Joey Kelly, the former guitarist of the pop and folk band “The Kelly Family”, has attracted attention in recent years, especially as an extreme athlete, with his ultra-long-distance runs and donation marathons. His latest project: once walking along the Kolonnenweg that follows the former border between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic.
A mammoth task of 1400 kilometers that he will undertake in several stages in all four seasons from summer 2020 and that will lead him through an infinite number of biotopes and nature reserves, through solitude, rain and cold. Again and again he meets people – from failed existences in the former no man’s land to retired border guards to Reiner Calmund and prominent refugees. And it literally runs into German-German history.
For him it is precisely the contemporary witnesses along the Green Belt “who can experience this strip, who beamed me back to a time that can only be understood here in this place and nowhere else,” he writes in the book “The Green Belt – Divided by Germany”, which is now out by National Geographic.
“What remains for me is the realization that health, which has always been a priority for me, now only comes second,” he sums up at the end of the book. “Freedom is still above that, which is exactly what a society has to fight for over and over again, it must never be taken for granted.”
Click your way through other photo series with Joey Kelly:
– On the Amazon: Till Lindemann and Joey Kelly’s journey to the Río Yavarí
– Bulli Challenge: How Joey and Luke Kelly drive to Beijing in an old VW bus
– “If he swallows you, you’re gone”: Rammstein singers Till Lindemann and Joey Kelly on the Yukon
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