Eckertal

Eckertal City of Bad Harzburg
Coordinates: 51 ° 53 ′ 48 ″  N , 10 ° 38 ′ 59 ″  E
Height :	240 m
Area :	25 ha
Residents :	137  (Dec. 31, 2019)
Population density :	548 inhabitants / km²
Postal code :	38667
Area code :	05322
Eckertal in Bad Harzburg
Memorial stone for the opening of the Wall on November 11, 1989

Eckertal is a district of Bad Harzburg in the Lower Saxony district of Goslar . It has 137 inhabitants (as of December 31, 2019).

Geographical location

Eckertal lies on the northern edge of the Harz low mountain range . The location is limited in the north and west by the Schimmerwald and in the east by the Ecker . The core town of Bad Harzburg is about 6 km west-southwest. The closest neighbor is the Stapelburg, located directly across the Ecker in Saxony-Anhalt . The Eckertalsperre is located about 8 km south-southwest of Eckertal . While the village is located in the Harz Nature Park, the Harz National Park lies directly to the southwest .

history

In 1936, the Wehrmacht built an ammunition plant (Muna) for the Luftwaffe directly northwest of Eckertal . On April 10, 1945 this was completely destroyed by blowing up. The tremendous pressure wave destroyed windows in Bad Harzburg train station, seven kilometers away . On the 240 hectare site there are over 120 bunkers and a large number of blasting funnels with a diameter of up to 60 m. The Lower Saxony ordnance disposal service was still in use at Eckertal until 2012 .

In the times of the division of Germany, Eckertal was a popular destination for excursions; On the West German side there was a lookout tower from which parts of the inner German border could be seen. The dam of the nearby Eckertalsperre was secured during the German division by a wall on the dam as part of the border; it is open to the public.

When the Berlin Wall was opened on November 9, 1989 , it was only a matter of time before it happened elsewhere on the inner-German border. On November 11, 1989 at around 4:30 p.m., the border between Eckertal and Stapelburg was opened by the citizens of Stapelburg. Historically, this was the first new border crossing between the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany outside of Berlin . The rush of visitors at this crossing was so great that the technical relief organization had to build a more stable temporary bridge over the Ecker on the same weekend. The Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Ernst Albrecht, was one of the first prominent visitors to the new transition . On the tenth anniversary of this event, a memorial stone was erected on the historic site.

Population development

development	year	Residents	year	Residents	year	Residents
	2005	158	2013	152	2019	141
	2007	169	2014	151	0	0
	2008	161	2015	152	0	0
	2010	160	2016	154	0	0
	2011	153	2017	154	0	0
	2012	153	2018	154	0	0
	As of December 31 of each year Source:, 2018 and 2019.

Web links

Commons : Eckertal  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Inkscape value: (5375.86 px² + 366.96 px² / 1501177.21 px²) * 65.42 km².
2. ↑ ^{a b} Source: City of Bad Harzburg, in: Goslarsche Zeitung : Immigrants save the population statistics , January 15, 2020.
3. ↑ Wolfgang Thamm: Fireworkers in action. The disposal of ordnance in the FRG 1945–1993 . 2nd expanded edition. Osnabrück 1997, p. 182.
4. ↑ The Shimmer Forest is now bomb-free .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Goslarsche Zeitung , August 30, 2012, on goslarsche.de  
5. ↑ Anna Kaminsky (Ed.): Places of Remembrance: Memorial signs, memorials and museums on the dictatorship in the Soviet occupation zone and GDR . 3. Edition. Ch. Links Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-862-2 , p. 509 .
6. ↑ The district of Goslar at a glance. Numbers, data, facts. District of Goslar, December 3, 2018, accessed on December 20, 2019 .