Occupied Ruptures in Space

Cultural recovery of the landscape within the former inner German border area

With the reunification of Germany in 1990, the two sides of the former inner German border area found itself no longer as remote regions on the margins of two separated political and social hemispheres, but in the center of a reunited Europe. With focus on the Schaalsee lake in northern Germany, once divided by the border into two nearly equal parts, Günter Marks adresses how the models of the two opposing socio-political systems find their expression in this specific landscape and how its formerly ruptured spaces coalesce – or remain separate – through the actions of the local people. Günter Marks embeds these questions in the debate of Ecological and Visual Anthropology as well as Sensory Ethnography. With the help of the medium film he approaches different concepts of living of the people who inhabit the region and accompanies their individual and collective processes of life. Thereby, Günter Marks illuminates the state of reunification 25 years after the fall of the Wall.