Hi, and thanks for the reply and the graphics.
I have a website, exclave.info, and rather than make work to post the
maps you asked for here, I'll post it to the website. I'll let you
know in a couple of days when it's finished. The maps weren't from
the treaty - they were part commercial, part from the Senator's office
and some were sections from Katasteramt maps. They covered all the
exclaves, I didn't write only about Steinstuecken - so there aren't
many from any one place, but a decent collection when all were
together - so much so that I was really impressed at the time it took
to copy them - and mark them up to show me particular points.
To find the old messages, and get a list of them, all of which were in
December 2001, and started with Nr. 5111, search the Boundary Point
archives under "steinstuecken". Use ue, not ü or u - only ue will
bring up the list.
You are right about the footbridge - it was fully in W. German hands.
I wrote without having the maps in front of me, and didn't recall
that the length of W. Berlin territory over which the tracks passed
was of greater length than I thought.
Where you wrote "The treaty explicitly says "the bridge" and nothing
else. It doesn't say "the territory under the bridge", or "defined by
the edges of the bridge" or whatever. So apparently the part of the
railway underneath wasn't included
Crucial to the interpretation is not the phrase "einschließlich der
Brücke" (including the bridge) by itself, because the bridge is only
the supplemental phrase to clarify what territory is included in the
"gebietsaustausch" (territory exchange). The crucial phrase, that the
words about the bridge are only supplemental, is the phrase that says
what territory is transferred: and that is "nach Westen abzweigende
Straße... in der Breite der Fahrbahn von ca. 3 m...". The phrase
"including the bridge" is almost a throwaway, because the 3 meter wide
strip of territory that is transferred is comprised of the very thing
that goes over the bridge. Naturally, the bridge is included if the
street being transferred goes over a bridge - so why say "including
the bridge"? No German treaty maker in his or her right mind would
have transfered a street and left the maintenance of the thing that
supports it to the East German regime.
You have to treat the road as the primary thing that has to be
addressed, with the status of the bridge secondary. The status of the
bridge is dependent upon the establishment of the status of the
roadbed. We have to look at the question "how deep under the road
does the W Berlin sovereignty go, under the terms of the treaty?"
Obviously the answer is that sovereingty goes at least as deep as the
bridge is thick from top to bottom. And when you think about it,
the bridge is pretty thick when you consider it's foundation supports
- the bottoms of which are buried in the ground. In fact, they extend
into the ground further down than the level (elevation) of the
foundations of the rails (i.e. the embankment rocks and ties) beneath
the rails that pass under the bridge.
But, does the depth of the bridge foundation mark the lowest level of
W German sovereignty even over the areas of the road before and after
the bridge - i.e., from the west end of the bridge and the west border
of Steinstuecken and from the east end of the bridge to the
intersection with the main road between Steinstuecken village and
Berlin proper? Or, is the traded territory over these two parts of
the road left and right of the bridge only as deep as the asphalt, or
as deep as the asphalt and the underlying roadbed onto which the
finished asphalt surface was laid, or only as deep as the sewage,
water and power lines that are under the road? Or, to the center of
the earth?
Regards
Len Nadybal
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., anorak222 <wolfi.junkmail@s...> wrote:
> Hi Len
>
> thank you for your kind reply. I'll try to answer your questions as
far as
> I can:
>
> >A couple of months ago we went through a discussion about this
bridge,
> >and how far below it West Berliner sovereignty extended, or if the
> >tracks directly under the bridge were West, meaning that when the
> >trains passed under the bridge, that they passed through west
> >territory for perhaps the 5 meters that the bridge above was wide.
>
> Could you or anyone else please tell me the message-no. or subject
of this
> discussion? The Yahoo search function isn't really very helpful.
>
> >that the bridge was west and the ground below east.
> >
> >I have a letter from the Senator fur Bau und Wohnungswesen from
1985,
> >where I wrote and asked that question. He sent me a copy of the
> >agreement with East Germany about the Steinstuecken corridor, and
very
> >detailed maps - but couldn't answer the question definitively.
>
> Incidentally, if it isn't too much work - could you scan these maps?
I'd be
> very much interested in them. Are they the maps which are part of
the
> treaty (which I don't have), or different ones? I'm interested
whatever
> they are.
>
> >He sent a copy of the treaty, but said the question wasn't
addressed
> >there - which, atfer reading it, I agreed with. Where did you get
the
> >info that the ground was East?
>
> From the same treaty. Strange that we come at different
conclusions, maybe
> we can sort it out. My copy is from an East German collection of
documents
> called "Das Vierseitige Abkommen über Westberlin und seine
Realisierung"
> (note spelling "Westberlin" in one word without hyphen, which was
the
> official GDR spelling) (steinstuecken_abkommen-cover.jpg). Document
> 24. from this book is "Vereinbarung ... über die Regelung der
Fragen von
> Enklaven durch Gebietsaustausch" dated 20. Dec. 1971, Article 1:
>
> "Vom Vollzug dieser Vereinbarung an gehören [...] zu den
Westsektoren
> Berlins - ein Gebietsstreifen entlang der Eisenbahnstgrecke Seddin -
Berlin
> (West) von ca. 1 km Länge und 20 m Breite sowie die von diesem
> Gebietsstreifen vor Steinstücken nach Westen abzweigende Straße bis
zur
> westlichen Straßengrenze der Teltower Straße in der Breite der
Fahrbahn von
> ca. 3 m einschließlich der Brücke als Zugänge nach Steinstücken."
>
> rough translation: With the fulfilment of this treaty, territory of
West
> Berlin shall be - a strip of land along the railway Seddin - Berlin
of 1 km
> x 20m , the street branching off it to the west before Steinstücken
> _including the bridge_, as accesses to Steinstücken.
>
> I added another map of Steinstücken as illustration how I read this.
The
> original is steinstuecken_195x.jpg, an official Senate map from some
time
> in the 1950s. My interpretation is steinstuecken_painted.jpg:
>
> First we have the old territory of Steinstücken: green
> Then the treaty adds the corrdidor: red
> The street branching off to the west: yellow
> Including the bridge: blue
>
> The treaty explicitly says "the bridge" and nothing else. It doesn't
say
> "the territory under the bridge", or "defined by the edges of the
bridge"
> or whatever. So apparently the part of the railway underneath wasn't
> included. This interpretation is confirmed by some of the more
accurate
> city maps (one of which I've included in the last mail), which paint
the
> border "underneath" the bridge.
>
> Incidentally, this map is from the back of a book
"Berlin-Steinstücken,
> Insel vor der Insel" of which I've also included the front cover
> (steinstuecken_insel-cover.jpg). ISBN 3-7678-0788-2
>
> >If the tracks pass through the
> >southern portion of Steinstucken (i.e., the train is in the west
for a
> >short distance at the south side of Steinstuecken, why would the
train
> >not just as easily pass through the west twice, once at the south
side
> >and the second time when it was under the road bridge on the north
> >side.
>
> The point isn't the rail. It was a route from and to West Berlin
anyway, so
> it was no problem if it went through a bit of Western territory once
more.
>
> The point of the treaty was to get road access under Western control
to all
> parts of Steinstücken with as little territory ceded as possible
(because
> it cost money). The part of Steinstücken geographically west of the
rail
> route had a special problem, because there was no road access there
even
> with the corridor. So they had to get the street north of
Steinstücken, and
> the bridge. Since they didn't need the rail underneath it, that
wasn't ceded.
>
> >How about the footbridge that crosses the tracks in the
> >middle of Steinstuecken, that led over the tracks from the East
half
> >of Steinstuecken to the West half near the helicopter denkmal?
>
> The footbridge is at the beginning of the S-shaped curve of
> Bernhard-Beyer-Str. Both that bridge and the rail beneath are
therefore in
> the West.
>
> >Why would the treatymakers not just split Steinstuecken into two
pieces,
> >split by the tracks? Why leave only a portion of the tracks in the
> >east?
>
> They apparently didn't care about the rail at all. The fact that
part of
> the rail into Steinstücken was eastern territory had been so before,
as you
> can see on the original map. The added corridor territories around
it just
> made that fact more obvious.
>
>
> Last not least, just for the fun of it, I've also included a city
map of
> Potsdam from 1980 printed in East Germany (steinstuecken_1980.jpg).
East
> Berlin and Potsdam maps from that time used to omit West Berlin
completely
> and paint it unicolour, which sometimes really gives strange
effects. The
> enclaves look like holes punched into the city ...
>
> Hope you enjoy this.
>
> wolfgang