Pieces of stone

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aerial photo of Steinstücke, 1989
Today's location in Steinstückens - surrounded by the Potsdam area

Steinstücken is a local situation in the southern part of the Berlin district in Wannsee ( Steglitz-Zehlendorf ) and is located approximately 300 residents southwest of Kohlhasenbrück almost completely from the area of Potsdam enclosed. The extension is around one kilometer in an east-west direction and around 300 meters in a north-south direction. Steinstücke became known primarily as the only permanently inhabited among the ten West Berlin exclaves during the Cold War . The " Kanonenbahn " runs through pieces of stone and divides the area into two parts.

Origin of the exclave

The place was first mentioned in 1680 as Die Steinstücke . In 1683 it was part of the desert Feldmark Wendisch Stahnsdorf, was there in the western part of the district and was administered by the Potsdam Office. The exclave was created when farmers from the village of Stolpe purchased a piece of land outside their actual municipal boundaries in 1787, on which a colony was formed in the 19th century . In 1801 a hunter's house was built there, "also called a forester's house in the Green Heath", in which there was a household (= fireplace) with six people. In 1840 it reappeared as "Forsthaus, Belonging to Drewitz". In 1860, Steinstücke consisted of the protective district Steinstücke and the Steinstücke forester's house, in which there were a residential and two farm buildings and six people lived. In the colony established in 1817 there were now five residential and eight farm buildings with 34 people.

The Prussian land surveying and reorganization from the years 1865 to 1868 allocated land outside the place of residence of the owner for tax and legal purposes to the municipality in which the owner lived. When Greater Berlin was formed in 1920, the municipality boundary from Wannsee became the outer city boundary of Berlin and Steinstück became a Berlin exclave. The forestry department was incorporated into the Nowawes community in 1929, where it was used as a residential area from 1932. The colony became a district of Berlin-Zehlendorf in 1922 and from 1932 a sub-residential area in the Berlin-Wannsee district in the Berlin-Zehlendorf administrative district. The outer boundary of Stolpe and consequently the exclave situation of Steinstückens remained. This fact was of minor importance until 1945; exclaves between communities are not uncommon. Geographically, Steinstücke was in the Potsdam suburb of Neubabelsberg , which had grown in the meantime , and everyday life was oriented there - despite its administrative affiliation to Berlin.

In the cold war

Steinstücke helipad

At the end of the Second World War , the city boundary became the zone boundary in 1945 , because Steinstücke came to the US sector as part of what was then the Zehlendorf district , while the surrounding Babelsberg became part of the Soviet zone . Initially, however, the border remained passable for civilians.

On October 18, 1951, the GDR tried to annex the exclave , but encountered resistance from the residents. After the US intervened , she reversed this act after a few days. Since then, Steinstücke has been cordoned off by a row of posts, so that the Steinstück residents were no longer allowed to freely enter the surrounding districts of Neubabelsberg , Babelsberg and Potsdam. The only remaining access to West Berlin was via a forest path and two border crossings to Kohlhasenbrück . On June 1, 1952, the GDR banned all West Berliners from entering the GDR, with the exception of East Berlin, and began erecting the first roadblocks on Berlin's outer border, including those on Steinstücken's borders.

Since the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Steinstücke was initially the target of numerous people willing to flee the GDR, because in this area only " Spanish riders " formed the obstacle. When more than 20 border guards from the GDR fled to the west at this point, the GDR government had the exclave cordoned off with a separate wall, making the border almost insurmountable here too.

After a helicopter visit by Lucius D. Clay on September 21, 1961, a permanent US military post was established in the exclave. The soldiers stationed there were regularly flown in by helicopter, for which a special landing pad was created. Refugees were also flown out by helicopter. A helicopter memorial on the playground commemorates this.

Further border fortifications, which separated Steinstücke from the Wannsee district, followed in 1963.

Corridor solution

Bernhard-Beyer-Strasse (corridor); View to the north: the wall on both sides ; to the left: to Stahnsdorfer Straße over the railway bridge; 1987

Within the framework of the Four Power Agreement of September 3, 1971, a solution for Steinstücke came into view. The agreement stipulated that "the problems of the small enclaves including Steinstückens [...] will be solved by exchanging territories". Since any change in the city limits affected the four-power status of the divided city, this prior agreement was necessary. A separate agreement between West Berlin and the GDR of December 20, 1971 regulated the details of the exchange. Accordingly, the GDR ceded a 20-meter-wide and around one-kilometer-long strip of territory between Steinstücke and Kohlhasenbrück to West Berlin. With this, Steinstücke was no longer an exclave, but rather connected to the "mainland" West Berlin. Before the exchange of territory was carried out in 1972, an asphalt road ( Bernhard-Beyer-Straße ) was built through this strip (still in GDR territory) , and in 1972 bus line  18 (currently: Bus 118) was extended to the town. Since the border ran on both sides of this street, it was surrounded on both sides by the wall. Since then, the exclusive life of the exclave has ended, resulting in a stream of day-trippers and tourists.

Particular difficulties arose with the new demarcation of the border during the negotiations for access to the western part of Steinstückens, as the place was divided into two parts by a deep cut in the railway line leading south from Wannsee . The only bridge over the railway is on the northern edge of Steinstückens and belonged to the GDR. To the east it came up against the corridor ceded by the GDR, which ran parallel to the railway from Kohlhasenbrück (West Berlin) to Steinstücke. The GDR refused a complete transfer of territory for the bridge, since the tracks below belonged to the Deutsche Reichsbahn . The bridge and the air space above it came - together with a piece of Stahnsdorfer Straße (up to the confluence of Teltower Straße) on the south side - to West Berlin, the air space under the bridge with the ground below remained with the GDR. This 1972 delimitation is still valid between the states of Berlin and Brandenburg , but is of little importance. Since the Federal Police are generally responsible in the railway area , there are no complications between Berlin and Brandenburg in terms of police responsibility on and around the bridge.

Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the corridor solution did not change the inaccessibility of the properties in Steinstrasse (southern edge), Rote-Kreuz-Strasse (western edge) and the western part of Stahnsdorfer Strasse (northern edge) from these streets. The wall came right up against the property line. The sidewalks also belonged to the GDR. Until 1990, the southern properties were only accessible via rights of way in the Malergarten and the western and northern properties only via Teltower Straße. There was an asphalt emergency road on the private land on Steinstrasse. The beginning and small remnants of it can still be seen near the confluence of Bernhard-Beyer-Straße and Steinstraße.

Enclaves in the area

There were two more West Berlin exclaves on GDR territory in the vicinity of Steinstücke. The Mark desert was cultivated by a West Berlin farmer and came to the GDR in 1988 as part of an exchange of territory. In Potsdam-Drewitz , the 3.64 hectare Nuthewiesen in the corner south of Nuthestrasse and the railway line belonged to West Berlin. The area was unused and was ceded to the GDR in 1972. As part of this area exchange, Steinstücke received the corridor to West Berlin.

Fall of the wall

After the fall of the Berlin Wall , the border installations were dismantled from spring 1990. Since then, life has returned to normal in the local area and has been geared towards Potsdam-Drewitz and Potsdam-Babelsberg. The unusual course of the border after the status of the exchange of territory from 1972 has so far remained unchanged, but now only as a state border between Berlin and Brandenburg.

Attractions

Bejach country house
  • The Bejach country house built according to plans by Erich Mendelsohn (1926/1927) for Curt Bejach
  • Memorial for the helipad at the end of the street Am Landeplatz
  • Remnants of the wall - the only remaining T-piece under the old remains of the interior wall
  • Small animal zoo run by the Steinstücke civic association
  • Remains of the former excursion restaurant Taubenschlag
  • Listed Büdner House behind the Potsdam grove on Steinstrasse
  • The Berlin Wall Trail leaves out pieces of stone. The memorial plaques on the history of Steinstücke are located in Kohlhasenbrück at the Königsweg / Bäkestrasse junction
  • The Erdmannshof property , in which u. a. the architect Peter Behrens lived and worked, was demolished in 2000

See also

literature

  • Ingo Krüger : Stein pieces Neubabelsberg walks. Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86514-165-1 .
  • Gabriele Leech-Anspach: Island in front of the island - A small place in the Cold War Berlin-Steinstücke. 1990. New edition: 2005, ISBN 3-930752-36-0 .
  • Honore M. Catudal, Jr .: Steinstücke: A Study in Cold War Politics. With a foreword by Lucius D. Clay . Vantage, New York 1971.
  • Lieselott Enders : Historical local lexicon for Brandenburg: Teltow (= Historical local lexicon for Brandenburg . Volume 4). Verlag Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1976.

Web links

Commons : Berlin-Steinstücke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Jump up area 25 years ago Lenné triangle: My corner, your corner . In: Der Tagesspiegel , April 22, 2014
  2. ↑ Directory of streets with all houses and Building sites, including details of the owner, manager and residents . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1922, IV., P. 1282. “Steinstücke (Post Neubabelsberg) Bernhard-Beyer-Straße: ← Guts Bezirk Potsdamer Forst → 1–8: three inhabited properties ← Jagdschloß Sternstraße → 9–15: are inhabited and built on 9, 10, 15 ← Berlin-Wetzlarer Eisenbahn → // Jagdschloß Sternstraße: ← Potsdamer Forst estate → three developed plots (without number) and construction sites ← Bernhard-Beyer-Strasse → ten developed properties (without numbers) and construction sites ← Potsdamer Forst estate → // Teltower Straße: ← Potsdamer Forst estate → 1–3: housing developments, 4: construction site, 5: new building ← Berlin-Wetzlarer railway → “.
  3. ^ Residents and streets in stone pieces . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1943, IV., P. 1430. “all properties Post Babelsberg 2 // Bernhard-Beyer-Straße: ← Potsdamer Forst estate → 1–8: housing developments, 5 is construction site ← Steinstraße → 9–15: built-up and inhabited, 11: Gardens ← Berlin-Wetzlar Railway → // Steinstraße (all straight): ← Guts Bezirk Potsdamer Forst → 22/24: built-up and inhabited, construction sites ← Berlin-Wetzlar Railway → 32 (two-family house) and garden ← Bernhard-Beyer -Straße → garden, parcels (34), number 36 (Duddasches house: six tenants) ← private road → 38–50: 14 settlement houses ← manor district Potsdamer Forst → “(32 owners of the developed land, 48 heads of household - with relatives - in stone pieces. ).
  4. ↑ Sometimes the red eagle flutters over pieces of stone . ( Memento from September 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: Berliner Zeitung , May 4, 1996
  5. ↑ The absurd piece of stone . At: Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk , accessed on May 3, 2018
  6. ↑ An assassination attempt on pieces of stone? In: Die Zeit , May 31, 1963
  7. ↑ Agreement between the government of the German Democratic Republic and the Senate on the regulation of the question of enclaves by exchanging territories ( Memento of March 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ a b Hope for pieces of stone . In: Die Zeit No. 45/1971
  9. ^ Christian Simon: Berlin Grotesk. The wall in the absurd everyday life of a megacity. Christian Simon Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-936242-14-0 , p. 56
  10. ^ Christian Simon: Berlin Grotesk. The wall in the absurd everyday life of a megacity. Christian Simon Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-936242-14-0 , pp. 57-58
  11. ↑ Visiting the Wall in Steinstücke May 1, 1990 ( Memento from August 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ Site location on map of Berlin 1: 5000 (K5 - color edition)

Coordinates: 52 ° 23 '  N , 13 ° 8'  E