The inner-German border cut through landscapes, villages, and families for decades. A partially mined security strip stretched over 1,393 kilometers from the Baltic Sea coast to Bavaria. Tens of thousands of people were directly affected in their daily lives. Jürgen Ritter and Peter Joachim Lapp present a meticulously researched documentation of this alarmingly effective barrier. They not only provide information about the technical details and military concepts but also recount the stories of those individuals for whom this border became a deadly fate. This is set against the backdrop of a political history that spans from the end of World War II to the attempts at legal reconciliation following German reunification. The volume documents the changes of recent years while also addressing possibilities.