Lenné-Dreieck

On Potsdamer Platz stands one of many remnants of the Berlin Wall around the city, in this case preserving the graffiti and chewing gum from immediately after the wall's demise. However, the land to the west of that particular portion of the wall was actually in East Berlin, a de facto no man's land that lay barren for over 40 years.

The Lenné-Dreieck (Lenné Triangle) actually exists thanks to a reorganization of Berlin's administrative districts in 1938. It was placed within Berlin-Mitte district, which after World War II became part of the Soviet occupation zone where the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was established. While most of the bombed-out buildings were demolished soon after the war, as occurred throughout much of the city, the iconic modernist Colombushaus building was partially restored and used as a department store. However, it was gutted yet again during the East German protests of 1953. The authorities there razed it completely in 1957, leaving the area completely empty.

It was four years later that the Berlin Wall was erected to prevent East Germans from leaving for the west. Its builders took a shortcut by building around the Lenné-Dreieck. That was because they intended to keep the area near the wall as an uninhabited militarized "dead zone." The Lenné-Dreieck, as a 4-hectare protuberance in the East-West Berlin border, was seen as unnecessary extra land that only gave East Germany more wall to patrol. A humbler fence was built around the triangle's border with West Berlin; however, many holes were made in it by West Berliners.

West Germany eventually saw a usage for the land that East Germany did not need, and in 1988 they agreed to a land swap so that an autobahn could be built through the Lenné-Dreieck. Yet shortly before the area was handed over, it was occupied by camping anti-autobahn protestors. When the swap took effect on 1 July and West German police were finally able to enter, the protestors then fled over the wall into East Berlin using makeshift ladders! They were detained by the authorities there and then soon sent back.

Ultimately, the protestors won their fight, as the autobahn in question was never built. After German reunification, the Lenné-Dreieck initially remained vacant after a proposed corporate headquarters development plan fell through. A park and an office and hotel complex were eventually built in the 2000s, and today virtually no trace remains of the land's once contested and eventful past.