Rest and memorial place Gerstenstein.
A very nice rest area with an audio station about the history of the people who lived here in the GDR border area.
Here at the barley stone the following happened:
A border incident went down in German-German history here in 1962: The 20-year-old officer candidate Hilpert Spohr from Heilbronn and three friends went on a trip to the inner-German border and climbed the three-meter-high "barley stone" in the GDR despite warning signs . The East German guard Lothar Kießling saw the young men on the rock and decided to put an end to the "border provocation". After shouting and firing a warning shot, he is said to have shot the young men with the machine gun from a distance of a few meters, seriously injuring one of the three visitors.
A six meter long banner with the inscription: “At this point Private Lothar Kießling became a criminal” was put up on a private initiative. On the East German side, a counter table was set up on which Hilpert Spohr was referred to as a provocateur.