German Green Belt

The German Green Belt (Grünes Band Deutschland in German) is a project of Bund Naturschutz (BUND), one of Germany's largest environmental groups. The project began in 1989 facing a forbidding, 870-mile network of fences and guard towers once ran the length of Germany, separating East and West. Now, one of the world's most unusual nature reserves is being created along the old "Death Strip," turning a monument to repression into a symbol of renewal.

For decades, Germany's former border sector remained an inaccessible region. It is one of the great anomalies of Germany's division history that in a place where a hostile line had been drawn, nature was able to develop undisturbed over a period of several decades. Apart from the no man's land itself, this also applied to extensive tracts of adjacent land because they were so cut off. This "Green Belt" is characterized by an exceptional wealth of species and habitats, most of which are now endangered, representing a system of interlinked biotopes of national importance, which joins together or passes through valuable swathes of land and intensively farmed agricultural landscapes. The federal government, Länder and nature conservation organisations are joining forces to protect this "Green Belt" and develop it into a valuable habitat for humans and nature. Something which once divided Germany is now a symbol of national unity.

The Inner German Border was formally established on 1 July 1945 as the boundary between the Western and Soviet occupation zones of Germany. On the eastern side, it was made one of the world's most heavily fortified frontiers, defined 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 GDR guards who faced tens of thousands of West German, British and US guards and soldiers.

Despite the extensiveness of the Inner Border, it was the Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) that would serve as the famous and infamous representation of the "Iron Curtain" and the Cold War. The Berlin Wall was a barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989, constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until it was opened in November 1989. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period.

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