Helmstedt-Marienborn

• Photographer
  Susanne Wegner

The checkpoint Helmstedt–Marienborn was the largest and most important border crossing on the Inner German border during the division of Germany.  The frontier between the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) from 1949 to 1990 ran 1,393 kilometres (866 mi) from the Baltic Sea to the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia). The pictures show the checkpoint more than 20 years after the German reunification, unnecessary and almost hidden from the traveller‘s view besides the Autobahn A2 from Hannover to Berlin, fading away like the remininiscence of long hours waiting in line to be checked by fellow countrymen.