I've always wanted to show you my hometown: Eschwege, a small town in Hessen.
It's pretty here, isn't it?
There are more than 1000 half-timbered houses here.
And if you're lucky, you'll hear the bells ring at the market place.
When I was born, Eschwege was on the edge of the Federal Republic, a few kilometres from the
inner-German border between Thüringen in the East and Hessen in the west.
The border separated Germany, even the whole of Europe into East and West.
But in 1989 the Berlin wall fell and the inner German border was also opened.
For the last 30 years Eschwege has again been in the middle of Germany.
Today I want to take you on a little tour along the border between Hessen and Thuringia
We’ll visit places that still bear witness to the Cold War division of Germany and its victims.
And we’ll find out what has changed since reunification…
turning a once heavily fortified death-strip into an attractive tourist destination.
My journey takes me south, always along the former inner German border to the Rhön region.
I go past small towns and villages, fields and meadows.
You don't really associate the landscape with terms like: Cold War or Iron Curtain.
But you can get an idea of what it used to be like at the Point Alpha museum.
It lies directly on the former inner-German border.
Danny Chahbouni shows me around.
First the different stages of development of the East German border installations:
from 1952 the old border stones were replaced by barbed wire.
Escapees were still able to cut through it quite well when there was no patrol nearby.
But then the exodus to the West became more and more life-threatening:
We are now in the middle of a former mine field that dates back to the 1960s.
When they begin building the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961, the inner-German border
was secured through military means. 1.3 to 1.4 million landmines were planted.
At the inner German border, more than three hundred people paid for their escape attempt with their lives.
The East German soldiers used to patrol the border strip past the East Border Tower.
Only 50 meters away, in the west, the watchtower of the US army was located.
It belonged to the observation post Point Alpha.
In the camp, directly at the border, 40 US soldiers from the Blackhorse Regiment were stationed
They had to be ready for action in just 10 minutes.
The Black Horse Regiment was a very strong unit with its own combat helicopters,
armoured infantry and artillery.
The assumption was that if a war broke out, the Soviets would advance
and this would be one of the first sites of a third world war.
Tanks were only allowed to drive up to this red line in the camp, anything else would
have been considered a provocation and possibly triggered the war.
The museum is visited by school classes, veterans from the USA
and many others interested in Germany's peaceful reunification.
My next stop is Vacha, one of the oldest towns in Thuringen, it was first mentioned as early as 814.
Almost as old: the bridge over the Werra.
Philippsthal begins on the other side, in Hessen.
Close enough to touch, but in Cold War times inaccessible.
Elisabeth Langlotz tells me that Vacha was directly in the restricted area, the bridge was impassable.
The bridge was a very important artery. It's from the Holy Roman Empire.
It was on the Via Regia from Leipzig to Frankfurt.
We liked it very much. And we were able to cross it until 1952. My aunt lived in the house on the border.
And then that ended here.
There were more and more fences built. First a wire mesh fence then a watch tower was
built on the bridge and then everything was closed off. There was nothing around.
It was like a no-man's land.
Did people try to escape through the Werra?
Yes of course, very often. My brother escaped in 1962.
He was a student in Freiberg and he and his friends played jazz and that got them into trouble.
So they swam across in August 1962.
Did they succeed?
They made it, yes!
In November of 1989 the border opened. What was that like?
Your family was reunited so was Germany. Your euphoria must have been immense I suppose?
It's the best thing to have happened to us at the end of the the 20th century.
It's a feeling that you don't experience very often.
Today the bridge again connects Vacha and Philippsthal. It is called "the Bridge of Unity".
Wartburg Castle near Eisenach is a symbol of German unity.
It was also only a few kilometres away from the inner-German border.
There are hundreds of castles in Germany, why is the Wartburg so important to Germans?
I have an appointment with Ulrich Baumhauer to find out.
He has been guiding visitors through the Wartburg for many years.
500 years ago Protestant reformer Martin Luther translated the Bible into German here.
Until then there were countless dialects, only the Luther Bible created the basis for a common German language.
The language the Germans speak today was born in this room. Created by Martin Luther.
When Goethe stood here 200 years later, he said: "Only through Luther did we become one people,
one nation, did we find a common language."
Another milestone in the history of Germany took place in the Wartburg.
In 1817 students and fraternities from the many small states and principalities gathered here in this chamber.
They demanded a common German nation, with civil-democratic basic rights.
The Jena fraternity invited people to the Wartburg Festival. And their colors are black - red - gold.
The black here in the middle, the red - purple back, then the gold modest,
briefly recognizable as the edge of the flag and as oak leaves in the middle.
The flag becomes the symbol of German democracy:
a black-red gold flag fluttered at Wartburg Castle for the first time.
For 30 years the Wartburg has been the castle of a unified Germany again.
Ulrich still remembers the first months after the opening of the border:
West Germans were finally free to visit the East without passports and visas.
And for many Wartburg Castle was one of the first destinations.
More than 700,000 people came in one year. They waited in line for hours.
They were thrilled because the Wartburg was in a super condition,
because they saw that investments had been made here for decades.
They saw the golden cross on the tower and knew they were at home here.
It’s been 30 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the reopening of the inner-German border.
Three decades that have blurred the lines between east and west.
And still we must not forget about the past which is why it is so important to have places that remind us of how
difficult and different things used to be around these parts.
Thanks for joining me. That's it for this week.
I'll see younext time somewhere in Germany.