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Eckertal is a hamlet of about 160 inhabitants in
During the period of the post-war
Eckertal is a hamlet of about 160 inhabitants in Bad Harzburg
Bad Harzburg (; Eastphalian: ''Bad Harzborch'') is a spa town in central Germany, in the Goslar district of Lower Saxony. It lies on the northern edge of the Harz mountains and is a recognised saltwater spa and climatic health resort.
Geograph ...
in Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...
, Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
.
Location
The settlement is situated just north of theHarz
The Harz () is a highland area in northern Germany. It has the highest elevations for that region, and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The name ''Harz'' derives from the Middle High German w ...
mountain range at the entrance of the densely forested Ecker
The Ecker is a , right-hand, southeast tributary of the Oker which runs mainly through the Harz mountains in the German states of Saxony-Anhalt and Lower Saxony.
Course
From its source to Abbenrode the Ecker is a border river, today running ...
valley, about downstream of the Ecker Dam
The Ecker Dam (german: Eckertalsperre) is a gravity dam in the Harz mountain range near Bad Harzburg, Germany. Constructed between 1939 and 1943, it is today operated by the Harzwasserwerke company. The dam's reservoir impounds the waters of t ...
. Located on the rim of the Bad Harzburg municipal area, about east of the town centre, its direct neighbour is the village of Stapelburg
Stapelburg is a village and a former municipality in the district of Harz, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Since 1 January 2010, it is part of the Nordharz municipality.
Geography
It is located at the northern foot of the Harz mountain range and Harz ...
, part of the Ilsenburg
Ilsenburg () is a town in the district of Harz, in Saxony-Anhalt in Germany. It is situated under the north foot of the Harz Mountains, at the entrance to the Ilse valley with its little river, the Ilse, a tributary of the Oker, about six nor ...
municipality in the state of Saxony-Anhalt
Saxony-Anhalt (german: Sachsen-Anhalt ; nds, Sassen-Anholt) is a state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia and Lower Saxony. It covers an area of
and has a population of 2.18 million inhabitants, making it the ...
. The parish is part of the Harz Nature Park; from here, the protected area of the Harz National Park
Harz National Park is a nature reserve in the German federal states of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. It comprises portions of the western Harz mountain range, extending from Herzberg and Bad Lauterberg at the southern edge to Bad Harzburg ...
stretches up to the Brocken
The Brocken, also sometimes referred to as the Blocksberg, is the highest peak in the Harz mountain range and also the highest peak in Northern Germany; it is near Schierke in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt between the rivers Weser and Elb ...
massif in the south.
History
The Ecker valley above the present-day settlement was the site of the medievalAhlsburg
The Ahlsburg is a range of bunter sandstone hills, relatively small in area and up to , in the southern part of Lower Saxony, Germany. It lies within the Solling foreland and is part of the Weser-Leine Uplands.
Geography
The Ahlsburg hills run ...
fortress, an Imperial castle
An imperial castle or ''Reichsburg'' was a castle built by order of the Holy Roman Emperor, whose management was entrusted to '' Reichsministeriales'' or '' Burgmannen''. It is not possible to identify a clear distinction between imperial castles ...
presumably erected in the 12th century. The picturesque vale was linked to public transport with the opening of the Wernigerode–Ilsenburg–Bad Harzburg railway line via Stapelburg and Eckertal on 1 October 1894. Two years later the '' Jungborn'' destination spa was founded in the Ecker valley, temporary home of notable guests like Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ty ...
in July 1912.
In the course of the German re-armament
German rearmament (''Aufrüstung'', ) was a policy and practice of rearmament carried out in Germany during the interwar period (1918–1939), in violation of the Treaty of Versailles which required German disarmament after WWI to prevent Germ ...
, the Luftwaffe
The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German '' Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the '' Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabt ...
forces in 1936 had a vast aircraft munitions depot (''Luft-Munitionsanstalt, Muna'') built on the railway line in the Schimmerwald forest northwest of the village. It was destroyed in the last days of World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
on 10 April 1945, when retiring German troops blew it up while US Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, c ...
forces entered the region. The blast left severe damages in the surrounding villages and even destroyed window panes in the Bad Harzburg train station about away. On the munitions site, which had an area of 270 ha, there were over 120 bunkers and a large number of bomb craters with a diameter of up to .Thamm, W.: Feuerwerker im Einsatz. Die Kampfmittelbeseitigung in der BRD 1945 - 1993, 2nd ed., Osnabrück 1997, p. 182. The Lower Saxon bomb disposal
Bomb disposal is an explosives engineering profession using the process by which hazardous explosive devices are rendered safe. ''Bomb disposal'' is an all-encompassing term to describe the separate, but interrelated functions in the militar ...
service continued to work at Eckertal until 2011.
During the period of the post-war division of Germany
Division or divider may refer to:
Mathematics
*Division (mathematics), the inverse of multiplication
*Division algorithm, a method for computing the result of mathematical division
Military
* Division (military), a formation typically consisting ...
, Eckertal was the site where the Inner German border
The inner German border (german: Innerdeutsche Grenze or ; initially also ) was the border between the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) and the West Germany, Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) from 1949 to 1990. Not ...
along the Ecker interrupted the Bundesstraße 6
The Bundesstraße 6 (abbr. B6) is a German federal highway running from Bremerhaven on the North Sea coast in a southeasterly direction through the states of Lower Saxony, Bremen, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony to Görlitz on the Polish border.
...
. Likewise, Eckertal became the terminus for trains from Bad Harzburg and the railway tracks were finally dismantled in the 1970s. A restaurant and an observation post overlooking the border installations were a popular destination for day-trippers.
After the Wall
A wall is a structure and a surface that defines an area; carries a load; provides security, shelter, or soundproofing; or, is decorative. There are many kinds of walls, including:
* Walls in buildings that form a fundamental part of the su ...
was opened on 9 November 1989 in Berlin
Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...
, the inner German Border followed suit. On 11 November 1989 around 4.30 pm the highway was re-opened between Eckertal and Stapelburg. From a historic point of view this was the first new border crossing between East
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fa ...
and West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
in the process of reunification
A political union is a type of political entity which is composed of, or created from, smaller polities, or the process which achieves this. These smaller polities are usually called federated states and federal territories in a federal governmen ...
. Today a monument commemorates this event. It bears the inscription ''"Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit für das Deutsche Vaterland"'' from the third stanza of the ''Deutschlandlied
The "" (; "Song of Germany"), officially titled "" (; "The Song of the Germans"), has been the national anthem of Germany either wholly or in part since 1922, except for a seven-year gap following World War II in West Germany. In East German ...
''.
References
{{Authority control Bad Harzburg Goslar (district)