HEILIGENDAMM, Germany - Bystanders gazed in curiosity and disgust Monday at the razor-wire-topped fence that will separate Group of Eight leaders from the rest of Germany during this week's summit — part of security measures that, for some, evoke memories of life behind the Iron Curtain. The G-8 conference - just like the Stasi!
"It's not good given the history of Germany — we had it in East Germany, and now it's up again," said Ralf Klonschinski, on vacation from a home in eastern Germany, as he looked at a security camera and floodlight perched atop the eight-foot fence. "I'm not so sure it's necessary."
Cutting across seven miles of verdant farmland near some of Germany's main seaside playgrounds, the fence is reviving memories of the Berlin Wall as authorities confront the modern realities of global terrorism and radical protest movements. German officials say a 16,000-strong police presence at the G-8 meeting as the only way to safeguard the free expression of nonviolent demonstrators, after more than 400 police officers and 500 protesters were injured in nearby Rostock over the weekend. But some precautions don't feel so benign to Germans with long memories. Prosecutors already face criticism for taking scent samples in a pre-summit investigation of a handful of G-8 opponents — a technique used by the dreaded East German Stasi secret police to track dissidents with dogs — and for intercepting and opening the mail of another suspect.
See? See? Toldja! Stasi!
Like other vacationers, Klonschinski and his wife hiked to the edge the fence supported by massive concrete blocks at every post and reinforced with iron bars driven into the ground to prevent people from going underneath.
Protesters will not legally get anywhere near the barrier, after a court last week upheld a ban on demonstrations within about four miles of the fence. An alliance of activist groups that plans a June 7 march has appealed to Germany's highest court. On Monday, officers on foot patrolled the inside perimeter. Police vehicles periodically drove along the dirt road built along the outside of the fence, bisecting lush green fields and a forest.
The public could see the fence only where it meets the sea, with the other area restricted to journalists and officials. Inside the fence, all was quiet: A small red fox even emerged from a farmer's crops to examine the barrier between him and the forest before retreating.
Surely a spy fox reporting back to HQ
Days before the summit starts, armored personnel carriers, trucks with water-cannons atop and other support vehicles were put into place, while police helicopters flew overhead. "I wanted to go a little further, but there's a tank," vacationing Hamburg resident Ingeborg Seipel said as she turned her bicycle around. "It's all a little much." She cycled to the fence from the Baltic resort city of Kuehlungsborn — crowded with media covering the summit. Seipel said she knew that the G-8 would land in the middle of her three-week holiday, but didn't expect such tight controls. "These measures I couldn't imagine," she said.
Kuehlungsborn hoteliers say a drop in tourists because of the G-8 has been made up for by journalists coming in.
Klaus Selck, who runs a seaside bratwurst stand along the path between Kuehlungsborn and the summit site in Heiligendamm, said normally 2,000 to 3,000 tourists would be in and out of his patch every day at this time of year, compared with a small trickle on Monday.
Seaside German brats. Yummy!
But nodding to dozens of police vans and armored vehicles in the parking lot in front of his stand, he said the officers were making up for the drop-off in tourist business — and he prefers them to the black-clad anarchists who torched cars and broke windows in Rostock. "I'm happy they're here," he said. "We don't want those others here." As a lifelong resident of the Kuehlungsborn area, once located in communist East Germany, he rejected any similarities to border controls to the era before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. "In East Germany you'd never get close to the border fence — they stopped you 10 kilometers (six miles) away," he said. "There's no comparison."
And then the reporter heaved an audible sigh of relief, snapped his notebook shut, and gratefully retired behind the fence to the hospitality tent...