Welcome to Nowhere: West Berlin as Mapped by East Germany

Nicolas Jasson has put together a page showing an excerpt from an East German map of Berlin, dating from the late 1970s/early 1980s, which showed virtually no detail on the other side of the Berlin Wall — for all intents and purposes, West Berlin did not exist.

Because of the Berlin Wall (here shown in purple) and the impossibility for the East Germans to travel freely, including to the Western sectors of Berlin (West Berlin), it was deemed preferable by the East German authorities not to show at all any detail of West Berlin! What is shown as a desert are of course densely built-up areas, with an equivalent density of streets, totally obliterated here, save for one or two major streets linking with the border crossings.
Posted on Monday, May 16, 2005 at 9:37 AM
Categories: Berlin

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Comments

While the mapmaking technique is fascinating, it’s not all that unusual. This is not only a Cold War-era technique of mapmaking. For example, at least as of today, the Mappoint (MSN) map of San Ysidro, California shows all civilization abrupting ending at the U.S.-Mexico border. For the record, Tijuana really does have roads, just like any other city.

Ontario Emperor | 05/16/2005 at 11:40 AM | #

Considering the age of the map the fonts and detail make it look very modern — almost on par with some recent city maps of Europe.

It looks like the S-Bahn ran across East and West Berlin, oblivious of the wall, and in fact even shows a stop in West Berlin. Was that an official crossing? Are the rails blocked at that point?

Scott Kovatch | 05/16/2005 at 2:01 PM | #

S-Bahn: that’s an interesting point because it exemplifies how complex and bizzare the situation was until the fall of the Wall. For historical, legal and political reasons, the S-Bahn was part of the East German State Railways (Deutsche Reichsbahn), including in the West. This is one of the reasons it is shown : it belonged to East Germany. The other reason is that indeed it provided a link between the two parts of the divided city at Friedrichstrasse (“Fr”): trains from the West ended at Fr and North/South trains stopped there but these were extraterritorial platforms of the western network, totally isolated from East Berlin, including visually; at Fr, you could change train and go back to the West but any access to the East meant going through immigration and customs in the most heavily guarded place on earth. The map also deliberately omits two U-Bahn (metro) lines, part of the Western network but which crossed the East Berlin without stopping except at Fr, part of the same “extraterritorial complex” as the S-Bahn. All this was abolished a few days after the fall of the wall, this was in fact one of the most tangible results of the event: the U-Bahn trains resumed calling stations in the East which they had run through at full speed under border guard watch for 28 years.
The story of the “ghost stations” is very well documented in this book (in German) :
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3861530341/302-5854935-8718432

Nicolas Jasson | 05/18/2005 at 6:58 PM | #

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