GLIENICKER BRIDGE. The site of three major East-West spy ex-
changes during the Cold War, the Glienicker Bridge connects Pots-
dam with Berlin over the Havel River. Having undergone numerous
changes—from its original wooden frame in the 17th century to a
neoclassical brick design by Prussian architect Karl Wilhelm Schin-
kel to the steel-girded structure of the early 20th century—the bridge
was destroyed during the struggle between the Wehrmacht and the
Red Army in late April 1945. Reconstructed in 1949, it was dubbed
the “bridge of unity,” although rising tensions between the German
Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany
(FRG) led to its restricted access two and a half years later. Construc-
tion of the Berlin Wall in 1961 resulted in even tighter security mea-
sures, which limited use of the bridge to personnel assigned to the
Soviet military headquarters in Potsdam and the military liaison of-
fices of France, Britain, and the United States accredited to it. Many
of these military attachés, officially sanctioned by existing treaties,
were in fact unacknowledged spies.
The first spy exchange occurred on 10 February 1962. Francis
Gary Powers, whose American U-2 reconnaissance plane had been
shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, was exchanged for Ru-
dolf Ivanovich Abel, a Soviet spy convicted in a major trial in New
York City in 1957. More than two decades passed before a second
exchange happened on 11 June 1985. According to the arrangement,
25 spies who had been confined in Poland and the GDR were ex-
changed for four people earlier apprehended by U.S. authorities. The
final and most publicized instance took place on 11 February 1986,
when Anatoly Shcharansky, a Soviet prisoner of conscience whom
the Americans adamantly insisted was not a spy, was traded along
with Wolf-Georg Frohn, Jaroslav Jaavorsky, and Dietrich Nistroy for
Eastern bloc operatives Hana and Karel Koecher, Jerzy Kaczmarek,
Detlef Scharfenorth, and Yevgeny M. Zemlyakov.
Most exchanges between the GDR and the FRG, which were also
facilitated by the East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel, occurred
at the Herleshausen-Wartha border crossing in the mountains near
Eisenach. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, normal traffic resumed
on the Glienicker Bridge on 10 November 1989. See also STANGE,
JÜRGEN.
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