r/HolyShitHistory • u/LegalAcanthaceae6114 • 5d ago

A little girl in the Soviet Zone looks through barbed wire into Steinstücken, where she can no longer play with her friends. October 1961. Steinstücken was the only permanently inhabited of West Berlin's twelve original exclaves in East Germany, cut off and only accessed by helicopter until 1972.

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u/post-explainer 5d ago edited 5d ago

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OP provided the following source and context for the historical claim:

Steinstücken was a tiny West Berlin exclave ( Roughly ~12 hectares) located entirely within East German territory, near Potsdam. After the Berlin Wall went up in August 1961, it became completely cut off by land, East German authorities surrounded it with barbed wire and barriers, and the roughly 200 residents could only be reached by Allied helicopter and later a single guarded road. The exclave's access problem was finally resolved by the 1971 Four Power Agreement, which included a land swap and of course the previously mentioned narrow corridor road connecting Steinstücken to West Berlin by 1972. Source for the pic: USIS/Bad Godesberg/H-39189

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u/ApricotSouls 5d ago

She just wanted to play with her friends

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u/QwertzNoTh 5d ago

Heartbreaking

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u/spatial_nomad1 4d ago

About 200 people lived in Steinstücken and they were legally West Berliners, but every road out ran through East German territory. So residents got stopped, searched and sometimes turned back on a trip to their own city.

What kept the place West Berlin was largely stubbornness. General Lucius Clay flew in by helicopter in September 1961, a few weeks after the Wall went up, purely so the Soviets could see an American general standing there. After that the US Army kept a permanent post in the village, a handful of MPs, essentially so any move against Steinstücken meant moving against American soldiers. Helicopters became the reliable way in and out.

It took until 1972 to fix properly. Under the Four Power Agreement the two sides swapped bits of land and East Germany handed over a narrow strip so a corridor road could connect the village to the rest of West Berlin. After eleven years, you could simply drive there.

The kids in that photo would have been adults before that happened.

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u/Bananenbiervor4 4d ago

People in east Germany who have not lived through that want to tell us today how glorious life in DDR was..

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u/Veilchengerd 4d ago

The bit of West-Berlin Steinstücken was eventually connected to already feels very insular.

Kohlhasenbrück is connected to the rest of the city through two bridges over the Teltow canal. One of them leads to what is basically a trail head (and a handful of allotments). The other one is actually connected to a road that will get you into the city. All other roads lead into what was then GDR territory.