'Crazy things always begin on the edge of the world' - The story of village in the grip of history
From defying Prussia to 20th century trauma, Netzeband is a fascinating microcosm of Germany's tumultuous history
It was a warm summer evening in Berlin when I stood next to a bunch of nude statues by the River Spree and gave an interview to the German public broadcaster ZDF.
For the news show heute-journal I was asked questions about my views on East Germany before and after 1990 and the political and social ramifications for today. The three frolicking bronze girls and their one male companion may seem an odd backdrop for such an interview at first glance. But the quartet had originally enjoyed a different waterside location.
They had once adorned a fountain in front of one of East Germany’s most exclusive addresses: the Palasthotel in East Berlin. The hotel was demolished after reunification but its cheerful, naked greeting committee survived and was relocated to the nearby banks of the Spree, where they continue to watch visitors to the capital.
When we were finished with the interview, Christhard Läpple, the journalist who had asked me the questions, told me that he had long had a strong interest in East Germany despite hailing from Ludwigsburg the former West. He had been a correspondent in both East and West Berlin in the late 1980s. His wife had left East Germany through an official application for permanent emigration but continued to be in touch with friends and family on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall.
The Läpples now spend much of their time in the small village of Netzeband, just north of Berlin, in the rural state of Brandenburg. ‘You must come and visit us there,’ said Läpple cheerfully before I headed off to the DDR Museum where I was due to give a talk about my book.
I’d never heard of Netzeband – a fact I was mildly embarrassed about given that I grew up in the state of Brandenburg myself. In fairness, Brandenburg is quite large. It surrounds Berlin entirely and is the country’s fifth largest state by area (though only its tenth largest by population). And the village is not huge, only around 200 people live there. But something in the way Läpple spoke about it made me feel I ought to know the place.
I was certainly intrigued to speak to an audience in rural Brandenburg about the GDR. An email exchange with the subject line ‘Netzeband Calling’ ensued as Läpple and I hammered out the details for my visit.
What I found in Netzeband turned out to be so much more than an East German village. It is a microcosm of German history that covers several centuries, one of those places where past and present play out the national story on a miniature stage. Quite literally in Netzeband’s case – it was theatre that contributed to the village’s recovery from the trauma of its 20th century.
I must admit that I had no idea where Netzeband actually was. I had been told it was near Neuruppin, which I had been to a number of times as a child. Two of my great aunts had settled there when they, my grandmother and my great-grandmother had been expelled as children at the end of the Second World War from what was then eastern Brandenburg and is now western Poland.
In 1688, Neuruppin became one of Brandenburg’s first garrison towns – a status it only lost when the Soviet troops left following Germany’s reunification in 1990. Its military character and connection to Frederick the Great, who was given command of his first infantry regiment here as Crown Prince after he had been imprisoned by his father for trying to run away, have given it a reputation as the ‘most Prussian of Prussian towns.’
Netzeband is only a short drive to the north of Neuruppin but couldn’t be more different. You approach it on country lanes that cut through fields that seem to stretch endlessly across the flat landscape. The solitude of Brandenburg’s sandy soils, pine forests and lakes have given many a poet inspiration, including Theodor Fontane, who was born in Neuruppin, and Bertolt Brecht, who wrote much of his output from a lakeside house in beautiful Buckow.
Netzeband too seems to be in the middle of nowhere. On the way, you pass a road called ‘Straße zum Rinderkombinat’ which translates as ‘Street leading to the cattle combine’ – a legacy of the collectivised farming that took place here during the years when Netzeband was in socialist East Germany.
Drive on a bit further towards the village and you pass a little toll house. I didn’t recognise what it was at first. A toll house seemed unlikely. What for? Netzeband is in the middle of Brandenburg with no obvious historical borders nearby. But intriguingly, the village is a piece of Germany’s fractured history before the nation state was founded in 1871.
Unlike nearby Neuruppin and everything else in the vicinity it wasn’t part of Prussia. By coincidence, marital agreements and complicated inheritance lines made it part of Mecklenburg, a little enclave in the middle of the Prussian heartlands.
Accordingly, those seeking to escape Prussia’s strict militia culture, conscription and the expectation for citizens to be soldiers in waiting sought refuge there. Theodor Fontane, the region’s famous son noted about Netzeband: ‘The village was synonymous with freedom. In many hundreds, if not thousands, of hearts all thinking and wishing revolved around the question: will I reach the village or not.’
The stakes were high if a recruit had fled the garrison in Neuruppin a canon was fired that could be heard in Katerbow, the Prussian village adjacent to Netzeband which the would-be refugee had to cross. If he was apprehended there, the punishment for desertion that awaited him could be severe.
It was only in 1937, as part of Nazi reforms, that Netzeband was integrated into Prussia. As everywhere else, Nazism brought about a varied response from the village population.
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