Glienicke Bridge - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

The Glienicke bridge as a venue for prisoner exchange has appeared frequently in fiction, most notably in John Le Carré's novel Smiley's People and the related BBC miniseries, as well as in the 1966 Harry Palmer film, Funeral in Berlin, based on the novel of the same name by Len Deighton.

The popular nickname 'Bridge of Spies' was used by the British band T'Pau as the name of the title track on their first album. The usage is metaphorical, referring to a 'walk to freedom' but in the context of long dreamt-of relationship.

The bridge is also referenced in the popular kid's TV show Codename: Kids Next Door, specifically when a bridge in a local mall is used to exchange a spy from the KND in return for a spy from the Teenagers, a clear parody of the real-life prisoner exchanges.

There is a brief reference to the bridge in episode six, season one of Archer, when Mallory Archer and her long-time lover (and head of the KGB) Colonel Nikolai Jakov mention meeting there "one moonlit night" when they both worked on covert operations in Berlin, presumably during the Cold War.