For decades, the German Democratic Republic (RDA) watched the internal border that divided the two Germans to avoid the escape of Eastern Citizens to the West, to the German Federal Republic (RFA). Now, an ancient border control tower located in the small town of Camplesen, in the northwest of Brandeburg, goes out to auction.
The tower, located halfway between Hamburg and Berlin, and the Elba river, it will be auctioned this Friday in Berlin. For a minimum bid of 5,000 euros, this protected building can be acquired as a historical monument in a natural place part of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve “Elba river landscape”. However, according to the company Deutsche Grundstücksauktinsan AG of Berlin, in charge of the auction, due to the damage caused by vandalism and the years of unemployment, the building needs “important repair and rehabilitation works”.
According to the information provided by the auction house, it is a solid construction of three floors and a basement, with an annex of a plant, which was formerly used as an office. “The building is covered with plaster and is characterized by its functional and specific architecture, typical of the border security facilities of the old RDA,” they detail.
On the ground floor of the tower are the lobby with tile floor, the toilet, the machine room for the electrical installations and the corridor that gives access to the annex. A concrete ladder leads to the basement, where other electrical installations are located, as well as the first and second floor, where the rest rooms of the border soldiers were located.
An iron staircase leads to the third floor, where the old border tower observation position was located. The annex is a single -plant rectangular building, plastered and with individual windows. From the ground floor of the tower, a hall leads to the annex, where the offices were before.
The surrounding land, with an area of 3,683 square meters, is also auctioned with the tower. According to the offer, the useful surface is approximately 180 square meters. The current owner is a real estate company owned by the federal state.
As explained to the DPA Bernd Atzenroth agency, spokesman for the District of Prignitz, to which the town of Camplesen belongs, Prignitz will not participate in the auction. “Currently, we have received numerous questions from interested parties,” he said. “It is an issue that interests many people.” However, he acknowledges that it is not clear if, due to his complicated structure, someone will finally want to acquire the building.
Camples is located in the old border area. A few kilometers down, the Elba separated the Federal Republic of Germany and the RDA. Nowadays, two ferries re -connect the federated states of Brandeburg and Baja Saxony.
The German internal border, almost 1,400 kilometers long, prevented the fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9, 1989, through massive fortifications, that the inhabitants of the RDA flee. Some 30,000 soldiers of the border troops of the RDA had order to prevent flight, even shooting the people who tried.
To this border was added the border within Berlin, which separated the GDR from the western sectors, which were isolated inside the German capital when the wall was built in August 1961. In the first moment, the surveillance towers were made of wood, but in the 1960 like the one that is auctioned now. In areas outside the German capital and where there were no nearby settlements, the interalean border consisted of several metal fences with signaling and ditch systems and had more than 400 surveillance towers.
The illegal crossing of the border was a crime that could lead to a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Many lost their lives in their attempt. To date, the exact number of fatalities on the German interior border is not known. The Berlin Wall Foundation estimates that the total number of victims of the border regime is approximately 650. This figure also includes the people who died in the Baltic Sea.