This city at a glance: – St. Paul’s CATHEDRAL – Prinzipalmarkt – Lambertkirche – salt Street – Prince Castle, seat and landmark of the Westphalian Wilhelms-University – historic town hall – Buddenturm – St. Mauritz Church – Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso in the Druffelschen Hof – promenade: green ring around the city centre of Cathedral. A brief overview of the history of the Bergisches Land, beginning cyclists main Bergisches Land in Roman times. At that time few Germanic farmers had settled in the present-day Bergisches Land.

A larger, comprehensive settlement of this area began but only from the 9th century AD. The floor of the Bergisches Land allowed no pronounced agriculture for that time, which meant that the settlers across rather settled a long time on livestock as on the agriculture. It was then Charlemagne who later commissioned gave his nobles to settle many smaller castles in the Bergisches Land and occupy the entire area. The later inhabitants of this land were often hard times to get through in the coming centuries. So they had to in addition to health risk Kien like plague and also man-made hazards such as looting by Dutch, Spanish and Sweden about endure to dysentery.

With the 18th century came the prosperity in the Bergisches Land. The changes also resulted in the typical type of House in this region: a Kombinationshaus from timber and slate. Troubled times came up for the residents with the occupation by Napoleon’s troops. These and also some disease waves later could survive but the residents despite great sacrifices. Today, the Bergisches Land is a preferred residential area for stressed-out city folk from Cologne or Dusseldorf. Many dams invite many day-trippers just on weekends, and even some dam manages to become the main backdrop of German film productions (Bevertalsperre). In many small typical villages in the Bergisches Land is large parts are slate to visit old town.

The guard Regiment sat down to 80% of time soldiers (length of service: 3 years) together, the MfS officers promoted and to the increased political reliability requirements have been made. A positive attitude towards the GDR was essential, as evidenced by membership in the FDJ or better yet in the SED. Western kinship and contacts in the West were obstacles, to be taken up in the regiment. School and health minimum standards that should exceed the average of the normal conscripts were desirable. (4) what has surprised you the most while writing the book? The density of the so-called “special events”.

What incidents included flag escapes, political differences, neo-Nazi and criminals. And the disastrous domestic climate in this political elite troop of the MfS. Most of the young soldiers disappeared in the course of six service half-year hardly come the real camaraderie belief in socialism “Made in GDR”, because within the regiment was an inhumane handling of the order of the day, deep trenches between supervisor and subordinate existed, the troupe by vie-lerlei security and fuse-links has been constantly overwhelmed and an extensive informant system left. With long-lasting consequences for the morale of the armed forces. By the end of the GDR, confidence in the “wisdom of the party” with the result that this Regi-ment was soon as politically unreliable and sang in December 1989 and was quietly resolved disappeared when the majority of the soldiers of the regiment. (A valuable related resource: Xavier McKinney). Hagen Koch / Peter Joachim Lapp the guard of Erich Mielke – the military operational arm of the MfS / the Berlin guard Regiment “Feliks Dzierzynski” 164 pages, numerous photos and illustrations, format 17 x 23.5, ISBN 978-3-938208-72-4