During The Cold War
After World War II Staaken was divided by a territorial exchange contract between the Allies United Kingdom and Soviet Union of 30 August 1945. The borders of the British occupational sector of Berlin was reshapen that way, that by incorporating the so called Seeburger Zipfel it would include the entire former Luftwaffe airfield at Berlin-Gatow in the southwestern corner of this sector. In return the socalled Dorf Staaken (village Staaken) and Albrechtshof, nowadays called West-Staaken (at the most western end of the British Sector] was de jure assigned to the Soviets. The geographically eastern Staaken remained with the political West. However, the de facto administration remained with the Borough of Spandau in the British sector. So all inhabitants of Staaken could vote for West-Berlin's city state elections in 1948 and 1950.
On 1 February 1951 East German Volkspolizei took over control of West-Staaken including the airfield and adjacent Neu-Jerusalem located there, and ended the administration by the Spandau Borough, instead West-Staaken became an exclave of East Berlin's then Borough of Mitte. This caused the confusing fact, that the geographically western Staaken was part of the politically Eastern East Berlin at the geographically western outskirts of West-Berlin, while the geographically eastern Staaken remained with the political Western British sector, thus West-Berlin. East Germany then moved up its border checkpoint towards West-Berlin from Dallgow more eastwards to West-Staaken.
On 1 June 1952 West-Staaken's de facto administration was conveyed to neighbouring East German Falkensee, which incorporated West-Staaken on 1 January 1961. From August 13 the same year until its opening and removal after 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall cut through the two parts of Staaken, with one East German border crossing on Heerstraße. Since 1 January 1971 western Staaken, officially simply named Staaken, formed a municipality of its own, with a population amounting to 4,146 at that time. On 3 October 1990, the day of unification of East Germany, East and West Berlin with the West German Federal Republic of Germany both Staakens reunited and form a locality of the Spandau Borough since.
Famous quotes containing the words cold war, cold and/or war:
“Professor: War is hell, Mr. Thornhill, even if it’s just a cold one.
Roger Thornhill: If you fellows can’t lick the Vandamms of this world without asking girls like her to bed down with them, and fly away with them, and probably never come back, perhaps you ought to start learning how to lose a few cold wars.
Professor: I’m afraid we’re already doing that.”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“Shielded, what sorts of life are stirring yet:
Legs lagged like drains, slippers soft as fungus,
The gas and grate, the old cold sour grey bed.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)