Berlin customs wall

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The Berlin customs and excise wall was the city ​​wall of Berlin from the 18th to the middle of the 19th century. It replaced the medieval Berlin city wall and the later Berlin fortress . The customs and excise wall comprised about seven times the area of ​​the old royal seat enclosed by fortifications .

The Berlin excise wall around 1855

In contrast to its predecessors, the excise wall had no military significance, but was mainly used to monitor trade: Excise , the direct excise tax on imported goods at that time, was levied at the 18 customs gates . The gates are usually named after the nearest important city that can be reached from here. The wall had to prevent both the smuggling of goods and the desertion of soldiers from the Berlin garrison. All traffic to and from the city was controlled. Jews were only allowed to enter the city in the north through the Rosenthaler Tor (from 1750 through the Prenzlauer Tor ) and in the south only through the Hallesche Tor and had to register there.

Construction of the excise wall

The excise wall was essentially built between 1734 and 1737 under Friedrich Wilhelm I ( King in Prussia , also known as the Soldier King ). It included the so-called line , which was built in 1705 , a fence made of palisades north of the city, the course of which can still be seen today on Linienstraße in Berlin-Mitte . The Friedrichshain Palisadenstraße also reminds with its name of the course of the excise wall at that time. The customs wall consisted mainly of wooden palisades and was only partially bricked. It was provided with 14 city gates, most of which were named after a city that was in the direction of the gate.

As at the city gates , customs controls took place at the points where the Spree crossed the excise wall. This was done with the help of wooden beams floating in the water, the lower or upper tree , with which the entry and exit could be blocked for ships. At the time of its construction, the excise wall encompassed not only Berlin and its suburbs, but also large areas of undeveloped or agricultural land, especially in the east and south.

Story to the point of demolition

As Berlin continued to grow, parts of the excise wall were moved outwards several times in the first half of the 19th century, and with it the customs gates were moved further. Between 1786 and 1802 the wooden parts were replaced by a stone wall and the excise wall as a whole was reinforced and raised to around four meters. Some city gates such as the Brandenburg Gate received a representative new building. In the middle of the 19th century, four more city gates were built, the New Gate (1832), the Anhalter Tor (1839/1840), the Köpenicker Tor on Lausitzer Platz (1842) and the Water Gate (1848).

Several cemeteries that still exist today were built just outside the city wall , such as the Dorotheenstädtische Friedhof on Chausseestrasse , the cemetery of the St. Georg community on Prenzlauer Berg , several cemeteries on Friedenstrasse and the cemeteries in front of Hallesches Tor .

The first railway stations of the 19th century were also built around the city, mostly outside the city wall. These were terminal stations that formed the terminus of a newly built railway line. In 1838 the Potsdamer Bahnhof was built right in front of the Potsdamer Tor , in 1841 the Anhalter Bahnhof right in front of the Anhalter Tor, which was newly built for this purpose, in 1842 the Stettiner Bahnhof (at today's Nordbahnhof S-Bahn station) near the Hamburger Tor and in 1846 the Hamburger Bahnhof near the New Gate. The only exception was the Frankfurt train station (today Ostbahnhof ), which was built in 1842 as the terminus of the Berlin-Frankfurt railway within the excise wall. In order to network these terminal stations with one another, the connecting line was built in 1851 , which, however, only served goods and military traffic and whose route mostly led along the excise wall. The first Berlin subway line was also built between 1896 and 1902 as an elevated railway along the now demolished excise wall in Kreuzberg .

From the middle of the 19th century, in particular, new suburbs emerged outside the excise wall. In 1840, the Berlin urban area comprised more than twice the area surrounded by the wall. As a result, so-called excise or tax houses were built on the access roads to Berlin, in some cases far from the city gates, in which customs had to be paid. The only still-preserved Akzisehaus is located about half a kilometer from the Schlesisches Tor on the Lohmühleninsel in the Landwehr Canal . Removed its main function, the excise wall was lifted by decree in 1860 . On January 1, 1861, the city area was almost doubled again through incorporations, it was divided into 16 city districts for the first time. Between 1867 and 1870 the excise wall and with it almost all gates were demolished.

Leftovers after the demolition

Memorial plaque on Stresemannstrasse , at number 64, in Berlin-Kreuzberg
In the 1980s, part of the excise wall in Stresemannstrasse, at number 65, was rebuilt

After the demolition, only the Brandenburg Gate, the Potsdamer Gate and the New Gate remained. Only the Brandenburg Gate still exists in its old form, including the auxiliary buildings for collecting customs. The destroyed New Gate was torn down after the Second World War . The Schinkelsche Neue Potsdamer Tor (between Potsdamer Platz and Leipziger Platz ) was also destroyed in the war. The remains were removed when the Berlin Wall was built in 1961.

On behalf of the Berlin police chief, James Hobrecht delivered a land-use plan for the entire Berlin urban area after the demolition of the excise wall and some gates , which was implemented step by step over the following decades ( Hobrecht plan ) . After the development work, a lot of construction activity began, large apartment blocks with a front building, side wings and transverse buildings were built. They are considered the first tenements .

The remainder of the medieval city wall, 120 m long, is located in Waisenstrasse and Littenstrasse , behind the old town house and the Parochial Church

Today you can still see the remains of the excise wall next to the Brandenburg Gate. In the Hannoversche Straße there is a section of the wall that is under monument protection and is integrated into house number 9. In the Stresemannstraße part of the foundations of the excise wall was excavated and built in 1987 a part of the wall for illustrative purposes again.

Location of the excise wall and city gates

Brandenburg Gate 1764, view to the west of the Tiergarten
Entrance portal to the restored former "Landgut Borsig" with the sculptures from the former Oranienburger Tor
Leipziger / Potsdamer Tor around 1800
Rosenthal Gate around 1800

The course of the excise wall and in particular the location of the city gates at the time of the demolition of the wall can still be recognized today by the names, especially of squares. In a clockwise direction, the excise wall had the following 18 city gates and two river-side entrances:

Similar structures in other cities

In addition to the city walls, which are often fortress-like, the upstream land forces were used for general transport controls and customs collection before excise walls were built . Mostly these were only a Gebück strengthened, but also partly fences or palisades in use have been like in the Frankfurter Landwehr . The building of walls at customs borders came up primarily in the Prussian state with its extensive land recruitment, as this form of reinforcement made it difficult for soldiers to desert. Similar wall structures were therefore found several times in Prussia in the 18th and 19th centuries. The customs wall of Potsdam , a residence of the Prussian kings, was built the year before from 1733 and existed until 1869. Its remains are in the still preserved city gates such as Jägertor (1733), Nauener Tor (1733/1755) and Brandenburg Gate (1733 / 1777). The Brandenburg Gate of Potsdam should not be confused with the gate of Berlin of the same name.

literature

  • Helmut Zschocke: The Berlin Excise Wall - The penultimate wall of the city , Berlin Story Verlag, Berlin 2007. ISBN 978-3-929829-76-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ official announcement of August 16, 1841, Berliner Nachrichten - No. 195, August 20, 1841
  2. ^ A b Hans Prang, Horst Günter Kleinschmidt: Through Berlin on foot , VEB Tourist Verlag Berlin Leipzig, 1983; Pages 28-29

Web links

Commons : City walls in Berlin  - collection of images, videos and audio files