PHANTOM BORDER : A Personal Reconnaissance of Contemporary Germany

"Phantom Border" weaves together the social and ecological stories surrounding the border that divided the author’s native Germany during the Cold War.

After three decades abroad, Kerstin Lange traces the remains of the 1,400-kilometer-long border that divided her native Germany during the Cold War. Using the former border as a prism and a compass for a journey by bicycle and on foot, she investigates the human, societal, and ecological stories surrounding the former German borderland. What was it like to live next to one of the world’s most draconian border systems? How come over 1,200 rare animal and plant species found refuge in the highly militarized border strip—today’s Green Belt? What echoes reverberate in today’s Germany from the time of the division and the time following the fall of the Berlin Wall and Reunification? Pivoting to the present, the book addresses questions of migration, identity, and belonging in light of the proliferation of militarized borders today. Lange concludes by pointing to the glimpse the Green Belt offers into much older landscapes for clues about the ecological dimension of home.