ENTANGLED ECOLOGIES 149
Unifi ed Ecologies
From an ecological perspective, national borders have an air of arbitrari-
ness, and particularly so in the case of the German-German border. Nei-
ther the FRG nor the GDR were self-contained realms of nature. Both had
a multitude of regions from the coasts of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea
to the peaks of the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) and the Alps in the south.
The Wall was always permeable in an ecological sense, far more so than
for people.
There was a dynamic trans-German exchange in the air and the water.
Two large German rivers, the Elbe and the Werra, ran from East Germany
into West Germany, bringing large amounts of water from one system to
the other. The potential for confl ict was especially great in the case of the
Werra because its drainage basin was heavily aff ected by the central Ger-
man potash industry. The processing of these salts produces waste lyes
with a high salt content, which are not biologically degradable. Confl icts
go back to Imperial Germany, when the potash industry was already fac-
ing serious objections from downstream interests. Shortly before World
War I, for instance, the senate in the city of Bremen decided to oppose
permits for new potash plants on the Weser River and its tributaries in
order to protect its supply of drinking water.^4
The GDR sought to expand its potash industry because it was a prof-
itable source of foreign currency, and the Werra off ered almost perfect
opportunities for the externalization of the ensuing environmental costs.
The negative eff ects of salt waste showed up mostly in West Germany,
and while a joint East-West wastewater committee did exist, it met only
twice after World War II. By the early 1970s, both the Werra and the
upper Weser River were mostly dead as a result. In 1971, a pollution-
induced fi sh kill triggered a shutdown at a West German nuclear facility, as
tons of dead fi sh clogged up the cooling water inlet of the Würgassen nu-
clear power plant. West Germany pressured the GDR into several rounds
of expert talks during the 1980s, but East Germans kept things up in the
air until the collapse of socialist rule. However, governments reached an
agreement on the Röden River on the border between Thuringia (East
Germany) and Bavaria (West Germany), with the terms refl ecting the im-
balance of environmental sentiments and fi nancial resources. The FRG
pledged to provide the necessary technology and most of the funds for
the construction of a water treatment plant in the Thuringian town of
Sonnenberg.
Both states felt the consequences of two seismic events that were the
result of potash mining. On 23 June 1975, scientists recorded an earth-