Marcel Krueger on the history of one of Berlin’s major cold war checkpoints…

There’s not much to see on the Autobahn 115 as one passes through Dreilinden—just a medial strip between the four lanes of motorway on which stands a small statue of a Berlin bear, its upper paws awkwardly raised and a smattering of faded red buildings reminiscent of an abandoned 1980s motorway service area.

It’s hard to imagine that this was once the location of a cold war checkpoint (Checkpoint Bravo). As I pull into a deserted parking space, I cannot help but imagine how it must have been to pass through here at the beginning of the 1980s. In order to travel from Berlin to West Germany, West Berliners were required to use specific East German transit routes, the so-called Transitstrecken, one of which was this one at Dreilinden.

There were police and customs agents stationed here, though travellers were only required to stop if there were goods to declare. After leaving the West German customs area, drivers would next see the famous “You Are Now Leaving The American Sector” message painted on the side of a concrete overpass. Behind that overpass was East Germany—and a dramatic change of mood and landscape.

The motorway was suddenly framed by mesh wire fences on both sides, and a Russian T34 tank memorial peered out from behind the fence on the left side, a remnant of the war but a reminder of whose jurisdiction you were now in. Next came a long row of customs huts and ensembles of grey concrete buildings and watchtowers from where GDR border officials and customs agents could monitor incoming and outgoing traffic with the utmost scrutiny.

The security of the outward-facing border and of the border crossings was maintained by special security divisions of the GDR border guard troops (SiK, short for Sicherungskompanien). Stone-faced men in green-grey uniforms, these Kalashnikov-carrying troops would demand papers and intermittently direct cars to a nearby parking area for closer inspection. In winter, their long coats and fur hats made them indistinguishable from Russian soldiers, though their Saxon accents gave them away.