1400 kilometers of Iron Curtain: A GDR border guard on the hike of his life

There are people who never stop moving or keep their mouths shut – because they want to improve something in their immediate environment, for the community, and indeed for humanity. Others shy away from the conflicts that come with it. Among the former is Günter Polauke, born in 1948, a post-war child of Prenzlauer Berg from an anti-fascist family, who was given the first name of his uncle, who fell in Normandy at the age of 21: an incorrigible optimist with a steady disposition and the kind of positive energy that easily rubs off on others.

Since June 11, 2025, he has carried his 76 years of life, about half of which were spent in the GDR , like a second backpack along the Green Belt. The former East-West border has borne this friendly name since December 9, 1989. 1,200 rare or endangered animal and plant species live where once barren land, sturdy metal fences, and minefields formed a death strip. Today, a unique natural and historical area stretches over exactly 1,393 kilometers, sometimes 30, sometimes 200 meters wide. On its periphery lie small towns and villages, whose inhabitants bear a thousand untold life stories.

As an 18-year-old with an MP on the death strip

Günter Polauke intends to walk this route – through Thuringia , Saxony-Anhalt , and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , all the way to the end. 80 percent of it is a road paved with perforated concrete slabs, once patrolled by East German border guards. Polauke was one of them. From 1967 to 1970, he did his military service in the border sector near Salzwedel, became a sergeant, and also an instructor. He knows what people are talking about when they talk about East German refugees being shot at. At least 260 people died during the years of the Iron Curtain . "I stood there as an 18-year-old with an MP and 60 rounds of ammunition," he says today. "Luckily, no one came. What would I have done if it had happened? I don't know."

It bothers him that so many people are now talking about war. Carrying a weapon means responsibility: "Politicians forget the situation they are putting soldiers in. They make decisions remotely, while the soldiers bleed to death in the trenches." Therefore, Polauke says: "Now we're supposed to make them fit for war again? That can't be right."

But what can you do? "Words alone don't help." His answer: "Start with yourself." So, after months of preparation, he set out to relive his life as a pilgrim along the Green Belt. As catharsis, or dialectically speaking, using Hegel's concept of "sublation": overcoming a contradiction, whereby the positive, valuable elements are preserved and continued, and the negative ones are eliminated. In Günter Polauke's words, it sounds like this: "To trace life backwards means to look at what one had. I want to come to terms with myself and to engage in conversation with people along the way."

In his case, the conflict is more intense than his years as a border guard alone can explain. An economist with a degree from Leipzig Business School and a member of the SED ( Socialist Unity Party), Polauke was mayor of the East Berlin district of Treptow from 1986 to 1989. That also meant a 17-kilometer border with West Berlin, a section of Kreuzberg, and a section of Neukölln. "I was at the border as a politically responsible person," he says. He didn't question it; it was a "political fact."

As mayor, he regularly participated in trips to the border zones. He knew what was going on there and the regulations governing how to act in the event of border breaches. The most important rule: "Do not use firearms. Prevent escape in advance." Nevertheless, it was in his district that Chris Gueffroy died: the last person to die at the Berlin Wall, a 21-year-old who, after visiting a pub in an allotment garden, decided to attempt the border breach. He was killed on the evening of February 5, 1989, by bullets fired by East German border guards. "Every death was terrible and sad," says Polauke.

After reunification, he soon resigned as mayor; he was implicated in the fraudulent local elections of 1989: "I could no longer appear before the people's representatives," he says. In February 1990, he started again from the very bottom: in a department store in Köpenick. But because he is who he is, he soon found himself in a responsible, voluntary position again, as elected chairman of the TSC sports club – and from 1998 to 2011, he led the venerable club out of the post-reunification crisis. Polauke has been a member of the SPD since 2001. He has always been open about his biography.

Finding oneself in the position of killing someone because of global politics isn't something that easily shakes people's minds. Especially not someone like Polauke, who is driven by empathy toward others. To cope with this, to deal with his own small story as well as the larger one, he embarks on a two-and-a-half-month journey.

The majority will be solitude, many hours of reflection, recapitulation. Making inner peace with people with whom one has struggled and argued, but also taking a clear stance, for example, on the recent war in Europe: "I stand in solidarity with the Ukrainians invaded by Russia. But the war in Ukraine is not my conflict. My freedom is not being defended there." He doubts: "Have we exhausted all means of creating peace?"

That's why he's seeking dialogue along the way, saying that it's important to maintain a dialogue, especially with young people – even if their opinions differ greatly. He's been feeling for some time now: "People are afraid again."

On the first few days of hiking, conversations flow naturally. An elderly gentleman, along with his wife and a friend, revisits the places where he himself served as a border guard in the 1970s. Another stands at the garden fence of his house, and it soon emerges: he, too, was once a border guard. A woman talks about 40 years of living in the restricted area; not even her brother from Jena was allowed to visit her. Now, however, with the border open, her town no longer has a baker, a doctor, or a mayor.

An old lady at the Saale Bridge near Hirschberg is deliberately seeking contact with passers-by. She has a piece of paper with a poem by Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798–1874) attached to it; it is to be read aloud: "You wild geese have it good, / You fly free and cheerfully / From one shore to the other / Through the whole of dear German land." And further: "It is not so for us tame humans: / We would gladly travel free and happy / Unexplored and unknown / Through the whole of dear German land." That was how it was in 1840, and isn't it the same again? The trauma of division lives on. And is being revived.

There's no escaping the facts here: the people in the border regions were hit hard by the post-war order. Entire villages were relocated. Those who stayed saw "the other side" only meters away. But eye contact was forbidden. The regime became stricter with each passing year. An elderly man explains what it meant that the garden fence was also the border fence. In the early years, if the children's ball flew over the fence, i.e. the border, they would ask the guards on the other side to throw the ball into the Saale River so they could collect it at the next bridge. Soon, that became unthinkable.

For two days, two friends accompanied Polauke's gang, twice walking a convoy of about 20 kilometers through the first hot days of the year: Holger Friedrich, the publisher of the Berliner Zeitung, was there because "this credible form of biographical reappraisal deserves to be supported."

The second was Heskel Nathaniel, a real estate developer originally from Israel, who 20 years ago, when he had long since become a Berliner, organized a major event to make a statement. At that time, terrorist attacks shook Israel. The idea came about while smoking a joint with a friend: "We need to counter all the bad news with good news." The idea was to be a "mountain of Israeli-Palestinian friendship."

Nameless mountains, whose first climbers have the right to name them, now only exist in Antarctica. The action then made world news: In 2004, four Palestinians and four Israelis, three men and one woman each, sailed 1,000 kilometers from southern Chile to Antarctica, hiked for ten days through the ice, and gave a 997-meter-high mountain a hopeful name. It didn't help much, says Heskel Nathaniel, but what if everything had been abandoned because of the apparent hopelessness?

The border fortifications: Today in BUND hands

He tells the story in Nordhalben, Bavaria, just south of the former Iron Curtain, in a small café over a Swedish cup of coffee shortly before saying goodbye to Günter Polauke, who is now hiking against the perceived lack of alternatives dictated by the logic of war: through 35 years of woodland that now overgrow the once bare border strip. For long stretches, the so-called vehicle trench runs parallel to the patrol path, intended to prevent vehicles from crossing the border. Again and again, the hiker encounters remnants of the original metal fence. A powerful infrastructure to seal off 1,400 kilometers of hill and dale.

Today, the German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) is aware of the importance of preserving this biotope. There is still no consistent signage along the trail, although the number of people hiking at least sections of it is steadily increasing.

In Mödlareuth, where Polauke's small group started, the border fortifications are still starkly preserved. The Tannbach stream has always divided the centuries-old village, which now has a population of 55. Since 1810, the border between the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reussen-Lobenstein ran along the stream right through Mödlareuth. This never bothered them; the neighbors celebrated together and went to the same school – until the division of Europe also divided Germany. And tore their village apart.

In 1952, a larger-than-life wooden wall was built across the village, followed in 1966 by a 700-meter-long concrete barrier wall with watchtowers and all the border fortifications that surrounded West Berlin. American military personnel called Mödlareuth "Little Berlin." On December 9, 1989, an excavator opened a direct crossing. The most important border fortifications have been preserved and are now part of the German-German Museum Mödlareuth.

Günter Polauke was pleased that he was treated kindly there, even though he comes from the "perpetrator's side" and openly admits: "I am not a victim." But he is glad that the border is a thing of the past: "It's good that we can talk about it today."