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Bernhard-Beyer-Straße, the corridor road to Steinstücken, with the Wall on both sides, April 1989.Photo: Aad van der Drift, 1989. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

Islands outside the island

West Berlin had ten islands inside East Germany. To hold one, the US Army flew in soldiers by helicopter

Steinstücken, a village of about 200 people, lay in GDR territory south of Wannsee. From 22 September 1961 three US soldiers were stationed there, flown in by helicopter. Treaties in 1971 and 1988 traded seven of the rest to the GDR and joined two to West Berlin.

10
exclaves of West Berlin after 1945, the Senate’s count
12.67ha
Steinstücken, the only one with residents: about 200
3
US soldiers stationed in Steinstücken from 22 Sep 1961, flown in by helicopter
DM 76m
paid by West Berlin to the GDR in the last exchange, 1988

01Greater Berlin, 1920–1945

Greater Berlin was born with ten pieces lying outside it

When Greater Berlin was formed on 1 October 1920, some of the land it took in did not touch the new city at all: meadows, fields, a forest parcel, two allotment colonies and one village. The Senate counts ten such exclaves, together about 112.9 ha.

After the war the Allies drew their sectors along the old borough lines. Every exclave belonged to a western borough, Spandau or Zehlendorf, so in 1945 all of them became pieces of West Berlin lying inside the Soviet zone, and from 1949 inside the GDR.

Only one of them had people living on it: Steinstücken, 12.67 ha, about 200 residents.

The ten exclaves, by area, and what became of them

joined to West Berlin, 1972joined to West Berlin, 1988ceded to the GDR, 1972 or 1988

West Berlin and its ten exclaves

Map of West Berlin with the Wall of 1989 and the exclaves, each a circle of its true area. It zooms to Steinstücken, Eiskeller, the Fichtewiese and Erlengrund colonies and the Lenné-Dreieck, and shows which exclaves went to West Berlin and which to the GDR in the exchanges of 1971 and 1988.
ExclaveJoined to West BerlinCeded to the GDRThe Wall, 1989

Circles are drawn to each exclave’s true area at its position (OSM or Wikidata; Große Kuhlake, Finkenkrug, Nuthewiesen and Böttcherberg approximate); no open dataset holds their outlines. The Wall and border strip are the 1989 line from Geoportal Berlin.

A street corner ending at a graffiti-covered concrete wall, with a street-name sign and a tilted warning sign in front of it.
Teltower Straße at Stahnsdorfer Straße, Steinstücken, April 1989: a sign warning “You are leaving the American sector” in front of the Wall.Photo: Aad van der Drift, 1989. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

1 October 1920 – 1988

Ten pieces of West Berlin outside the Wall

Each circle on the map is one exclave, drawn at its true area and placed from OpenStreetMap or Wikidata. The biggest, the Falkenhagener Wiese, was 45.44 ha of meadow. The smallest, at Böttcherberg, was 0.3 ha.

A weathered octagonal concrete watchtower with windows, seen from below between trees.
A GDR watchtower at the Steinstücken exclave, 1987.Photo: Jochims, 1987. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

18 October 1951 · the end of May 1952

A village reached by one road through the GDR

On 18 October 1951 GDR police occupied Steinstücken. The United States protested, and they withdrew four days later. From the end of May 1952 its residents could reach their homes only by a 1 km road under GDR control; visitors had to prove they had a second home there.

A dark green US Army helicopter with the words United States Army and Spirit of Steinstücken on its side, parked in a hangar.
A US Army Bell UH-1H helicopter marked “Spirit of Steinstücken”, in a hangar, 2023.Photo: André Gerwing, 2023. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

From 22 September 1961

Three US soldiers, flown in by helicopter

After the Wall went up, the US Army posted three soldiers in the village. West Berlin police recorded their arrival at about 16.40 on 22 September 1961: “flown in by a helicopter”. Helicopters connected them to the rest of West Berlin, from a landing site in the village.

The end of a residential street closed off by the Berlin Wall, with bare trees behind.
The dead end of Bernhard-Beyer-Straße in Steinstücken, April 1989. The Wall ran along Steinstraße.Photo: Aad van der Drift, 1989. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

20 December 1971 · opened 30 August 1972

A road of its own, 20 metres wide

The Four-Power Agreement of 3 September 1971 allowed the enclave problems to be solved “by exchange of territory”. West Berlin’s Senate and the GDR signed on 20 December 1971. The GDR ceded a strip about 1 km long and 20 m wide beside the railway, with the road: 2.3 ha. It opened on 30 August 1972, with a bus, the 118.

A column of printed German text listing parcels of land with areas in hectares.
Article 1 of the agreement of 20 December 1971: what went to the GDR, each parcel with its area, and the first item West Berlin received, the strip to Steinstücken.Document: Gesetzblatt der DDR, Teil II Nr. 31, 3 June 1972, p. 359. Amtliches Werk (§ 5 UrhG). Scan: gvoon.de.

In force 3 June 1972

Four other exclaves went the other way

In the same agreement West Berlin gave up 15.6 ha: Finkenkrug, Große Kuhlake, Böttcherberg, part of the Nuthewiesen and a strip at Eiskeller. It received 17.1 ha: the corridor, the north part of Frohnau cemetery and 10.7 ha around Eiskeller. For the difference the Senate paid DM 4 million.

A narrow paved lane runs between a ditch and a wooden fence across flat meadow; the white Berlin Wall and a watchtower stand on the horizon.
The road to Eiskeller, with the Wall and a watchtower beyond the ditch, March 1988.Photo: Roehrensee, 1988. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Eiskeller, 1961

Eiskeller: almost an island, and a boy with an escort

Eiskeller, a few farms in the Spandau forest, was joined to West Berlin only by a lane about 4 m wide and 800 m long; accounts disagree on whether the lane itself was West Berlin land. In September 1961 Erwin Schabe, 12, said GDR police had stopped him on his way to school, and a British armoured car was sent to take him. In 1994 he admitted that he had made the story up.

A woodland path with an orange marker post and blue information panels beside it.
The Berlin Wall Trail at Erlengrund, with its information steles, 2013.Photo: Colin Smith, 2013, geo.hlipp.de. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.0.

1920 – 1988

Allotments behind the Wall: “Erich Honecker, ring twice”

The Fichtewiese and Erlengrund colonies, 3.51 ha and 0.51 ha, lay just beyond the Wall in Spandau. Only West Berliners named on a yearly list for the GDR border guards could ring at a call post; the guards opened a gate, and a second post checked papers after a 50-metre path. Someone wrote beside the gate: “Erich Honecker 2 x klingeln”.

A coloured map of Berlin with West Berlin in white, East Berlin and the GDR around it, small labelled exclaves outside the western border, and a hand-drawn red arrow.
West Berlin on a CIA map of 1978, still marking the exclaves Falkenhagener Wiese, Lasszinswiesen, Fichtewiese/Erlengrund and Wüste Mark. The red arrow and the handwriting were added later, by the map’s uploader.Document: Central Intelligence Agency. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Signed 31 March 1988 · in force 1 July 1988

The last exchange: West Berlin paid DM 76 million

The GDR took the last three exclaves, the Falkenhagener Wiese, the Laßzinswiesen and Wüste Mark: 80.8 ha together. West Berlin received 14 parcels along its borders, 96.7 ha, among them the land that joined the Fichtewiese and Erlengrund to Spandau, and paid DM 76 million. West Berlin grew by 9.4 ha.

A graffiti-covered section of the Wall with a uniformed border guard on top; beyond it the empty border strip at Potsdamer Platz and East Berlin’s skyline with the television tower.
The Lenné-Dreieck being cleared, 1 July 1988: a GDR border guard watches from the Wall.Photo: Neptuul, 1988. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

1 July 1988

On handover day, squatters fled east over the Wall

The exchange also gave West Berlin the Lenné-Dreieck, about 4 ha of East Berlin land on the western side of the Wall at Potsdamer Platz. Protesters had occupied it since 25 May 1988. When West Berlin police cleared it on 1 July 1988, more than 180 of them climbed the Wall into East Berlin.

02Steinstücken, 1961–

The soldiers came by air; the residents kept the road

The helicopters did not replace the road: the people of Steinstücken still drove in and out through GDR checkpoints. What came by air were the three American soldiers, flown in and out. The memorial on their landing site recalls, in the Senate’s words, “the Allies’ protective role”.

When the flights ended is not settled. The Senate says the landing strip was used until the end of 1976; US Army aviation accounts end the regular link in September 1971, before the road opened. The memorial is two rotor blades set upright in concrete.

The helicopter years: the sources disagree on the end

Two tall black helicopter rotor blades with yellow tips stand upright on a concrete base in front of a yellow house.
The memorial on Steinstücken’s former helicopter landing site, Am Landeplatz: two rotor blades set in concrete, 2011.Photo: OTFW, Berlin, 2011. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
A concrete wall topped with a round pipe, a watchtower behind it, seen through bare trees.
The Wall and a watchtower at Steinstücken, April 1989.Photo: Aad van der Drift, 1989. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

03Three agreements, 1971–1988

West Berlin paid to straighten its border

Three agreements between West Berlin’s Senate and the GDR settled the exclaves. Two were swaps in which the land changing hands came out close to even, and in both the Senate paid the GDR in Deutschmarks on top: DM 4 million in 1971, DM 76 million in 1988.

In between, on 21 July 1972, it bought 8.5 ha of East Berlin railway land at the former Potsdamer Bahnhof outright, for DM 31 million.

What each agreement moved, in hectares, and what West Berlin paid

The 1988 figure to the GDR is the Senate’s 96.7 ha less West Berlin’s net gain of 9.4 ha. The 1971 areas are the agreement’s own, rounded to a tenth of a hectare.

A printed page of German legal text in two columns, headed Gesetzblatt Teil II Nr. 31.
Gesetzblatt der DDRThe enclave agreement of 20 December 1971 as the GDR printed it in its Gesetzblatt on 3 June 1972, the day it came into force. Article 2 sets the Senate’s payment at “4 Millionen DM (in Worten: vier Millionen Deutsche Mark)”.Document: Gesetzblatt der DDR, Teil II Nr. 31, 3 June 1972, p. 359. Amtliches Werk (§ 5 UrhG). Scan: gvoon.de.

04Wüste Mark and the Laßzinswiesen

A farmer who lost his field to a treaty

Wüste Mark, 21.83 ha of arable land south of Zehlendorf, was farmed for decades by the Wendt family with GDR permission: mostly rye, also potatoes. Der Spiegel reported in March 1988 that the Senate had not told them of the coming exchange, and that the father died of a heart attack days after he heard.

The Laßzinswiesen, 13.49 ha of meadow north of Spandau, were, in Der Spiegel’s words, “inaccessible from the West” until then. Both went to the GDR on 1 July 1988, with the Falkenhagener Wiese.

A wide ploughed field under a pale sky, with a line of pine forest behind it.
Wüste Mark, the former exclave, in the Parforceheide near Stahnsdorf, February 2021.Photo: Leonhard Lenz, 2021. Wikimedia Commons. CC0.

05Potsdamer Platz, 1 July 1988

On the last handover day, people climbed the Wall into the East

The Lenné-Dreieck, about 4 ha between the Tiergarten and Potsdamer Platz, had belonged to the Mitte borough since 1920, and so to the Soviet sector, but lay on the western side of the Wall, fenced off and empty. The 1988 exchange gave it to West Berlin’s Tiergarten borough from 1 July 1988.

Protesters against a road planned across it occupied the ground on 25 May 1988. When the police came at the handover, more than 180 of them escaped over the Wall to East Berlin, and left the GDR soon after through the ordinary checkpoints.

A black-and-white street scene: a road junction with lamp posts, a sign and overgrown rubble behind a fence.
Kemperplatz in 1957, at the sector boundary by what became known as the Lenné-Dreieck; Lennéstraße leads off to the left.Photo: Willy Pragher, 1957. Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.

West Berlin began with ten islands outside its walls. By 1988 it had none: one got a road, two were joined up, seven were signed away.

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Berlinfographics (2026). “West Berlin’s exclaves, 1945–1988”. Berlin Experiences. https://berlinfographics.com/west-berlin-exclaves/

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{{cite web |title=West Berlin’s exclaves, 1945–1988 |url=https://berlinfographics.com/west-berlin-exclaves/ |website=Berlinfographics |publisher=Berlin Experiences |date=2026-11-09 |access-date=2026-11-09}}