Berlin milestone

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1959 Berlin milestone with the distance to Berlin 318 km on the Berliner Platz in Lübeck
Berlin milestone based on Renée Sintenis ' original design in Baden-Baden

The Berlin milestones are modern small monuments with kilometers to Berlin, which are located at numerous locations in the western German states . They are not to be confused with the historical, Prussian milestones , which indicate or have indicated the distance to Berlin in Prussian miles (approx. 7.5 kilometers per mile) .

background

The Berlin milestones go back to an initiative of the CDU politician Gerd Bucerius , who was chairman of the Bundestag committee for Berlin from 1949 to 1953 . In 1953, the Federal Minister of Transport, Hans-Christoph Seebohm , ordered Berlin milestones to be set up, which were to contain the Berlin bear with the kilometers to Berlin on the front.

To that of the GDR enclosed West Berlin to hold general awareness and promote in West Germany solidarity with the city, should be based on the central reservation of motorways at a distance of 100 kilometers memorial stones with a representation of the Berlin bear and the indication of the distance to Berlin be set up. The cost of producing and erecting the stones was paid for from federal funds; the federal states responsible for the administration of the respective motorway sections only had to take care of the organization of the work.

The concept was then expanded to include locations on federal and state highways, whereby it was a free decision of the municipalities to build a Berlin milestone. In these cases, the federal government only paid part of the costs; the affixing of the distance information and the list were borne by the municipality concerned.

layout

The design for the relief image on the milestones - the Berlin bear as graffito  - was created in 1953 by the sculptor and graphic artist Renée Sintenis .

However, since there were no binding specifications for the execution of the Berlin milestones, numerous other variants of the upright striding bear were used. The same applies to the shape of the stones themselves, which often follow the basic design of a simple stele , but were also designed as obelisks , columns or plastic statues , for example .

Renée Sintenis also made a number of bronze bears on signposts to Berlin, which were made in 1957 on the median of today's A 115 near Dreilinden and the sculpture of the bear awarded at the film festival. A prototype of this Sintenis stone - with no kilometer indication - is located in front of the Reneé Sintenis elementary school in the green area on Laurinsteig in Berlin-Frohnau .

The kilometers indicated on the milestones indicate the respective distance from the former Berlin Dönhoffplatz: The copy of the Prussian “zero milestone” from 1730, the earlier one , has been standing near this location in Berlin on Leipziger Strasse since 1979 , near the Spittel colonnades on the Dönhoffplatz .

Lineup

The first Berlin milestone was set up between Cologne and Frankfurt am Main on the federal motorway 3 near the Fernthal service area , just before the Wiedbachtal bridge . On January 12, 1954, Federal President Theodor Heuss inaugurated the monument.

The Berlin Commissioner of the Federal Government, Gerd Bucerius , who was known for his personal ties to Berlin, announced a “Berlin milestone” every 100 km on the autobahn, but only in some places (e.g. Aachen 1954, Munich bronze statue 1962, Frankfurt 1958) has been realized. The Berlin Commissioner was able to provide these milestones, financed by federal funds, free of charge. The communities each only had to pay for the cost of erecting the stones.

However, the plan to set up Berlin milestones every 100 kilometers along the autobahn was never fully implemented. In return, however, the memorial stones proved to be popular with the cities and municipalities: around 300 - the exact number could not yet be determined because there is no official list of all federally financed or promoted Berlin milestones - were erected between 1954 and 1989 on the basis of municipal initiatives , most of them in the 1950s and 1960s.

Monument protection initiative for Berlin milestones

Since the memorial stones have meanwhile been removed in some places for various reasons and have been forgotten, their exact locations cannot be reconstructed in all cases.

The Monument Protection Initiative for Berlin Milestones is researching the origin and meaning of these stones . The Berliner-Bärenfreunde e.V. is also very active in applying for monument protection for Berlin milestones. V. Until 2010 only a few of these small monuments were known. In numerous cases, after the Berlin Wall opened in the years that followed, they were dismantled, destroyed or stored in places that were not publicly recorded because they were not aware of their importance. As a rule, there was no monument protection for the Berlin milestones. In 2013 there were already more than 250 locations; The entry in the list of monuments of the federal states and the protection of monuments was applied for in 2011. In Lower Saxony, the Lower Saxony State Office for the Preservation of Monuments only provides a monument designation for the stones that were related to the uprising of June 17, 1953 and the construction of the Wall in 1961 , but not for stones erected later.

Pictures of milestones in Berlin

Web links

Commons : Berlin Milestones  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Berlin bear as a warning . In: Die Zeit , No. 3/1954. (Miscellaneous) . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1954, pp. 15 ( online - with ill.).
  2. ↑ forschungsgruppe-meilensteine.de