Mehringplatz
| Mehringplatz formerly: Belle-Alliance-Platz |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
 View across the square in north direction, around 1900 |
|
| Basic data | |
| place | Berlin |
| District | Kreuzberg |
| Created | 1732 to 1734 |
| Newly designed | 1968-1970, 1990 |
| Confluent streets |
Friedrichstrasse , Friedrich-Stampfer-Strasse , Brandesstrasse |
| Buildings | Peace column in the middle |
| use | |
| User groups | Pedestrians , cyclists , road traffic , public transport |
The Mehringplatz (formerly Belle Alliance Square ) is a scale in the urban expansion in 1734 place at the beginning of Friedrichstrasse in Berlin district of Kreuzberg . After it was completely destroyed in World War II , it was rebuilt in a modified form. In the middle of the round square is the Peace Column by Christian Gottlieb Cantian . The square is considered a social hotspot and will be redesigned by 2020.
Naming
.jpg)
From the roundabout to Belle-Alliance-Platz
From 1734 to 1815 the square was called Das Rondell , in other spelling, Rondel or Rondeel am Hallescher Thore because of its round shape . It was renamed on October 22, 1815 and was now called Belle-Alliance-Platz until 1946 . The reason for the renaming was the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815, in which English and Prussian troops under Wellington and Blucher had decisively defeated Napoleon's army . Blücher later named the battle after the Belle Alliance homestead , south of Waterloo in Belgium, where he met the English military leader. Wellington gave the battle the name of the village of Waterloo, where it had its headquarters.
Politician becomes the namesake of the place
After the end of the Second World War , the communist- dominated magistrate Werner no longer considered it appropriate to use the name of the prominent square to commemorate a triumph of the Prussian army. On February 6, 1946, he decided to rename the square in Franz-Mehring-Platz . Since July 31, 1947, it was called Mehringplatz for short. It was named after the publicist, politician and Marxist historian Franz Mehring . In the nearby building at Lindenstrasse 3, he had taught at the SPD party school from 1906 to 1911 .
Mehringplatz should not be confused with Franz-Mehring-Platz in the Friedrichshain district , which was given its current name in 1972. This name duplication in the district, which has been unified since 2001, is explained by the division of Berlin until 1990.
history
Between 1732 and 1945
Friedrich I , from 1701 king in Prussia, had begun toupgradehis residential city of Berlin by having Friedrichstadt , a suburb outside the old city center, laid outfrom 1688. His son and successor Friedrich Wilhelm I (the "Soldier King") had it expanded considerably. Friedrichstadt wasexpandedto the southunder the direction of the chief building director Philipp Gerlach to the Hallescher Tor . It was one of 14 gates in the new customs wall (excise wall ) that the king had built around the city. In the years 1732 to 1734 three representative squares were built directly behind this wall, which were initially named after their ground plans: In the west the square , also Karree or Quarrée (today's Pariser Platz ), and the octagonal octagon (today: Leipziger Platz ), in the south the roundabout (today: Mehringplatz), whose urban model was the Piazza del Popolo in Rome . The three major north-south connections of Friedrichstadt - with Friedrichstrasse as the main axis in the middle, Wilhelmstrasse to the westand Lindenstrasse to the east - were brought together as a three-beam on the roundabout. People and goods were forwarded to the different parts of the city via the places behind the customs barriers.
Rondell and Hallesches Tor were the scenes of special events during the Napoleonic Wars , always with great sympathy from the population: Napoleon's occupation troops entered the city here in 1806 , and here they left the city again in 1813. In August of the same year the Prussian troops and their allies advanced through this gate to the battle of Großbeeren , where they inflicted a heavy defeat on the French and thus prevented the renewed occupation of Berlin.
The hygienic conditions remained catastrophic for a long time, sewage of all kinds flowed openly in the gutters. After a flood in 1829, the square was filled with gravel 1.25 meters high. In a second phase, the square, which was raised again in 1839, was given a representative green area. In the meantime, the development towards a middle-class residential area had also begun, a tendency that continued in the following decades. The original development consisted of simple, plain plastered two-story houses. In the middle of the 19th century, four to five-storey classicist buildings dominated the scene , later the facades showed the sweeping decorative shapes of the Wilhelminian era .
After the removal of the excise wall, the Hallesche Tor was also demolished around 1870 , but the place name was retained. The use of the square for weekly markets was discontinued in 1886; space was needed for the new means of transport, omnibuses and trams . The subway has stopped at Hallesches Tor station since 1902 . The further Berlin expanded, the more southern Friedrichstadt was integrated into the center of Berlin , at that time the power center of the empire . The nearby Belle-Alliance-Platz offered upper-class living comfort and a well-kept environment. Gradually adorned sculptures the plant since 1843, the central erected 19 meters high Peace Tower with that of bronze existing statue of the goddess of victory Victoria by Christian Daniel Rauch . The figure symbolizes the glorious military victory, according to the Prussian state, a precondition for peace. The image program of the square was expanded in 1876 to include allegories of the four victorious powers of Waterloo (or Belle Alliance ), and in 1879 the sculptures Der Friede and Die Historschreibung followed .
When the new city of Greater Berlin was formed in 1920 , the city administration merged the area around Belle-Alliance-Platz, the Luisenstadt adjoining to the east and the Tempelhofer Vorstadt to form the new Kreuzberg district (initially “Hallesches Tor district”).
The temporary end of the square came in the Second World War on February 3, 1945. The proximity to Berlin's inner city , especially to the government district on Wilhelmstrasse , was the undoing of the square and its outskirts. In an Allied air raid between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., around 900 four-engine USAAF bombers dropped a total of 7,160 high- explosive and 996 incendiary bombs in two waves on the Berlin city area. More than 120,000 people were left homeless. 2,296 buildings were totally destroyed, 909 heavily and 3,606 moderately to slightly damaged, 22,519 apartments destroyed, and a further 27,017 apartments had to be vacated due to the risk of collapse. Even these ruins were still hard fought for in the battle for Berlin towards the end of the war. With barricades on the Belle Alliance Bridge , the German army command believed they could stop the Red Army troops advancing from the south ( Tempelhof ) . Many people died in this pointless attempt.
After 1945
After the end of the Second World War, the square was classified as "totally destroyed". The original traffic route was retained until the late 1960s, but it ran through bare, undeveloped land. Urban planners and architects also saw an opportunity for completely new developments in the total destruction . The architect Hans Scharoun won a competition from 1959/1962 (before and after the construction of the Berlin Wall ) for the development of Mehringplatz. For Scharoun, the design of the social living space played a decisive role, he propagated the "habitable urban landscape", a "park-like green landscape instead of streets and streets in which the living cells combined to form a block are located".
In 1968 the architect Werner Düttmann took over the work on Mehringplatz from his teacher Scharoun, who died in 1972. The urban planning requirements had changed fundamentally in the meantime. The square should now be a compact residential area according to the standards of social housing . Since the financial means were scarce, highly schematic living modules had to be used. Two concentric rings of residential buildings with four and six floors surround the square, which was designed as a purely pedestrian zone . To protect against the south bypass planned at the time , the perimeter development was higher. A number of additional buildings belong to it: a formerly owned senior citizens' house (Düttmann) and to the west the AOK building (Scharoun / Fleischer ). The historic street layout has been changed, Wilhelmstrasse and Lindenstrasse flow laterally into Uferstrasse on Landwehr Canal, and the drivable Friedrichstrasse ends in front of the northern entrance to the square.
Situation from 1990 to 2010
The new development area around the square has been a social hotspot and prevention area since the late 1990s . New construction projects with feeders, residential buildings for the socially disadvantaged and high-rise buildings characterize the Südliche Friedrichstadt quarter as a whole and also the Mehringplatz with its immediate surroundings. The problems of a social hotspot required various measures to upgrade the area since the early 1990s. Between 1993 and 2001, the area was renovated in sections , as a result, among other things, a standard satellite system for TV reception and easier Internet access was installed. A neighborhood management consisting of municipal employees and members of independent organizations and initiatives aims to improve living and working conditions in the area with the participation of the residents. Funds from the Senate Department for Urban Development are used to finance smaller projects from a residents' fund and larger projects from a project fund; a citizens' jury and a project jury decide on the implementation of the applications. In 2004 a survey of the residents was carried out as part of the “Mehringplatz Action Forum”; the subject was the subjectively perceived quality of living. People wanted more neat green spaces and playgrounds and complained about the heavy consumption of alcohol and other drugs on the square.
Because the area around Mehringplatz and the Mitte district, which formerly belonged to the GDR , are close to each other, a discussion began soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall about how the formerly separate western and eastern halves of the city should grow together. While some city planners and architects prefer the quarter to be integrated into the structures of Berlin's new inner city as quickly as possible, others advocate a cautious, citizen-oriented policy of restoring and repairing existing building structures.
In 2006, the path of visionaries was realized in the southern Friedrichstrasse, which opens onto Mehringplatz , with panels embedded in the ground with quotations from important Europeans. Due to material defects, however, the cover plates only lasted three years. Mehringplatz ends at the sculpture Where do we come from, where are we going by the Berlin sculptor Rainer Kriester .
Situation since 2011
With a statutory ordinance of March 15, 2011 (effective April 1, 2011), the Senate formally designated the entire southern Friedrichstadt area as a redevelopment area , with the aim of "urban development and functional upgrading". For the redesign of Mehringplatz planned in this context, the then building councilor of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Hans Panhoff , initiated a workshop procedure in 2014 and an official competition procedure in the following year. The winner was the joint design by the ARGE Lavaland GmbH , Berlin and TH Treibhaus , Berlin offices . In the same year, the square with its two building rings was placed under a preservation order, making the interim planning of creating a line of sight to the elevated railway at Hallesches Tor obsolete.
Street art was created on the square in the early 2010s , u. a. the work Hoodie Birds (2014) by the Danish artist Don John, which has meanwhile been vandalized with red paint bags .
On June 16, 2017, the Senate declared the entire southern Friedrichstadt, including Mehringplatz, a milieu protection area in the sense of the conservation statute , in order to slow down gentrification as a result of upgrading renovations. According to the 2015 competition result, the renovation should actually start in 2017, but this was delayed for various reasons.
The financing of the project, which will (now) cost around 5.9 million euros , had been clarified by the end of 2018, and the Senate stopped the money in its 2019 budget. The renovation work began at the beginning of February 2019 and will be carried out in several construction phases. First, the inner square (the inner circle) will be greened and the pedestrian zone areas will be paved with natural stones. At the same time, the street furniture and lighting will be renewed in compliance with the preservation order .
According to the basic idea of the planners, with the completion of the renovation, Mehringplatz will once again be made visible as one of “the three iconic city gate squares along the historic Berlin excise wall”.
environment
In the further catchment area of the Mehringplatz there is the traditional newspaper district on Oranienstraße with the Bundesdruckerei and on Rudi-Dutschke-Straße (formerly: Kochstraße ) with the Axel Springer high-rise and the headquarters of the alternative daily newspaper taz , not far from it Former Allied checkpoint Checkpoint Charlie , which stood on the dividing line of the divided city during the Cold War and which today is a reminder of that time. In the northwest, the area around the square borders on the site of the former Anhalter Bahnhof , a little further away on Potsdamer Platz . To the northeast of the square is the Jewish Museum , to the east is the central Kreuzberg swimming pool, the Prinzenbad . To the south and south-west, beyond the Landwehr Canal, with many preserved old buildings, there is the traditional Kreuzberg, which was less damaged in the Second World War .
The number of residents of this catchment area is given as around 13.00 people.
Transport links
Mehringplatz is connected to the BVG transport network by the Hallesches Tor underground station (lines U1 , U3 and U6 ) as well as several bus lines , including the M41 metro bus , from the nearby Anhalter Bahnhof (lines S1, S2 and S25) also a connection to the S-Bahn .
See also
literature
- The Peace Column on the Belle Alliance Square in Berlin . In: Illustrirte Zeitung . No. 30 . J. J. Weber, Leipzig January 20, 1844, p. 61-62 ( books.google.de ).
- Gudrun Maurer: Berlin and the surrounding area. Michael Müller Verlag, Erlangen, ISBN 3-923278-85-3 .
- Hinnerk Dreppenstadt, Klaus Esche (Ed.): All of Berlin. Walks through the capital. Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89479-139-X .
- Rainer Haubach: Berlin - In search of the city. Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-87584-852-7 .
The travel guides listed contain further information on Mehringplatz and its wider area.
Web links
-
Mehringplatz. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near Kaupert )
- Belle Alliance Square . In: Luise.
- Belle-Alliance-Platz and the surrounding area on a city map from 1932. In: alt-berlin.info
- Historical information from the Senate Department for Urban Development
- 22 original sheets on Belle-Alliance-Platz in the Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Berlin
- District management at Mehringplatz
- Klaus Hartung : Berlin non-simultaneities - on the dispute about the "inner city plan" . In: Kommune 4/97
- Martin Krauss: Place of Losers . ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Jungle World , March 17, 1999 (about the structural change in northwestern Kreuzberg)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mike Wilms: The redesign has started: This is how Mehringplatz should look soon . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 19, 2019
- ↑ Berlin. Struggle for freedom and self-government 1945–1946 . Published on behalf of the Senate of Berlin, Heinz Spitzing Verlag, Berlin, 1961, p. 361.
- ↑ Mehringplatz. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near Kaupert )
- ^ Franz-Mehring-Platz (Friedrichshain). In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near Kaupert )
- ↑ The day Berlin went under. In: Berliner Zeitung , November 8, 2013.
- ↑ How do you invent a city quarter? In: NZZ Online , December 20, 2010
- ^ Works by Rainer Kriester
- ↑ redevelopment goals . Official website of the renovation project
- ↑ Current projects . Official website of the renovation project
- ↑ First plans for redesign: Cars in the tunnel . In: Berlin week to redesign the square
- ↑ How the milieu protection slows down displacement in Kreuzberg. In: Berliner Morgenpost , June 23, 2017
- ↑ a b c d The new gate to Friedrichstrasse . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 19, 2019, p. 11.
Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 56.4 " N , 13 ° 23 ′ 30.1" E