“Let Them Meet on the Moon”: Locals Against The Fence

Since "The Fence" went up around Heiligendamm this winter, tourists and locals have been angry. It reminds them of the Cold War. Two and half meters-high, twelve kilometers long, equipped with cameras, patrolled by police dogs, and topped with ultra-sharp iron wire.

"It’s a pity, but it has to be like this," said Christa Heese, a 58-year Heiligendamm old tourist in, one of the last tourists to stay in the region's luxury hotels before preparations for the G8 began. "Security may cost something.”

Mrs. Heese said she's afraid of violent protesters, like the G8 protests in Genoa, Italy in 2001, when one Italian protester was shot to death after an attack on a police officer. The images she remembered looked like civil war. "In the past, demonstrators had more respect for the authorities.”

Most people I spoke to in Heiligendamm are against the fortifications erected around the cosy Baltic resort. "Let them meet at the moon," shouts one woman near the fence. A lot of locals want to keep their anonymity. They are not used to protesters, media invasion and experienced forty years of dictatorship in Communist East Germany.

Dagmar Krüger is clearly against the fence. "It’s absurd. They should spend the money on more schools," says the Bad Doberan resident. "Last year we didn’t need a fence when George W. Bush came to visit the area. He just took his bike and made a tour around the dunes.”

Adrienne Göhler, the former cutlure senator of Berlin, also made a statement against the fence. "This incredible bad ambiance isn’t the right occasion to have good talks about globalization. Let them meet on an oil platform, offshore!”

Nobody needs this demonstration of power, according to Gähler. That’s the reason she curated "Art goes Heiligendamm." "

"Art has to occupy itself with the import topics,” said Göhler.

Twenty-eight year-old student Anke Hornburg from Bad Doberan says, "Heiligendamm used to be a quiet place. Now rich people and politicians come. They need a fence to have their old boys network. But Hornburg knows the hated object won’t last long. After the G8 it will be torn down and sold to the Rostock Zoo."

ROB SAVELBERG