Statue of the Customs Officer (Kommies) in Suderwick

Wenn der Zöllner mit dem Smuggler ... (Toen de douanebeambte met de smokkelaar ....), Jürgen ebert, 1996. (Süderwick)

Suderwicker Grenzgeschichte, the limit that only exists on paper.

If a village is intersected by a national border, there has of course been a lot of smuggling back and forth over the centuries. The artist Jürgen Ebert from Bocholt shows in a humorous way how this smuggling worked in Dinxperwick. On the Village Square in Suderwick, next to a closed barrier, there is a bronze smuggler. He walks away from the border and looks back to see if the commies (the customs officer) has noticed him. You can see from his satisfied grin that the smuggler thinks his mission has been successful. But the bag he carries over his shoulder also contains two mice. One of them realizes the plight the smuggler actually finds himself in. The commie is standing a little further away (in front of the Volksbank) peering into the distance with his binoculars. Fortunately, the commie has his binoculars wrongly placed in front of his eyes and he does not see the smuggler at all. Does this represent the narrow eye that commissioners often had for the smugglers? We will never know. Nor will we ever know whether another smuggler on the Dutch side who crossed the border with livestock was ever "snatched". However the story ends, the picture in three (actually four, including the barrier) sharing gives a nice impression of how important smuggling must have been over the centuries in the twin village of Dinxperlo-Suderwick. Until 1992, when the European internal borders opened and free movement of goods was allowed between the Netherlands and Germany and therefore also between Suderwick and Dinxperlo, a lot of smuggling took place on the Heelweg/Hellweg, where this group of statues is located. And smugglers were also regularly caught by Zoll and customs officials. This writer experienced this personally in 1986, when he was in military service in Germany and wanted to smuggle tax-free goods through Dinxperlo to the Netherlands. Nowadays, when I cross the border there, I still think: there the commie is waiting for me again with his binoculars. (coulissenland.nl/cultuur-musea/als-de-commies-met-de- smuggleaar-dinxperlo -suderwick/)