…by The Revelator, the online magazine of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Regular readers may remember Lange’s Revelator essay about Germany’s “Green Belt” and what it represents for humans and nature. That essay just scratched the surface — this book-length examination takes us on a powerful journey through the Green Belt’s history, culture, and ecology.
“During the four decades the Iron Curtain divided Germany and the European continent, over 1,200 rare animal and plant species found refuge in the border strip — today’s Grünes Band or Green Belt. Lange uses the 1,400-kilometer-long German Green Belt as a map for a personal reconnaissance of her home country and as a prism through which to investigate the transformation of the border, along with the societal reverberations of the division and its aftermath.”
Phantom Border can be ordered at any bookstore and is available at Columbia University Press as a paperback and Ibidem Press (paperback and E-book).
I couldn’t stop reading. When I finished, I was ready to have a look myself at the remains of the Phantom Border. The Iron Curtain, the border dividing Germany after 2nd WW into East and West Germany,
was extremely fortified by the East German Government from early 1960 to hinder East Germans fleeing to the West. Especially Lange’s empathetic interviews with concerned individuals along the some 800 miles long border touched me thorougly. Although I had heard and read about the inhumanity, separated families, political indoctrination, torturing and killing over decades before, this book made me shiver. But the author found a balance between evil and good by conveying the very positive result that Nature flourished in the Death Zone. Is that the Phantom? Possibly. Now as a native to Germany, I want to see the miracle myself which came to light after the Berlin Wall came down end of 1989 and thereby all fortifications.
Very good Read!
Thank you so much for your comments Heiner!