Nieder Neuendorf Border Tower

Memorials of recent German history

0 Ratings of 5 (0)

“Do you want to run away too?”, an apprentice at Lokomotivbau Elektrotechnische Werke (LEW) in Hennigsdorf asked an intern – and he, a 20 year old student at the Technical University, agreed. The two young men prepared to escape through Lake Nieder Neuendorf. On January 31, 1963, they crossed the border barriers and swam through the water covered in ice floes to the West Berlin banks of Heiliger See Lake on the opposite side.

The watchtower of the GDR border troops in Nieder Neuendorf, where this history is told today, is one of the last four of its kind to be preserved along the Berlin Wall. The tower served as a command post for the deployment of border troops in and around the ten kilometre long section of the Berlin-Brandenburg Wall from Schönwalde to the south to Stolpe-South to the north. From here, border security in this area was coordinated and steps taken in the event of an alarm to prevent GDR residents form fleeing to West Berlin. The distance between the border posts armed with Kalaschnikov machine guns that were commanded from the tower was 560 to 950 metres by day and 400 to 650 metres by night.

A bilingual exhibition that opened in 2014 provides information at the tower over four levels on the structure and everyday life of the GDR border troops, how the barriers were constructed and the history of refugees, those who wanted to leave and opponents from the region. Among other things, the exhibition shows a “Ruf- und Sprechsäule” (communication pillar), which was part of the communication network at the border. You can also see a search light and a special telescope, which made it possible to watch the stretch of border closely.

The border tower has been a protected monument since 1999.

Literature: