17) Lenné Triangle

From 1961 to 1988 there was a piece of land in Berlin without jurisdiction. A triangle of East Berlin, lying between Potsdamer Platz and Tiergarten and very close to the Berlin Wall, somehow always faced west. Plans for the large Autobahn project of the Westtangente had always included this triangle. In 1988, when news arrived of final negotiations for a land exchange between East and West Berlin, the Lenné Triangle was occupied by a dozen of protesting people, a combination of ecologists and members of the “anti-Westtangente” action group, camping on the premises in the night of May 25. Their intention was to protect this place without governance that had grown wild and eerie during the years. The colony quickly expanded to three hundred people living in tents and huts. They renamed it Norbert Kubat Triangle. On July 1 the agreement for a land exchange between West and East Berlin was reached. On that day the Triangle fell under the jurisdiction of the West. West Berlin police, allowed to intervene, attacked the occupants early in the morning to make them leave. But many of the militants climbed over the Berlin Wall, where GDR police already expected them with trucks. They were carried away and offered breakfast in a canteen of East Berlin, to then be released back to the West at Bahnhof Friedrichstraße.

From 1961 to 1988 there was a piece of land in Berlin without jurisdiction. A triangle of East Berlin, lying between Potsdamer Platz and Tiergarten and very close to the Berlin Wall, somehow always faced west. Plans for the large Autobahn project of the Westtangente had always included this triangle. In 1988, when news arrived of final negotiations for a land exchange between East and West Berlin, the Lenné Triangle was occupied by a dozen of protesting people, a combination of ecologists and members of the “anti-Westtangente” action group, camping on the premises in the night of May 25. Their intention was to protect this place without governance that had grown wild and eerie during the years. The colony quickly expanded to three hundred people living in tents and huts. They renamed it Norbert Kubat Triangle. On July 1 the agreement for a land exchange between West and East Berlin was reached. On that day the Triangle fell under the jurisdiction of the West. West Berlin police, allowed to intervene, attacked the occupants early in the morning to make them leave. But many of the militants climbed over the Berlin Wall, where GDR police already expected them with trucks. They were carried away and offered breakfast in a canteen of East Berlin, to then be released back to the West at Bahnhof Friedrichstraße.