Kerstin

Die Vögel am Ende der Welt

(Bonus Post in German! Ausschnitte aus Kapitel 18) For English, scroll back to the last two posts. Die Nachtluft hat die Hitze des Tages nicht wirklich aus meinem winzig-gemütlichen Dachzimmer vertrieben, und meine schläfrigen Versuche, einer hungrigen Mücke nachzustellen, waren erfolglos.    Aber als die Morgensonne meine schweren Augenlider überlistet, fällt mir wieder ein, was für… Read more Die Vögel am Ende der Welt

The birds at the end of the world (Part 2)

As Kai goes on to fill in the picture for me, I realize that what made the resolution for the Green Belt so effective was a chain of developments that sounded almost providential. Kai Frobel himself uses the expression glückliche Fügung, the coming together of auspicious circumstances. What becomes quite clear to me, too, is the… Read more The birds at the end of the world (Part 2)

The Birds at the End of the World (part 1)

Why “the end of the world?” you may ask. For the people who lived near it, the border between East and West Germany might as well have been the end of the world. For birds – and for countless other wild creatures – the deadly border was a lifeline in an increasingly inhospitable modern agricultural… Read more The Birds at the End of the World (part 1)

The Birds at the End of the World: Jan. 24, 2020, 7 pm at the North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier

January 24: The Birds at the End of the World: Renewal and Remembrance in the German Borderland – Kerstin Lange When the Berlin Wall fell under the pressure of peaceful protests thirty years ago, the 900-mile-long border that had separated the two German states also became obsolete. During the four decades that humans were kept… Read more The Birds at the End of the World: Jan. 24, 2020, 7 pm at the North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier

The chapel in the no-man’s land, and the monk who pushed the envelope

… and other stories from Kella, the little village that found itself next to the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.  After Kaffeetrinken with a view of Braunrod – the former “window on the GDR” – Anna took me up the hill behind her house to the chapel I had read about in Daphne’s book.… Read more The chapel in the no-man’s land, and the monk who pushed the envelope

30 years later: Kella and its neighbors commemorate the opening of the border

This article from the Werra Rundschau’s January 1, 2020 issue, about the festivities marking the 30thanniversary of the border opening between Kella and Braunrod, describes the improvisation that was necessary to set up a border crossing in the absence of any guidance from “above”.  The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, had thrown the… Read more 30 years later: Kella and its neighbors commemorate the opening of the border