Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement

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Tank tracks cross a path near Wilsede in 1960

The Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement (SLA) was a contract between the Federal Republic of Germany , the United Kingdom and Canada , which regulated the use of areas in the Lüneburg Heath as a military training area, particularly for tanks , between 1963 and 1994 .

prehistory

Despite the establishment of the Bergen military training area in 1935 and the two training areas in Munster (1893 and 1916), the protected areas of the Lüneburg Heath nature reserve were initially excluded from military use. Military installations during the Second World War included an air force observatory on Wilseder Berg , a Hamburg hospital in Wintermoor and a military airfield near Reinsehlen .

The Reinsehlen camp as the starting point of the British tank exercises 1950–1994 in the Lüneburg Heath, today an important sandy grassland area

After the Second World War, Canadian troops and units of the British Rhine Army carried out military exercises in the Lüneburg Heath on the basis of occupation law from 1945 onwards . There was no permanent practice room. The area of ​​the former military airfield was used as Camp Reinsehlen by British tank units from 1950 onwards. The occupation troops steadily expanded their training areas all the way to Wilseder Berg, from which they withdrew at the end of the 1940s. From 1948 on they no longer practiced all year round, but only eight months a year. The President of the Nature Protection Park Association (VNP), Alfred Toepfer , fought for the preservation of the natural areas, but the British commander in chief only offered arable and grassland areas as alternatives, which were urgently needed to feed the population.

In the course of the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into the West , she joined NATO in 1955 , which ended the occupation statute. The Paris Treaties contained a new regulation for the stay of foreign armed forces in the Federal Republic, which became stationing troops. In 1956, the Canadians largely stopped their exercise activities. This year, the British withdrew from a 600-hectare area near Haverbeck after considerable protests by citizens.

agreement

On August 3, 1959, the Federal Republic, Canada and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland signed a special agreement in Bonn on maneuvers and exercises in the Soltau-Lüneburg area. It was included in Article 19 of the NATO Force Treaty. Due to the lengthy ratification, the law was only published in the Federal Law Gazette in 1961 and came into force on July 1, 1963 under the name Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement . In 1965 a standing committee for the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement was formed. He followed up on complaints, balanced interests and coordinated civil and military matters.

The agreement allowed the stationing troops to conduct military exercises in the designated area all year round. The places and homesteads were not allowed to serve as targets, tanks were not allowed to pass them on Sundays and public holidays.

affected areas

The Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement comprised a 40 km long and 10 km wide area between Soltau and Lüneburg with an area of ​​around 34,500 hectares, in which around 26,000 people lived. The Federal Property Administration leased around 12% of the space that was available to the stationing troops with around 4,600 hectares as red areas for permanent and unrestricted use. Of the red areas , 3,700 hectares belonged to today's Heidekreis district , the remaining 900 hectares to the Lüneburg district . Before the agreement, military exercises were carried out on 48,000 hectares. The red areas were reserved for the stationing troops , the Bundeswehr was not allowed to practice on them.

consequences

Around 1800 landowners were forced to make their land available for military use as part of the contract. With over 1,600 hectares , the Association of Nature Conservation Park (VNP) was one of the landowners affected and therefore rejected the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement from the outset, but this had no consequences. Another 1,600 hectares belonged to private owners. In 1970 some of the owners were given back their agricultural land. In the mid-1970s, the VNP sued the Lüneburg Regional Court without success, citing the unconstitutionality of the agreement .

As a result of the use with tanks, the heather on the red areas looked more and more desert-like areas. The areas were not cordoned off , as with a military training area , and tourists could enter. In individual cases there were accidents as a result of handling found practice ammunition. Sharpshooting was not allowed in the training area.

From the 1970s onwards, an average of 1,500 tanks and 30,000 soldiers were in the area of ​​the agreement. This caused a constant load on the road through troop movements and a high risk of accidents, especially at night. There were traffic accidents with injured and dead civilians. The population and tourism suffered from a reduction in quality of life due to noise, dust and vibrations. In addition, harvests were partially destroyed and roads were damaged by heavy military traffic . There were also frequent clashes between the residents and the soldiers.

Citizen Protests

In Schneverdingen in 1986, which was based citizens' for reducing the stress in the military Heide e. V. , which with 13,000 collected signatures demanded the dissolution of the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement. The members carried out numerous high-profile protest actions. In 1988, when they inspected the red areas , they collected around 100 oil containers and protested in front of the Lower Saxony state parliament in Hanover. In 1990 they blocked the railway ramp of Camp Reinsehlen against the unloading of tanks. In 1991 a passage near the camp was again blocked to prevent tanks from entering the heather. In Amelinghausen , a citizens' initiative was also founded in 1988 to reduce the military burden. Both citizens' initiative and other environmental associations demanded from Lower Saxony's Prime Minister Gerhard Schröder in 1992 that the exercise be ended and the agreement be repealed.

End of the agreement

Towards the end of the Cold War , the Defense Ministers Gerhard Stoltenberg and Tom King renegotiated the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement at the end of 1989 in order to reduce the burden on the population from the exercise. From 1990 onwards, it was agreed that there would be a break from practicing for several weeks during the heather bloom and thus the main tourist season in August and September. In addition, tanks were no longer allowed to drive on the red surfaces on Sundays and public holidays . The places were given a 400 m wide buffer zone against tank exercises and were no longer allowed to be passed at night.

After German reunification , the two defense ministers, Stoltenberg and King, signed an agreement on October 17, 1991 to end the exercise in the heath. On July 31, 1994, the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement expired and the last red areas were returned to the Nature Conservation Park Association. He then restored the areas with the support of the federal government.

literature

  • Messages from the NNA: One carries the other's burden - 12,782 days of the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement , 4th year / 1993, special issue

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