Kaninchenfeld - the territory of the free rabbits (9 photos)

These brass rabbits are a touching tribute to those long-eared creatures who once felt at ease in the neutral territory around the Berlin Wall.





When the German capital was divided into East and West Berlin, and the city was separated by the infamous Berlin Wall, a rather impressive neutral zone was formed between the two areas. If people could not freely pass from one part of the city to another, then no one could stop free wild rabbits from wandering where they wanted.



City rabbits could dig under the ground, cross the border as many times as they wanted and frolic on one side or the other, burrow under the wall, jump and run as much as they wanted on both sides of the border. The guards' duties included only monitoring illegal border crossings by people.





But the rabbits' ability to run back and forth across the border ended when the wall was torn down in 1989. The long-eared creatures lost their natural habitat. But their story did not end there. Residents did not interfere with the rabbit army when it moved into city parks and populated green areas, where their offspring live to this day.



As a tribute to the free-eared rabbits who lived in no man's land, in 1999 the artist Carla Sachse installed 120 life-size rabbit silhouettes as a floor inlay on the former border crossing on Chausseestraße in the Berlin district of Wedding. Near the place where they once roamed so freely, as a symbol of independence from the unacceptable demands of political didacticism. Unfortunately, in the decades since then, many of the brass rabbits have been buried under new layers of asphalt. It is not known how many remain, but some can still be seen along the street today.



In 2009, the documentary film "Berlin Rabbit" by director Bartosz Konopka was released, telling the story of the Berlin Wall from the perspective of a group of wild rabbits that inhabited the neutral zone.









Frame from the film "Berlin Rabbit"