Glienicker Brücke and Klein Glienicke
The Havel bridge between Potsdam and West Berlin, and the East German enclave of Klein Glienicke beside it.
The border ran across the middle of the Glienicker Brücke. From August 1961 Germans from either side could not cross it; until the mid-1980s only Allied military personnel could, from 1985 also diplomats, and agents were exchanged on it in 1962, 1985 and 1986.1 Beside it, Klein Glienicke was a GDR exclave enclosed by the Wall and reachable only from Babelsberg over the Parkbrücke, which was watched by border posts; residents needed a registration note in their identity cards and visitors a pass.2 Between the Jagdschloss and Kladow the border ran down the middle of the Glienicker Lanke and the Havel, with underwater barriers near the banks and walls, fences, a strip and towers on land.2
In the exclave, escapes started from houses and gardens. A mother and her five-year-old jumped from a balcony in 1962; two roofers repairing the chapel disarmed a guard and went over with a ladder in 1965; a councillor's family of four used a neighbour's fruit ladder in 1971; and in 1973 nine people escaped through a 19-metre tunnel dug with a child's spade. On the water, Hubert Hohlbein swam the Jungfernsee in a diving suit in 1963, a landscape architect got through a corroded gap in the Nedlitz underwater barrier in 1986, and Horst Plischke drowned north of the bridge in 1962. The first successful escape over the bridge itself came in March 1988, when three men in a lorry loaded with empty gas cylinders broke through four barriers.
The two halves of the bridge are still painted in different shades, and a metal band set into the roadway in 2009 marks the former line.13 Stelae for Plischke and Herbert Mende stand on the Schwanenallee behind the Villa Schöningen, which houses a bridge exhibition, and in the Waldmüllerstraße an information panel tells the exclave's story, with stelae nearby for five people who died at the Wall.24
Sources for this text
- Glienicker BrückeChronik der Mauer
- Mauerweg: Von Griebnitzsee zum Wannseeberlin.de
- Mauerreste: Glienicker BrückeChronik der Mauer
- Glienicker Brücke, PotsdamReiseland Brandenburg (TMB)
Checked October 2026. Facts taken from an escape record on this site link to that record, which lists its own sources.
18 events: 11 successful escapes, 2 failed attempts and 5 fatal attempts. At least 28 people reached the West in these events.
August 1961
Rita Bergemann and Michael Reck swim the Havel from Sacrow
A good two weeks after the Wall went up, a young Potsdam couple swam roughly 300 metres across the narrowest part of the Havel from Sacrow to Moorlake, just as a patrol boat turned away.
August 1961
Peter Mindorf flees from his post in Klein Glienicke
An Oberwachtmeister of the Potsdam riot-police training unit, on guard in Klein Glienicke, used a toilet break to flee with his submachine gun and 80 rounds.
23 August 1961
A breakthrough from a garden on Am Waldrand, Klein Glienicke
On 23 August 1961 the border was broken through from the property Am Waldrand 2–3 in Klein Glienicke, a garden that directly adjoined West Berlin.
26 November 1961
Lothar Lehmann – a young policeman swims from Sacrow
A 19-year-old member of the Groß Glienicke readiness police slipped into the Havel at Sacrow wearing a life jacket; the cold water caused a shock and he died after being pulled out by guards.
1962
A 17-year-old is caught trying to cross through the grounds of the Villa Kampffmeyer
In 1962 the 17-year-old brother of a Potsdam resident tried to reach West Berlin across the grounds of the Villa Kampffmeyer near the Berliner Straße; he was caught and held in the Stasi remand prison in the Lindenstraße.
16 February 1962
A mother and her five-year-old jump from a balcony at Klein Glienicke
On 16 February 1962 a 25-year-old woman and her 5-year-old son jumped from the balcony of a house near the Böttcherberg cemetery into West Berlin. West Berlin police forced the border guards who were firing at them to take cover.
11 June 1962
Erna Kelm – swimming belt under her clothes
On Whit Monday 1962 an angler found the body of 53-year-old Erna Kelm from Sacrow in the Havel; she wore a swimming belt under her clothes and had apparently tried to swim to West Berlin.
19 November 1962
Horst Plischke – missing in the Havel for four months
A 23-year-old from Potsdam went into the Havel north of the Glienicke Bridge before dawn; guards spotted him and fired, and he drowned. His body surfaced four months later.
20 November 1963 – 21 November 1963
Hubert Hohlbein – through the Jungfernsee in a diving suit
Wearing a diving suit and weight belt, 21-year-old Hubert Hohlbein swam low in the water from near Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam to the West Berlin shore by the Glienicker Brücke.
28 July 1964
Norbert Wolscht and Rainer Gneiser – homemade diving gear in the Havel
Two 20-year-old friends from Freiberg in Saxony tried to reach West Berlin underwater through the Havel near Potsdam using self-built breathing equipment; both drowned in the night of 27–28 July 1964.
7 May 1965
Roofers escape from the Klein Glienicke chapel
Two roofers repairing the chapel roof in the GDR exclave of Klein Glienicke disarmed one of their guards and crossed the Wall with a ladder into Zehlendorf.
15 November 1968
Deserting policeman and border soldier die near Klein Glienicke
A 21-year-old Volkspolizist deserting towards West Berlin opened fire on a border patrol vehicle in Babelsberg Park, killing driver Rolf Henniger, and was himself shot dead by the patrol leader.
15 June 1971
A councillor, his wife and two small sons climb the Wall at Klein Glienicke with a fruit ladder
On the night the SED's VIII Party Congress opened, an NDPD town councillor and trainee editor, his wife and their sons aged two and a half years and six months climbed the Klein Glienicke wall with a neighbour's fruit ladder in pouring rain.
26 July 1973
The Klein Glienicke Family Tunnel
Two brothers, their wives and five children escaped from the GDR exclave of Klein Glienicke through a 19-metre tunnel dug with a child's spade during a heatwave.
27 August 1976
A home-made ladder from the garden at Am Böttcherberg
A painter, his wife and their four-year-old child cut through the rear fence opposite their garden in the Klein Glienicke enclave and climbed the 3.5 m Wall with a ladder they had built themselves.
8 October 1986
A landscape architect dives through the Jungfernsee barrier
A 29-year-old landscape architect in a diving suit slipped through a corroded gap in the underwater barrier at Nedlitz and swam to West Berlin north of the Glienicker Brücke.
9 December 1987
Wolga car on the Glienicke Bridge
Two men from Potsdam tried to ram a Wolga M 21 through the barriers on the Glienicke Bridge but were stopped at the very first gate.
10 March 1988
Truck full of gas cylinders over the Glienicke Bridge
Three men drove a truck disguised as a hazardous-goods transport and loaded with 92 empty gas cylinders through four barriers on the Glienicke Bridge. It was the first successful escape over the bridge.
