received in many parts of the East. The Western influence led to the formation of more "underground" groups with a decisively western-oriented sound.

Additionally, hip hop culture reached the ears of the East German youth. With videos such as Beat Street and Wild Style , young East Germans were able to develop a hip hop culture of their own. The entire street culture surrounding rap entered the region and became an outlet for oppressed youth. The government of the GDR was invested in both promoting the tradition of German classical music , and in supporting composers to write new works in that tradition.

The birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach — , Eisenach , was rendered as a museum about him, featuring more than three hundred instruments, which, in , received some 70, visitors. In Leipzig, the Bach archive contains his compositions and correspondence and recordings of his music.

East German theatre was originally dominated by Bertolt Brecht , who brought back many artists out of exile and reopened the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm with his Berliner Ensemble. After Brecht's death, conflicts began to arise between his family around Helene Weigel and other artists about Brecht's heritage.

In the s, a parallel theatre scene sprung up, creating theatre "outside of Berlin" in which artists played at provincial theatres. Theatre and cabaret had high status in the GDR, which allowed it to be very pro-active. This often brought it into confrontation with the state. Benno Besson once said, "In contrast to artists in the west, they took us seriously, we had a bearing. The Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin is the last major building erected by the GDR, making it an exceptional architectural testimony to how Germany overcame of its former division.

Here, Berlin's great revue tradition lives on, today bringing viewers state-of-the-art shows. The East German industry became known worldwide for its productions, especially children's movies Das kalte Herz , film versions of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and modern productions such as Das Schulgespenst.

The film industry was remarkable for its production of Ostern , or Western-like movies. Native Americans in these films often took the role of displaced people who fight for their rights, in contrast to the American westerns of the time, where Native Americans were often either not mentioned at all or are portrayed as the villains.

Yugoslavians were often cast as the Native Americans because of the small number of Native Americans in Europe. He became an honorary Sioux chief when he visited the United States in the s, and the television crew accompanying him showed the tribe one of his movies. American actor and singer Dean Reed , an expatriate who lived in East Germany, also starred in several films.

These films were part of the phenomenon of Europe producing alternative films about the colonization of America. Cinemas in the GDR also showed foreign films. Czechoslovak and Polish productions were more common, but certain western movies were shown, though the numbers of these were limited because it cost foreign exchange to buy the licences. Further, movies representing or glorifying capitalist ideology were not bought.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, several movies depicting life in the GDR have been critically acclaimed. Go for Zucker by Dani Levi. Each film is heavily infused with cultural nuances unique to life in the GDR. East Germany was very successful in the sports of cycling , weight-lifting , swimming, gymnastics, track and field, boxing , ice skating , and winter sports. The success is attributed to the leadership of Dr. Manfred Hoeppner which started in the late s. Another supporting reason was doping in East Germany , especially with anabolic steroids, the most detected doping substances in IOC -accredited laboratories for many years.

Sport teachers at school were encouraged to look for certain talents in children ages 6 to 10 years old. For older pupils it was possible to attend grammar schools with a focus on sports for example sailing, football and swimming. This policy was also used for talented pupils with regard to music or mathematics. Sports clubs were highly subsidized, especially sports in which it was possible to get international fame. For example, the major leagues for ice hockey and basketball just included 2 teams each. Football was the most popular sport.

Club football teams such as Dynamo Dresden , 1. Many East German players such as Matthias Sammer and Ulf Kirsten became integral parts of the reunified national football team. Other sports enjoyed great popularity like figure skating, especially because of sportspeople like Katarina Witt.

Television and radio in East Germany were state-run industries; the Rundfunk der DDR was the official radio broadcasting organisation from until unification. Reception of Western broadcasts was widespread. By the mids, East Germany possessed a well-developed communications system. There were approximately 3. An unusual feature of the telephone network was that, in most cases, direct distance dialing for long-distance calls was not possible.

Although area codes were assigned to all major towns and cities, they were only used for switching international calls. Instead, each location had its own list of dialing codes with shorter codes for local calls and longer codes for long-distance calls. After unification, the existing network was largely replaced, and area codes and dialing became standardised.

The prevention of escapes was a key priority at crossing points such as Marienborn. It was not possible to simply drive through the gap in the border fence that existed at crossing points, as the East Germans installed high-impact vehicle barriers mounted at chest height. These could and did kill drivers who attempted to ram through them. The guards at border crossings were, as elsewhere, authorised to use weapons to stop escape attempts. Vehicles were subjected to rigorous checks to uncover escapees.

Inspection pits and mirrors allowed the undersides of vehicles to be scrutinised. Probes were used to investigate the chassis and even the fuel tank, where an escapee might be concealed, and vehicles could be partially dismantled in on-site garages. At Marienborn there was even a mortuary garage where coffins could be checked to confirm that the occupants really were dead. The discovery of this practice caused a health scare after reunification. A subsequent investigation by federal authorities found that these involuntary screenings did not result in "a harmful dose" despite violating basic radiation safety protocols.

Passengers, too, were checked thoroughly with an inspection of their papers and frequently an interrogation about their travel plans and reasons for travelling. West and East Germans were treated very differently when entering or leaving East Germany. West Germans were able to cross the border relatively freely to visit relatives. They had to go through numerous bureaucratic formalities imposed by the East German government. These included applying in advance for permission, registering with the local police on arrival, remaining within a specified area for a specified period and obtaining an exit visa from the police on departure.

East Germans were subjected to far more stringent restrictions. The East German constitution of granted citizens a theoretical right to leave the country, though it was hardly respected in practice. Even this limited right was removed in the constitution of which confined citizens' freedom of movement to the area within the state borders.

This gave rise to a joke that only in East Germany did people look forward to old age. As they were retired, they were seen by the East German government as economically unimportant and no great loss if they defected. The vast majority, though, chose to return home at the end of their stay. Not until were younger East Germans permitted to travel to the West, though few did so until the mids.

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They were rarely permitted to take their own car but had to go by train or bus instead. A lengthy process had to be endured to register with the police for a passport and exit visa and to undergo close questioning about their reasons for wanting to travel. An application to travel had to be submitted well in advance of the planned departure. They also had to submit an application and undergo a personal evaluation at their workplace.

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Their employer would then submit a statement and various forms to the police. Applicants were left in the dark about the success of their application until the day before their departure. The odds were against successful applications, as only around 40, a year were approved. Refusal was quite often arbitrary, depending on the goodwill of local officials. Members of the Party elite and cultural ambassadors such as sportspeople, singers, film directors and writers were frequently given permission to travel, as were essential transport workers such as barge crewmen, railway workers and truck drivers.

However, they were not permitted to take their families with them. Until the late s, ordinary East Germans were only permitted to travel to the West on "urgent family business" such as the marriage, serious illness or death of a close relative. In February , the regime relaxed the definition of "urgent family business", though it still required travellers to leave behind "collateral" in effect, a hostage such as a spouse, child or other close relative. This massively increased the number of citizens able to travel to the West. Soon thereafter, the county no longer wanted to bear the heating and cleaning cost, the janitor was fired, and the exhibits were frequently vandalized.

It was finally closed in The county of Helmstedt, for instance, initiated efforts in to turn a local landmark into a monument Mahnmal. The object in question was the hulk of a burned omnibus that the Allies had dragged on the demarcation line in to block the road. Local communities remained engaged with border tourism until autumn ; the pertinent infrastructure was then either removed, dismantled, and demolished — a fate that caught up with the Helmstedt bus wreck —, or re-dedicated to serve as memorials to German partition, catering to the Cold War commemorative tourism that flourishes today.

Border Travel as Political Propaganda. Federal and state officials in charge of border-related matters appear to have assumed a rather linear effect of border travel and hence lent it significant financial support. Politicians considered a visit to the border especially beneficial for high school students. Groups could book border tours with the local office of the customs or border guard unit. This practice was encouraged by West German authorities in order to prevent visitors from violating the demarcation line, which could trigger an encounter with Eastern border guards, and to ensure that they would receive information about the border fortifications that would turn the trip into political education.

Postcard showing West German border guards as tourist guides, looking at an observation bunker, ca. How these visits to the Iron Curtain were meant to politicize the visitor emerges from an analysis of the travel guides that state agencies made available to such groups before their trip or at border information points.

The political message of the travel guides was rather straightforward: They also left no doubt about the blame for the current conditions. One way or another, a border visit was expected to become a transformative experience. Only guides published in the s contained information about towns on the other side of the fence and the political system of the GDR.

The tone in these later publications was also less confrontational. Government officials had not only domestic but also foreign audiences in mind when they advertised border travel. These travel guides and other materials on the border were therefore also printed in English, French, and Spanish. It allowed the West German government to boost its anti-communist credentials and present itself as a worthy and reliable partner in the Western Alliance. During the Adenauer era, this was an attractive prospect for a country that was constantly reminded in the international arena of the crimes committed in its name in the not so distant past.

This idea lay at the core of the emerging border program for foreign visitors coordinated by the Foreign Office in Bonn. By the late s, a routine for such border visits was well established. The effect was intensified when the choreography of such a trip combined a former concentration camp with a visit to the border. A group of former Belgian resistance fighters did just that. In November , they requested the opportunity to visit Bergen-Belsen, lay down a wreath, and continue on to see the border.

The request dovetailed nicely with efforts of the Bonn government to invoke the imagery of concentration camps in government brochures about the border. By traveling from Belsen to Helmstedt, the visitors left the recent German past behind and arrived in the West German present. The report to the Foreign Office stated: Time and again the participants declared that they believed themselves at the fence of a gigantic concentration camp.

The Visitors and the Visited. What did other visitors get out of a border trip? We know more about the intentions of state agents who provided funds and publications to stimulate border travel than about the experience of those who made the journey. Local newspapers frequently reported on border visits. Once such visits became institutionalized, however, they lost their news value; as such, only dangerous incidents or the visits of political dignitaries received press coverage.

There are a few core constituencies of border travel, however, about which one may make some preliminary observations. Among these were expellees from former German territories as well as refugees from the GDR. For both groups, the demarcation line was the closest point they could approach their former homelands, at least until the fruits of Ostpolitik , including the rapprochement with Poland in and the Basic Treaty with the GDR in , eased travel restrictions for trips to Poland and into the GDR. Among other things, such Landsmannschaften sponsored the erection of several large crosses in immediate proximity to the border, widely visible monuments in the landscape that served as sites of mourning and were intended to keep alive a desire for reunification.

These crosses, in turn, became incorporated into the annual activities of expellee organisations, drawing crowds for outdoor church services, reunions, and 17 June commemorations as well as group tours and hikes. A multi-purpose backdrop for May Day rallies, for jumps over bonfires and deep sighs during border hikes. For military personnel, a trip to the border for the study of the layered fortifications was part of their military training.

East German border guards meticulously counted anybody in uniform and tried to identify insignia. At a secondary school in Frankfurt, a dedicated teacher, Dr. After the trip, sponsored by the Hessian Bureau for Political Education, the students produced reports, adorned with their own photographs and drawings. The , and scrapbooks show that the students experienced, or at least depicted, the border as a threat; the accompanying West German border guards thus appear less as tour guides and more as bodyguards. In their observations the border fortifications held center stage: Judging by the scrapbooks, Dr.

The reports exhibit an already established choreography for such border trips in ticking off some highlights such as divided roads and houses, making use of West German border guards as travel guides, and incorporating local expertise to harvest anecdotes about border incidents and life on the Cold War front line. The individual visitor, however, who traveled on his or her own volition outside the framework of organized tours remains the unknown quantity of border travel despite the fact that, according to an intelligence report by GDR troops , such individuals made up a large part of the border tourists.

Touring the border became almost an obligation if those visitors came from abroad. Probably influenced by the way his host family introduced him to the border, Boag perceived the Iron Curtain as the dividing line between communism and freedom that was patroled by sinister looking border guards. The steady stream of visitors did not mean, however, that border communities were embracing this kind of tourism unequivocally. In the early s, some local officials realized that the border could in fact be detrimental to leisure tourism. Resort towns Kurorte in particular did not want to see their image as sites of relaxation and recuperation intertwined with the dangers of the Iron Curtain.

When the GDR introduced measures in June to seal the border, the Harz resorts on the western side felt the impact immediately. Even if local dignitaries considered it beneficial for the community to embrace border tourism, borderland residents did not necessarily play along. Local officials expected a certain earnestness from the border visitor; sensationalism was not welcome. Companies advertising such trips, including federal rail Bundesbahn , were chided for their lack of political tact. The people who had no voice in shaping border visits or impacting its decorum were, of course, the residents of border communities in the GDR.

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In the early years of partition, cross-border communication was still common. In the presence of border guards, however, pre-arranged forms of communications had to suffice, such as shaking out the bedding or a tablecloth at an open window as a form of waving or hanging up a colored garment on the clothesline to indicate news in the village. The reason why Western border communities put up with busloads of visitors and welcomed foreign dignitaries was a combination of a sense of political mission and obligation that came with living on the frontline of the Cold War and the desire not to be forgotten.

Long stretches of these borderlands proved beyond help because they had been economically weak even before the imposition of the border. In view of the larger economic problems of these newly peripheralized communities, the Iron Curtain held out the not unreasonable hope that tourism could provide some relief, that a first-time visit to inspect the division of the country would eventually translate into a longer-term visit to the borderlands, that the day-tripping sightseer would transform into a holiday maker, and that either way, the visitor would spend some money.

There is, however, conflicting evidence whether border tourism ever paid off for the municipalities, towns, and villages affected by it. As a consequence, there was a striking increase in tourism to those communities which led to notable economic advantages in several localities. While the ultimate economic impact of border tourism in its various forms might thus be hard to pin down, it becomes apparent that federal and state investments in these regions were less about the bottom line and more about political appearance.

The borderlands must not show any signs of poverty. The construction of the Berlin Wall in August was a desperate push to force the political and spatial reorientation of East Germans towards their new state and its socialist order. The ensuing accommodation of GDR citizens to their now unavoidable situation has been widely noted in the literature. While historians have sought to understand the meaning and consequences of the Iron Curtain for the GDR and its citizens, they have not yet posed similar questions for the Federal Republic.

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This essay tries to open such a conversation in order to gauge the extent to which the border also affected West Germany, a state that related to the Iron Curtain first by demonizing it but eventually grudgingly accepting it as part of a new postwar reality, only to be baffled by its sudden disappearance. Analysis of the steady stream of visitors to the Iron Curtain offers one possible first step to flesh out an answer to these questions.

Most strongly during the late s and s, border tourism was framed variously as support for the East Germans behind the Iron Curtain or for the West Germans who now lived in economically depressed borderlands; as an accusation against the East German regime; and, ultimately, as a protest in favor of German unity. Seeing the border allowed West Germans and their visitors from abroad to juxtapose freedom and prosperity with captivity and decay, thus advertising the superiority of the capitalist model over its socialist other.

As the East German leadership escalated border fortifications over the years and turned them into the military installation remembered today, a growing tourist infrastructure, including look-out platforms, information centers, and ubiquitous warning signs, accompanied these changes on the Western side. Border tourism thus stabilized the physical border in the sense that it developed a material infrastructure for border viewing.

Border viewing, in turn, although undertaken or officially encouraged out of a whole range of different motives, inscribed the border on the mental maps of those who came to see it, regardless of whether the visitors came to condemn or just to ponder it. By traveling to the border to see for themselves where and how Germany and Europe were divided, visitors slowly adjusted to the fact that the border was there to stay and that half of the European continent was vanishing from view.

Border tourism nonetheless remained a highly ambiguous phenomenon. In economic terms, it most likely did not meet the expectations and hopes that local communities and state officials had harbored for this sort of travel. Despite the common assumption that a border trip would inevitably translate into a condemnation of socialism and would help sustain various ties to and interest in East Germany, visits to the Iron Curtain failed to arrest the process of increasing accommodation to living in a divided country. At times, they amounted to a skewed form of communication between West and East Germany that reinscribed and reinforced mutual alienation.

Indeed, a confrontation with the seemingly insurmountable border fortifications, especially in their most mature form of the late s and s, might well have supported a resigned response. Seeing the border and learning about its deeply layered structure conveyed the sense that it was intended for eternity. In fact, borderland residents themselves were among the first to acknowledge this new postwar reality. The stream of visitors continued unabated until , but the texture of border tourism changed over the years.

By the early s, communities along the border promoted their very remoteness, unindustrialized landscapes and nature as the main attraction, catering to visitors who wanted to get off the beaten track. By the s, however, the selling point was less the military character of the Iron Curtain and more the borderlands themselves that the Curtain had created. In this shifted scenario, the border fortifications remained a sight to be seen, although, it seems, for different reasons.

While the member states of the European Community strove to lower their internal borders, create Euro-Regions, and trade with ever fewer barriers, the border between East and West Germany stood as the counterpoint to integration and as an archetype of all borders.

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