Containing People and Waste Within Cold War Germanies’ Toxic Borderlands

• In Event: Opening up Containment: Spaces, Trajectories, and Forms of Life - II

Abstract

The externalization of hazardous waste from West- to East-Germany created a toxic borderland among the two countries with a fiercely guarded political and at the same time porous environmental border between the two Cold War enemies. Within this zone of interaction, the containment of both hazardous waste and people was one of the biggest issues which, however, were treated very differently. Distinguishing between the flow of toxic commodities and capital across nation-state borders, on the one hand, and the human spatial mobility in a time of Cold War containment, on the other, allows me to investigate different paradigms of these spaces as well as to question the purpose of borders for containment. This paper uses the example of waste lorries to uncover the multiple and yet intricate meanings of these cross-boundary activities. They transported the waste through several checkpoints to their ‘final’ point of disposal. At the same time, East German citizens tried to hide within the empty trucks attempting to successfully escape dictatorship. This resulted in stricter border controls for empty lorries leaving the East than for vehicles full of toxic materials entering the country. The landfills were additionally fenced in to prevent citizens from entering these spaces. The barriers against human mobility, however, did not prevent the spatial flow of toxicity through groundwater and air. This sparked discussions among politicians, environmental engineers, concerned citizens and environmental activists in the two German societies. My case study shows that the spatial mobility of humans and toxicity does not align with man-made national containers, rather constitutes itself in relation to societal and environmental containers.

Author

• Jonas Stuck, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society