Grass Over History

Out in the country, the inner-German border was mapped by double fences made of heavy steel mesh and patrolled by armed guards. At night, anyone who dared enter the forbidden zone risked exposure by motion sensors and automatic search lights, bullets and mines -- while regular sweeping of the no-go area meant that footsteps were easily detected.

Almost 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) long and up to 300 meters (328 yards) wide, the ribbon of land referred to during Germany's division as the Death Strip was in fact swarming with life.

From corridor of death to hub of life

Dubbed "the green belt" by environmentalists in 1989, the inner-German border snaking through the country from the Baltic Coast to the Vogtland in Saxony forms the backbone of a chain of biotopes that green activists are determined to see preserved. A swathe of land humans feared to tread, the peace and quiet of the inner-German border provided perfect conditions for animal and plant life.

"Agricultural cooperatives in East Germany were only allowed to farm up to five kilometers from the border," said Jürgen Starck, who runs the local branch of Friends of the Earth in Salzwedel in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, which has a 113-kilometer share of the former border.

"A lot of rare breeds are refugees from civilization, as it were, like fish otters and black storks, which are much shyer than white storks, and hate any disturbance," he added. "They need certain habitats, and the division meant this region is a very well preserved natural habitat."

It's also home to some exceptional flora.

"Wild orchids used to be grow across Germany, but humans are gradually driving them out with nitrogen fertilizers," Starck said. "Not here. Some of this land is so untouched that wild orchids are a common sight."

Healing the scars of history

"What we don't want is the sort of nature reserve no one is allowed into," Starck said. "We want the former inner-German border to be a biotope people can visit. People shouldn't forget that this was once a border zone and they should have an opportunity to see how nature responded to the division.

"Some villages were evacuated and razed, because they were close to the boundary," he said. "Jahrsau was one of them. Today you can still find a few traces of it, remnants of foundations for example. It's incredible to see how an oak tree just grows through what we call civilization, and simply reclaims it, as if history never happened."

An organic iron curtain

Today, Germany's Green Belt project, the country's most ambitious single conservation concept, is at the forefront of a continent-spanning scheme to turn the entire Iron Curtain into a biotope, establishing nature reserves from the Finnish-Russian border through Europe to the Bulgarian-Greek border.

The project took off in 2003, when Jürgen Trittin, who was Germany's environment minister at the time, announced that the government had decided to donate the land it owned on the former inner-German border, said Liana Geidezis from the Green Belt headquarters in Nuremberg. She added that as a result, Germany's states along the former border were able to use 10,000 hectares -- or 65 percent of the entire Green Belt -- for environmental purposes as long as they agreed to participate in the project.

Obstacles

Inevitably, it hasn't all been plain-sailing.

"The states involved -- Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Lower Saxony -- have all been profiting from the real estate along the border," Geidezis said. "According to the Wall Land Act, every time the government sold any of it, proceeds would be ploughed back into a funding scheme, which was distributed among the states and invested into social, cultural and economic projects."

Even though the states have mainly welcomed the project, disagreements between cash-strapped regional finance ministries and their environment colleagues have been impossible to avoid. While the details are being fleshed out, many local activists have started taking matters into their hands.

"In Salzwedel, Friends of the Earth decided it would buy up as much private land as possible, while it's being decided what happens to the state-owned land," Starck said. "With the help of donations paid by people we like to see as share-holders, we've now acquired 150 hectares of land."

Steeped in symbolism

Unresolved property claims involving disowned East German land-owners remain a major hurdle. Starck said he also regrets the feet-dragging on the part of the authorities.

"The finance ministry in Saxony-Anhalt, which owns the real estate, isn't always helpful," he said. "It's only interested in money. It wants trees felled, the land farmed. It wants it to be profitable."

But he and his fellow ecologists strongly believe their project is as much about preserving Germany's cultural heritage as its unique biotopes.

"It's an extraordinary contradiction," he said. "What you see here is the beauty of nature juxtaposed with the horror of what once happened."