Potsdamer Platz: Vom Todesstreifen zum Symbol Berlins

What does “Todesstreifen” mean in German?

Todesstreifen is the open, mined, floodlit no-man’s-land that ran between the two Berlin Wall barriers. Tod means death, Streifen means strip, and together they name the place exactly: a strip where people died. When the Wall went up, Potsdamer Platz — once one of the busiest squares in Europe — fell inside it, guarded, empty, and lethal to cross.

“Denn mit dem Bau der Mauer wird der Potsdamer Platz Teil des streng bewachten Todesstreifens.” / “Because when the Wall was built, Potsdamer Platz became part of the heavily guarded death strip.” Streifen on its own just means a strip or stripe — ein gelber Streifen auf der Straße is a yellow stripe on the road. Combined with Tod, it becomes something much darker. You will mostly meet Todesstreifen in talk about the Berlin Wall and the inner-German border, not in everyday speech. It is a strong, deliberate word that makes the danger of the divided city impossible to soften.