Theodor Fontane (1819 – 1898), novelist and poet regarded by many to be the most important 19th-century German-language realist writer, was born in Neuruppin
Today again fields and forests, brick farm houses and brick gothic churches, and for this part of Germany characteristic roads lined with trees, sometimes fruit trees, apple, pear or cherry, or birch, linden or oak trees. They are lovely and it's a shame that the trees are now being cut down in an effort to reduce the number of deadly car accidents. Wouldn't it be more sensible to enforce speed limits instead?
We discover that our route along quiet country roads is also the route that the prisoners from the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen were forced to march in the last days of the war.
The route of the Death March from Sachsenhausen to the north: Memorials are posted along the road, commemorating the tragic death of thousands in the last days of the war. On the morning of April 21, 1945, the SS evacuated the camp and marched 30,000 prisoners in groups of 500 on a Todesmarsch (Death march). Those too weak or sick to walk fast enough to keep up with the others were shot and left by the roadside. The surviving prisoners were finally liberated by allied forces near Schwerin.
