… 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
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
The next few posts will be about my visits with people in Kella, population plus minus 500. When Germany was divided after WWII, Kella ended up in the 500-meter Schutzstreifen (“protective zone”) right next to the border strip, which meant that its residents had to put up with considerable restrictions on everyday life, imposed by… Read more Visiting
