German-German Border

From Deutsche Welle:

"Remembering inner-German border victims"

While the Berlin Wall remains a symbol of German division and the brutal former East German regime, a new project aims to focus attention on the many victims of the equally forbidding East-West German border zone. On August 13, 1961, the communist East German regime began building the Berlin Wall. The construction became the infamous symbol of a divided Germany, but the border between the two countries received less public attention, despite also being heavily guarded from an even earlier point in time. Politically, Germany had been split since 1949. Four years after the end of the Second World War, the Federal Republic of Germany was created in the west, and the geographically smaller German Democratic Republic (GDR) - commonly known as East Germany - was established on the other side. Despite its name, the GDR was a communist dictatorship that severely limited its citizens' political freedom and regularly punished dissidents. Politically and economically, West Germany was more successful than its neighbor from the start. Many East Germans started crossing over to the other side in the early days of the two countries. This exodus prompted the GDR's ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) to create a five-kilometer-wide (3.1-mile) restricted area along the demarcation line. The border stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Vogtland region in Saxony and was nearly 1,400 kilometers long. Anyone who entered this zone risked being arrested or shot. According to Germany's minister for culture and media, Bernd Neumann, the project's focus is the people behind the statistics. Research into individuals' stories will give the victims names and faces, thereby restoring their dignity.

"Their biographies will remind us how the people of Germany were affected by the brutal SED dictatorship and the inhumane border regime," said Neumann at a presentation on the project at the Berlin Wall Memorial. The research should be finalized by 2015, producing a book of short biographies of the victims. It is based on the research into the victims of the Berlin Wall, which has largely been completed. The Berlin Wall Memorial includes the "Window of Remembrance" with names and photos of the dead, located in the middle of the former border zone. In the time preceding the Wall, the residents of Berlin still enjoyed relative freedom of movement, but the inner-German border was already fortified with barbed wire and guard posts. As the years went on, crossing it only became harder. Border guards were ordered to shoot anyone attempting to cross, but those who went unnoticed still risked being killed by the many mines planted within the zone.  Despite all this, the number of attempted escapes remained high. Project head Klaus Schroeder from the Free University of Berlin has found out from the documents of the East German secret police (Stasi) that between 1974 and 1979 there were nearly 5,000 people who attempted to cross the inner-German border. Of these, 229 successfully made it to the other side. Nearly 100 set off mines or spring-guns. The majority were arrested. According to Schroeder, the files contain no information about the fates of those whose attempts failed.

^ I know that many people don't even know that the East Germany/West Germany border had mines and other barriers - they only know of the West Berlin/East Berlin border. I have a piece of the West German- East German border. ^

http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16161679,00.html