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 and/or war:
“The funny part of it all is that relatively few people seem to go crazy, relatively few even a little crazy or even a little weird, relatively few, and those few because they have nothing to do that is to say they have nothing to do or they do not do anything that has anything to do with the war only with food and cold and little things like that.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a Democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the “money touch,” but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)