Entlang der Grenze | Doku zum 25. Jahrestag der Mauer (Remastered)

One of the most impressive ARD documentaries about the East German border: Heribert Schwan's "Along the Border" depicts escape attempts, fates, and prominent voices – in the mid-1980s. A contemporary document full of drama and historical depth. On August 10, 1986, ARD broadcast Heribert Schwan's WDR documentary "Along the Border": A relentless look at everyday life in the GDR, Honecker's brutal border regime, and life-threatening border breaches – broadcast just days before the 25th anniversary of the construction of the Wall. The approximately 44-minute report depicts the Iron Curtain on the border between East and West in the mid-1980s in all its facets: • Dramatic escapes: Armin Gerbrandt recounts his brother's fatal attempt to swim across the Elbe River. A border guard uses a risky trick to escape from his own watchtower. And a young electrical engineer escapes to West Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie. • Everyday life of the border troops: Former GDR officer Ralf Molter describes what he knows about orders to shoot, wanted lists, and rewards for the arrest of "border violators." Historians and political scientists place this practice in the larger context of military and disarmament policy. • Prominent voices: Writers, actors, and artists such as Stefan Heym, Angelica Domröse, Erich Loest, Jurek Becker, Manfred Krug, Heiner Müller, and Wolf Biermann speak unusually openly about the division, their personal experiences with the border, and the "dirty shame" of the Wall. • Symbolic images: Aerial photographs of the Werra and Elbe border rivers, the death strip around Berlin, and the Brandenburg Gate clearly demonstrate how deeply the border has become ingrained in the country and in the lives of Germans. Even the dismantling of self-firing devices and the detonation of landmines by the GDR initially did nothing to change this. The film's musical theme is particularly haunting: Verses by Wolf Biermann, whose melancholy permeates the entire documentary, are heard repeatedly. The film concludes with his song "And when we came to the shore" – a piece full of melancholy and hope at the same time, which captures the tragedy of the German-German division as well as the longing for freedom in moving words. The documentary "Along the Border" makes it clear: Even a quarter of a century after the Wall was built, every meter of this border was – literally – politically mined. And yet, with the courage of desperation, people repeatedly dared to overcome the Wall and barbed wire. This film documents a piece of German contemporary history that continues to resonate today. 🎥 Source: Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). 📼 VHS recording, digitized, restored, and posted online for the preservation of contemporary historical documents. #GDR #Wall #Border #ContemporaryHistory #Escape #HeribertSchwan #WDR #Documentary #History #ARD #WallBuilding #GDREscape