Danger zone now a green belt
LIFELINE: GERMANY’S ‘DEATH ALLEY’ IS HOME TO RARE FAUNA AND FLORA
Olaf Olejnik served among the guards patrolling the heavily fortified border deterring freedom-seeking East Germans from escaping to the capitalist West three decades ago.
Today, Olejnik, 50, still regularly marches up and down the former death strip – no longer as a conscript of the communist dictatorship, but as an ornithologist, surveying the area for wildlife.
Once a zone blocked off with barbed wire, littered with landmines and manned by soldiers with shoot-to-kill orders, today, much of the 1 393km border that divided the East from the West is a thriving natural paradise.
Rare dragonflies, Eurasian otters and wildcats now call the strip home. More than 1 200 species on the red list of endangered flora and fauna can be found.
“This place has transformed from a death strip into a line of life,” Olejnik said, standing metres away from a watchtower he sometimes patrolled past as part of his duties during his 14-monthlong military service.
Alarmed by increasing flight to the West, the German Democratic Republic communist regime in 1952 began to construct barriers to keep its citizens in.
A ditch to block cars from ramming through to the West was dug, and a protective strip about 500m in diameter was installed.
A 5km-wide area became a restricted zone, accessible only to those deemed loyal to the regime.
Barbed wire was installed, later replaced by metal meshes and electronic signalling systems. A total of 327 people lost their lives on the inner-German border, an official study showed, although victims associations put the figure higher.
Over time, the space snaking from the Czech border up to the Baltic sea became no-man’s land, allowing nature to move in.
“The area became a high-quality living space for wildlife,” said Dieter Leupold, who also works at nature group Bund, which spearheaded the Green Belt project.
Birdwatchers in West Germany counted among the earliest to appreciate its natural value “through our binoculars”, said Kai Frobel, one of the founders of the nature zone.
A month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, “during a meeting between environmentalists from east and west, a resolution was adopted to protect the Green Belt as a line of life,” said Leupold.
Bund persuaded authorities to turn over land left unclaimed – about half the former border area.
But it is having to purchase the rest back from landowners, spending €5 million (R81.2 million) to buy 900ha to date, with a view of creating a continuous nature conservation strip along the entire former border.