A Hazardous Connection

For decades, the Iron Curtain divided Germany into East and West. Yet while people were barred from crossing this heavily fortified border, millions of tons of waste passed through it. A Hazardous Connection traces the waste trade between East and West Germany from the 1970s to the fall of the Berlin Wall. A pragmatic solution for West Berlin‘s mounting waste problem developed into a lucrative business and an international European waste network, as East German disposal sites took in waste from across Western Europe – earning foreign currency while shifting environmental risks and toxic burdens onto the GDR. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book uncovers the networks of politicians, officials, waste workers, companies, and activists that sustained – and increasingly challenged – this trade, revealing a striking Cold War paradox: even across one of its most fortified borders, environmental and economic interests remained deeply interconnected. This book offers a new environmental history of divided yet connected Germany – and shows how toxic legacies outlasted the Iron Curtain itself.