At the inner-German border, a gruff tone prevailed until the end of the 1980s: “Please open the bonnet, the trunk and lift off the rear seat bench” – this quote from a customs officer can be found in large letters on an exhibition board in the Marienborn Memorial to the German Division . Young visitors walk past her carelessly, while older ones often stop and try to remember. Until 1989, Marienborn was the largest inner-German border crossing point, every year around twelve million people passed through this place in Saxony-Anhalt. Anyone who wanted to travel by car, truck, motorbike or bus from western northern Germany to the east or to West Berlin had to cross the border here. Marienborn is on the A2 motorway from Hanover to Berlin. Here you could also enter or leave the GDR – and anyone who seemed suspicious to the East Customs when crossing the border was directed to the control garage and asked to remove the paneling from their car so that the customs officers could check whether People hidden inside or illegally executed DDR marks.
Many older people can still remember it, including the long traffic jams in front of the checkpoints, the scrutinizing looks of the GDR border guards and their own mixed feelings. However, as a rule only the former residents of the former Federal Republic of Germany remember it – for most GDR citizens, on the other hand, Marienborn was inaccessible.
When the Wall fell in November 1989, GDR citizens pushed together in long queues at the border crossing.
(Photo: dpa; zb archive)
The transit agreement between the two German states that came into force in 1972 accelerated clearance on the way to West Berlin. Lengthy identity checks should only be carried out on specific occasions. At the same time, technical surveillance was expanded: Among other things, the GDR border troops also set up so-called screening systems – cars were checked from 1978 with the help of radioactive cesium 137 in order to track down fugitives.
“They were convinced of the state”
While the facilities at most of the other border crossing points were dismantled after reunification, much is still preserved in Marienborn: the X-ray facility, the checkpoints, customs clearance, the exchange office of the GDR state bank, where West Germans exchange a fixed daily rate of D-Marks for GDR money had to exchange. You can also still see the commander’s tower, the so-called inspection bridge and roadblocks that were supposed to stop “Refugees from the Republic”. Many of these facilities can be visited, there are exhibition boards both inside and outside. Among other things, they address the search for illegal goods, the detection of hiding places and the work of undercover employees of the GDR state security as border controllers.
Other stations such as the barracks of the Soviet forces, which controlled the military vehicles of the Americans, British, French and their own soldiers, were demolished after the fall of the Wall. Where the area for the departure of trucks was once located, there is now a tank and rest area. Today, the Marienborn memorial covers around eight hectares; the border crossing point used to be just over 35 hectares in size.
The pillar in the foreground once bore the coat of arms of the GDR.
(Photo: Z5328 Jens Wolf/dpa)
For the 15- and 16-year-old students from the Saaleschule in Halle, who are visiting the memorial on this day, it is all far away. Long ago, long gone history. And yet: in small groups and with work assignments, they explore the historic site. Carlotta, Max and Konrad look at the customs barracks, register the doors with the small peepholes, the neon lights, the many mirrors on the walls around the check-in counters. “It’s really spacey here,” the young people shout at each other, laughing.
They listen to reports from former customs officers at listening stations. In an interview, Wolfgang Dolle tells how he and his colleagues used to write magazines like star and mirror withdrawn from circulation as so-called hate organs if they discovered them entering the GDR. They then asked the vehicle owners, sometimes nagging, and in any case often uncomfortable questions about who these press products were intended for. “They were convinced of the state,” student Carlotta summarizes what she wrote down for the rest of the class. “Besides, the salary was good and they got an apartment.”
The radio play cassettes stayed at home
Their classmates Chiara, Fiona and Nina then report on the assembly line system on which the travelers’ passports were transported to the control barracks. “It’s amazing to see what it looked like here not so long ago,” says Nina, whose mother doesn’t like to talk about the GDR era. And she adds: “I’m surprised at the great effort that was made to ensure that the state had everything under control. The GDR was tougher than I thought.” All in all, the spacious paved area with the high noise level from the adjacent six-lane motorway seems rather boring to the girls.
The memorial is mainly visited by visitors from western Germany, says historian Insa Ahrens, educational worker in Marienborn. “They often have concrete memories of this place on their trips to Berlin or when entering the GDR.” From the east, on the other hand, only those around 1,000 people who worked in three shifts at passport control and customs, with the border troops and as civilian employees in Marienborn had a closer connection. In the nearby Helmstedt Zone Border Museum in Lower Saxony, a visitor wrote in the guest book what has stuck in her memory after more than 30 years: “As a child, I often went to the GDR with my parents – and I always found it a bit scary. I was allowed to Don’t take any radio play cassettes with you. My parents feared that they might all be listened to…”
The Munich writer Hans Pleschinski, who grew up in Wittingen in Lower Saxony in the immediate vicinity of the former border, describes in his book “Ostsucht – Eine Jugend im deutsch-Deutsche Grenzland” how many travelers from the West lost their self-confidence the closer they got came to the border crossing: “West Germans approached the moment of danger, the moment in which bank accounts, marital status, toupee or bald head, local health insurance fund, CDU or FDP membership were no longer of any use if a GDR border guard first took them out of the GDR column waved out.” Pleschinski is convinced: in view of conveyor belts swallowing passports and border guards looking grim, love for the West German state was decisively encouraged in Marienborn.
The Marienborn Memorial is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. In addition to the permanent exhibition, the touring exhibition “Germany beyond yesterday. Radical changes in the workplace after reunification” can be seen there from October 3, 2022 to January 6, 2023.