Glienicke Bridge I The Steel Bridge of Spies I Divided East and West Germany On The Bridge

#DevidedGermany #EastWestGermany #Germany #Gliencke #BridgeOfSpies
The first bridge built across the Havel River was wooden, it was constructed in 1660, but by the early 1800s, a new bridge was needed to accommodate the massive increase in traffic between Berlin and Potsdam.
The architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel designed a brick and wood bascule bridge, which was finished in 1834. In the year 1900, tens of thousands of vehicles crossed the cumbersome movable wooden bridge. The narrow structure was not capable of handling such an increase and it caused heavy traffic.
Something more durable was needed and so in 1904, the Prussian government held a design competition to replace the wooden bridge. The Prussian government looked to steel for a strong, reliable material.
The Johann Caspar Harkort Company of Duisburg submitted the winning design, a modern, iron bridge with the outer appearance of a suspension bridge. The new steel bridge was officially opened in November 1907. This bridge is still standing today and has many stories of division and unification to tell.
In April 1945, during the Second World War, an unexploded shell detonated near the Glienicke Bridge, leaving it badly damaged. After the War, a makeshift wooden bridge was built parallel to the damaged steel structure in order to restore the important road link between Berlin and Potsdam.
The reconstruction of the steel bridge was completed in 1949, after the division of Germany. The East German government called it the Bridge of Unity because it straddled the border between East and West Germany and, right in the middle of the bridge, a white border line was drawn. The thin white line of paint is still visible today.
In May 1952, East German authorities officially closed the bridge to citizens of West Berlin and West Germany. In August 1961, after the construction of the Berlin Wall, the bridge was also closed to East German citizens. From that moment on, only allied personnel were allowed to access the bridge, crossing it became next to impossible.
Around the same time, the bridge lost its name Bridge of Unity and instead became the Glienicke Bridge named after the nearby Palace of the same name.

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