Berlin-Friedrichsfelde (historic town center)

View over the Anger into Alfred-Kowalke-Straße from the east

In the historic center of the Berlin district of Friedrichsfelde , a remarkable number of buildings from around 1900 have been preserved or reconstructed and placed under monument protection.

Demarcation

Old village center drawn from a plan from 1762

There is no precise information about the delimitation of the area. The following limits apply: north of the Alt-Friedrichsfelde road ( B 1 / B 5 ), east of the railway line of the Berlin outer ring , south of Tränkegraben or the zoo , west of the Volkrad- / Robert-Uhrig-Straße (connection to the Weitlingkiez ).

Anger - historical center of Friedrichsfelde

Friedrichsfelde village church

Former inspector's house

Friedrichsfelde developed as a typical Angerdorf through the arrival of families from the Lower Rhine , Fläming and Westphalia areas as early as the 13th century. It was first mentioned in documents in 1265.

The original center of the Angers is the village church Friedrichsfelde (today's building is the third), then there is a Prussian column from 1876 based on a design by the artist Thié and a war memorial for the fallen of World War I from 1922. The memorial was erected in 1991 restored by the Schulz sculptors' partnership.

Alfred-Kowalke-Strasse

The original main street of the village runs in a west-east direction. What the village green of historic Friedrichsfelde was called before has not yet been clarified.

From the end of the 19th century until 1976, the traffic route was named Wilhelmstrasse after the first German Emperor Wilhelm I. Despite the destruction of the nearby village church, numerous first buildings were preserved and constantly found new residents. It is a matter of:

Numbers 3/4: laboratory building of the Institute of Comparative Pathology .
Number 16: tenement house from 1880
Numbers 29 and 30: first girls' community school, later expanded, then expanded and demolished in 2014, despite citizen protests.
On the corner of what was then Schlossstrasse (now Am Tierpark), the municipal administration used a former gardener's house between 1910 and 1990. That has been empty since the late 1990s. The Senate of Berlin put it on the list of architectural monuments in the 1990s.
Number 34: Inspector's House (Farmhouse)
Numbers 35 and 38: tenement houses and restaurants from 1880
Number 39: Farmhouse built around 1880
Number 40a: Apartment building built around 1880
Numbers 41/42: tenement houses built in 1890

Former schools in the area

School Rummelsburger Strasse

Listed gymnasium, Rummelsburger Strasse 3

At the beginning of the expansion of the village of Friedrichsfelde through the construction of factories and the subsequent influx of people, appropriate communal facilities, especially schools, had to be built. At the turn of the 20th century, two school buildings were built: on the one hand, the boys' school at Rummelsburger Straße 1, which was completed in 1893 (opposite the later Friedrichsfelde underground station , on the western foothills of the Angers) with one facing the courtyard Gym. The school building was the 24th elementary school in Lichtenberg from the 1950s, and has been the Lichtenberg Evangelical School since the late 1990s .

The gym of this school is a listed building. For them there have been usage concepts and estimates of renovation costs since the beginning of the 21st century. For example, around 615,000 euros are given for the hall, which could also be used as a café (as of 2002). If the school and adjacent open spaces were to be renovated and converted, around five million euros would have to be made available. Since then, the district office has not published any projects or even tackled them (status: May 2009).

School in Alfred-Kowalke-Straße with a changing location

Alfred-Kowalke-Str. 30, former school wing

This educational institution on the eastern part of the Angers was opened in 1870 as the first girls' school in Friedrichsfelde. Around 1900 the school building underwent the first renovation (increase). The extension and renovation carried out around 1920 prompted the administration of the newly formed Lichtenberg district to set up several offices here. The house thus became a town house . School was no longer possible here.

A larger multi-section schoolhouse was built in the courtyard area of the neighboring property to accommodate the increased population of the Friedrichsfelde community, and the entire school operations were relocated there. In addition to classrooms, a coal heating system and an auditorium, the building complex also had a director's apartment and an official apartment for a school clerk (later a school caretaker).

Instead of a gymnasium - which was destroyed in World War II - directly on Wilhelmstrasse, the 28th elementary school was given a simple rectangular type building next to the schoolhouse to the northwest on a branch of Alfred-Kowalke-Strasse in the 1960s. At the same time, a GDR type school building was built directly on the street, but it was demolished again in 2008.

Before and after the political change , the 1920s schoolhouse was no longer part of regular school operations. The Berlin Senate maintained a "contact teacher center" and a "school psychological advice center" here. Not all rooms in the school building were used. This complex was sold and completely demolished in 2014, even the old and healthy trees of the former school yard were felled except for the Treskow plane . The guys' gym from the 1970s has remained. In 2017, a Hamburg investor built the Domicil senior care home Am Schloss Friedrichsfelde on the vacated site according to plans by the Berlin architects Broll • Förster .

Near the Friedrichsfelde underground station

At the western edge of the former Dorfanger, directly at the intersection of Alfred-Kowalke-, Rummelsburger, Zachert- and Einbecker Straße, is the former terminus of underground line 5 , the Friedrichsfelde underground station . In continuation of the underground route , a tunnel leads south up to the BVG workshop . Until this line was extended, the workshop facilities were in the middle of gardens or fields. Before the rebuilding at the end of the 19th century, there was a smaller, Dutch- style park in this area that belonged to the silk merchant Orelly. During the GDR era, part of the site belonged to the Institute for Drug Research , which cultivated plants here.

Newer shop buildings in Alfred-Kowalke-Straße near the underground station

In Einbecker Straße 118, at the exit of the subway, a small cinema was added to a larger apartment building before 1930 ("Schloss-Lichtspiele") and used by the residents. The cinema had to be closed before 1980 due to dilapidation. In November 2009 the building was demolished. After 1967 the design office for building construction I planned smaller shop buildings in the vicinity of the underground station, which were then built and quickly accepted by the residents of the area.

To the east of the underground station, on Kurzen Strasse, is the successor to the Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd, which was inaugurated in 1906 .

When new three- to four-story residential buildings were built in Alt-Friedrichsfelde from 1965, further schools and day-care centers were built in parallel. The district concept specifies around ten school buildings and seven day-care centers in Alt-Friedrichsfelde (status: end of 2001). Gardening areas and fields had to give way; the street layout of Massower Straße, which previously crossed Schloßstraße, has been changed.

East side of the former Angers

Pan sculpture on Alfred-Kowalke-Strasse

Today's Tierpark Berlin borders on the south side of Alfred-Kowalke-Strasse ; it was laid out as a palace park by Benjamin Raule in the 17th century and later used by the von Treskow family ; Remnants of the foundations of the old castle wall can still be seen in front of the zoo fence. Closer to the street is a sandstone sculpture created by Karl-Günter Möpert in 1990 , depicting the Greek shepherd and forest god Pan . It initially stood in front of a restaurant and was later implemented.

On the north side of the street, opposite the zoo and the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research , is the approximately 350-year-old Treskow plane tree . Behind her and the school complex were gardens and fields; Development only began in 1970. Today, of the new buildings, the Berlin School of Economics and Law , the State Office for Statistics and other administrative units are worth mentioning.

Along the street Am Tierpark

At the zoo, southeast of Alfred-Kowalke-Strasse

South of the Alfred-Kowalke-Straße / Am Tierpark intersection, on the eastern side of the street, past some residential buildings from around the 1930s, where wealthy Friedrichsfeld citizens stayed, you reach the former main entrance of the zoo, the gate to Friedrichsfelde Palace .

Further south there is a small settlement around Criegernweg, which was built around 1920 on a part of the Treskow's castle park for the servants and is mainly built with one or two family houses. The few short streets, previously only distinguished by numbers, were named in 1936 after people from Brandenburg - Prussian history and the Treskow family. Directly to the street Am Tierpark, the Criegernweg is flanked by two U-shaped rental blocks, which are named Eichenhof and Lindenhof .

This is followed by today's main entrance to the zoo and the adjoining outdoor enclosure bear shop window , today for black bears , which was only created after the opening of the zoo and after which this entrance is named.

Allotment gardens were located on the western side of the street before the expansion of the Hans-Loch district in the 1960s up to the VnK route .

literature

The architectural and art monuments in the GDR , Berlin II; Pages 209-218
Jan Feustel: Walks in Lichtenberg . “Berlinische Reminiszenzen” No. 75. Haude and Spener Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-7759-0409-3