I am going on a history tour of Europe with my son and we will be staying in Hamburg for a couple of days. I wondered if there were any East German border remains anywhere with a museum?
We're going to Berlin as well, but I wondered if there was anywhere interesting remaining from the iron curtain?
Take a look at "Museums of the inner German border" on Wikipedia. It describes the museums and gives a map of their locations. You can figure out which ones would be closest to Hamburg.
That Wikipedia page runs from North to South, so look at the top part.
Awesome thanks, second from top looks perfect for us.
In Berlin, be sure to go to the Berlin Wall exhibits in and around the Nordbahnhof station. The station itself has information about escapes via the U-bahn, and then you can see some free movies about the wall's construction and operation. Then you see the wall itself, including the only remaining section showing the "double wall" construction.
All of this is free (or at least it was in 2012 when I went). Even my mother, who only went along with me to please me, found it very interesting.
Also the walk from the Nordbahnhof along Bernauer Strasse to the U-8 station follows the path of the wall with a lot of exhibits and historic photos.
If you are driving to Berlin from Hamburg I recommend that you stop in #9 Helmstedt. I recommend that you stop to see the transit museum in this key town. We passed along this corridor in 1982 when we had to go through the border checkpoint and again 2 times in 1990 when we could just drive right through while watching soldiers ripping the structure apart. While I have been to Helmstedt on more recent occasions I haven't been to the museum but may go someday. The images are still so vivid in my mind of what I saw and experienced on those crossings from the past. Have a great trip with your son.
EDIT: another strong impression. Once you left Helmstedt you couldn't get off the highway for any reason (except the specially built, controlled petrol stations) until you reached the "Welcome to the xxx Sector" on the outskirts of Berlin . Right now I can't remember if it was the British sector or US. It was a very bleak and tense drive, especially since we'd been pulled over by an East German guard with a big gun right after leaving the Helmstedt guard station.
2nd Edit...We were actually on the A2 a more west-east approach on the 2nd of 3 transit routes between east and west. We were driving from Bielefeld to Berlin.
Bielefeld and Helmsted were both in the British sector. I had heard of Helmsted in 1971, that's why I avoided the whole thing by flying from Hannover-Langenhagen to West Berlin. In 1971 it was landing at Tempelhoft, in 1973 it was at Tegel.
