Berlin Wall Trail
The Berlin Wall Trail ( ) is an approximately 160 kilometer long cycle and footpath in Berlin and Brandenburg . It largely follows the earlier course of the Berlin Wall around West Berlin . It mostly follows the former post route used by the GDR border troops or uses the customs route that runs along the border on West Berlin. A number of historical testimonies and information opportunities along the way remind of the history of the wall.
history
In the course of the division of Germany in the Cold War , the previously structurally unsecured border to West Berlin in East Berlin and the area around the GDR in what was then the Potsdam district was fortified by the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961. In the course of the following years the border fortifications were strengthened. Typically they consisted of several protective walls or fences and other security systems, so that a wide border strip was cordoned off. In most of the sections there was a post route on which the GDR border troops made inspection trips.
A few months after the opening of the border on November 9, 1989, the first measures to dismantle the Berlin Wall began, which had finally become superfluous with the economic and monetary union of the two German states on July 1, 1990 and the complete abolition of border controls. In the period that followed, the barriers were dismantled over almost their entire length. At that time, almost its entire length of the post route used by the GDR border troops running along the wall was freely accessible.
Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall , there were initiatives by environmentalists and bicycle associations to preserve and renaturate the open spaces on the undeveloped wall strip around the West Berlin area. The post route should become a hiking and cycling route around Berlin. The idea of using it as a green belt around the city was symbolized in individual places with tree-planting campaigns. In 1990 representatives of the General German Bicycle Club marked the route with painted bicycle and pedestrian pictograms. In 1991, the Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation Germany also proposed a continuous hiking and cycling route around the city. A few years later, monument conservationists also wanted the remaining remnants of the border fortifications to be preserved as comprehensively as possible. On the other hand, residents and community representatives were again interested in a quick demolition of the path and in some cases also worried about the obligation to maintain safety on the area.
However, there was no systematic securing of the route by the local authorities. In the following years, larger parts of the wall strip were built on, especially in the inner city area of Berlin. The post route was also removed or interrupted on other sections. In 1996 there were again demonstrations by the ADFC for a continuous wall path around the city, on which the previous destruction of the post path was criticized.
Around the year 2000, interest in securing the area grew. Michael Cramer and other politicians from Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen Berlin have been organizing wall raids around the city every year since 2001 . From 2002 to 2006, the Berlin Senate initiated the expansion of the Wall Trail around the city. In some cases, replacement travel options had to be created for parts of the route that were no longer preserved. Reconstructed or newly built traffic routes also separated sections of the route from one another. In the area of Lichterfelde on the border with Teltow , an underpass was built under the Berlin – Halle railway line in 2004 as part of the customs route in Berlin, after fear of an interruption in the route at this point.
Since April 2009, part of the Wall Trail on the banks of the Griebnitzsee in Potsdam has been closed by some property owners. A similar situation has existed at Groß Glienicker See since summer 2009 . In both cases, a long-running legal dispute has been going on between the city of Potsdam and the owners. In 2013, a section of the Wall Trail in the community of Schönefeld, which ran along the former Postenweg, was closed by the private owner, so that other routes had to be set up there.
At the junction with the Dresdener Bahn near Lichtenrade , however, there is still no possibility to cross, so a longer detour via partly paved streets is necessary. The German railway justified the lack of crossing ability as saying. "This Wall Trail is not a legally erected path we have to consider as crossing" In 2012, the parliament of Brandenburg decided up to 250,000 euros for the construction of an underpass under the railway in this area, but their realization is delayed due to the repeated postponement of the long-distance tracks of the Dresdener Bahn in this area. After the responsible municipality of Blankenfelde-Mahlow had suspended the associated procedure since 2014, the crossing of the Wall Trail was not taken into account in the planning approval decision for the expansion of the Dresden Railway. An implementation in the next few years is therefore not foreseeable, instead the municipality is now aiming for a tour of the Wall Trail via Ziethener Strasse further south.
Longer sections of the Wall Trail are now in a disastrous state. Despite a decision by the Berlin Senate in January 2019 to renovate and maintain the Wall Trail as a whole, and for which it initially registered 12.4 million euros in the 2020/21 double budget, there is still not enough money available. From 2019 to 2021, only 1.2 million euros are available, of which 170,000 euros annually for maintenance and 330,000 euros for new buildings.
course
General
The Wall Trail is around 160 kilometers long, around 50 kilometers of which run along the inner-city border in the urban area of Berlin and around 110 kilometers on the border between West Berlin and the surrounding area. On the website of the Senate Administration, the Wall Trail is divided into 14 individual stages that begin and end near railway or subway stations.
If the inner-city border runs over streets, the border line is marked by a double row of paving stones embedded in the road surface, as a reminder of the earlier border. At various points, information boards point out the route and remind of events at the respective stations.
The path is mostly asphalt, although there are sections that were newly laid out after 2000 as well as sections where the original surface has been preserved with the corresponding wear and tear. Only short passages are unpaved. Individual, also mostly shorter, sections are paved. The Wall Trail is linked to several other long-distance cycle paths. These include the European Bicycle Route R1 , the Berlin-Copenhagen Cycle Route , the cycle route Berlin-Usedom , the Havel bike path , the Spreeradweg or the bike path Berlin-Leipzig .
The Wall Trail is signposted throughout, the signs read “Berlin Wall Trail” in white on a gray background.
From the city center to the city limits at Schönefeld
From Potsdamer Platz , the Wall Trail, following the former border line, initially leads mainly over urban streets and passes, among other things, the Topography of Terror memorial , Checkpoint Charlie , the former Heinrich-Heine-Straße border crossing and the Engelbecken . From the Schilling Bridge near the Ostbahnhof , the path runs along the north side of the Spree on the Friedrichshain side, which used to belong to East Berlin, along the East Side Gallery . He changes at the Oberbaumbrücke (former border crossing) on the Kreuzberg side and continues to Treptow and there along the Landwehr Canal . The route between Treptow and Neukölln is winding, mostly on roads along the border. It continues to the southeast along Kiefholzstrasse. A well-developed cycle path begins around the level of the Plänterwald , which, with the exception of a short section, leads to the city limits near Schönefeld . On a short stretch in Baumschulenweg on Britzer Allee west of the former Sonnenallee border crossing , this cycle path is interrupted, cyclists are led a short distance through Neukölln, separated from pedestrians. At Chris-Gueffroy-Allee, the Britzer connecting canal is crossed and the former East Berlin area is reached again. This street is named after Chris Gueffroy , who was shot there in 1989 by GDR border guards. A stele reminds of him. From the waterway junction Britzer Connection Canal , Neuköllner Schifffahrtskanal and Teltow Canal , the route to Adlershof runs along the Teltow Canal parallel to the A 113 motorway and then on between the districts of Rudow in the west and Altglienicke in the east. The planned Y-route rapid cycle connection is to run over the section along the motorway .
Along the southern city limits
In Schönefeld, the route initially runs on the Berlin side. Then various provisional routes bypass a short, closed section in the Schönefeld area. Between the Dörferblick and Lichtenrade there is an indentation of the border around the village of Großziethen that extends far to the north and that the Wall Trail follows. It partly runs on city streets in Berlin off the border. The border strip itself is accessible, but the paths are not asphalted. In the south of Berlin-Lichtenrade, the route leads through the settlement areas due to the lack of the possibility of crossing the Dresden Railway and reaches the border again in the west of the district.
From Lichtenrade via Marienfelde to Lichterfelde on the Berlin side or to Teltow on the Brandenburg side, the path runs mainly in the border strip, which is partially covered by forest-like vegetation. While the Berlin side is built up right up to the city limits, in some cases with large estates, the Brandenburg side is almost completely devoid of buildings in many sections. The “Citizens' Initiative Teltower Platte” is committed to preserving this “green city edge”.
The path leads north past the former village of Osdorf , whose residents were relocated by the GDR leadership in 1968 due to the town's proximity to the border. At the “Japaneck” a 1.5 kilometer long section was planted with Japanese ornamental cherries , which were planted here soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall . Every year a cherry blossom festival takes place here in spring . In this area, the Wall Trail runs a few hundred meters over Berlin, where a crossing under the Anhalter Bahn was built for the Wall Trail .
The path leads via Teltow, south of Zehlendorf and Kleinmachnow on to Königsweg and there on it a longer piece through the forest in Berlin. After Kohlhasenbrück , near the train station Griebnitzsee Potsdam is reached. As a replacement for the Postenweg on Griebnitzsee, which is closed by residents, the Mauerweg runs through Karl-Marx-Straße. The Teltow Canal is crossed in Klein Glienicke and the Glienicker Bridge is reached via Berlin .
From Potsdam to Frohnau
From the Glienicke Bridge , the Wall Trail leads to the next possible crossing over the Havel, the Wannsee – Kladow ferry , in Berlin areas sometimes well away from the border, past the Wannsee past the Pfaueninsel and Nikolskoe . On the other bank of the Havel in Kladow , the path runs to the border near Potsdam and along the Postenweg to Groß Glienicker See in Groß Glienicke , which is divided between Berlin and Potsdam, and runs on the Potsdam side of the town near the western shore of the lake. Due to the closure of the riverside path by some owners, the path is led through local roads and reaches Berlin again in the north of Groß Glienicke. There it runs in a north-easterly direction next to the Bundesstraße 2 , then turns to the north-west and reaches the Staaken district between Old and New Hahneberg . To the north of the two railway lines through the district, the route mainly leads on the Zollweg on the West Berlin side to Eiskeller and later back to the Brandenburg area. After the Schönwalder Chaussee he changes back to the Berlin side and reaches the Havel at the Bürgerablage . The border is crossed again at Nieder Neuendorf . The path to Hennigsdorf runs along the Havel, where the Havel is crossed. Behind the settlement of Stolpe-Süd it first runs east on the post route of the GDR border troops, crosses the former transit motorway to Hamburg near the former border crossing Heiligensee / Stolpe, then turns north in Berlin-Frohnau and reaches the border between Frohnau and Hohen Neuendorf near the Invalidensiedlung its northernmost point.
From Frohnau to downtown Berlin
The route mainly leads south on the Postenweg between Frohnau and Glienicke / Nordbahn . In the area of the duck beak he changes to Berlin area. Then the route leads eastwards along Veltheimstrasse in Berlin, then through the streets of Glienicke. In Schildow the path turns south and leads in the area of the Tegeler Fließ on the former Postenweg through a natural landscape. There he reaches the border from East Berlin and follows the Postenweg along the Heidekrautbahn to Wilhelmsruh . In Rosenthal on the border with the Märkisches Viertel , he changes to the West Berlin side at Quickborner Strasse. Here a part of the West Berlin customs route is still preserved in its original state. In Wittenau , the route reaches the route of the Berlin Northern Railway , which it follows to the southeast, first in former East Berlin territory, then from Wilhelm-Kuhr-Straße to the Esplanade / Grüntaler Straße railway underpass on the West Berlin side past the S-Bahn station Wollankstrasse . The path then leads along the Postenweg east of the railway facilities, the surroundings of which have also been partially planted with Japanese ornamental cherries, to the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing and crosses under the street there. It continues over Norwegerstrasse to the Behmstrasse Bridge and over the Schwedter Steg to Schwedter Strasse through the Mauerpark .
Along Bernauer Straße it leads west on the West Berlin side to the Nordbahnhof , turns north on the east side of the former extensive railway facilities and further west along the cemeteries on Liesenstraße on to West Berlin area in the district of Wedding . After the former border crossing at Chausseestrasse, it leads back to East Berlin territory. The route to the south follows the Berlin-Spandau shipping canal and along the way over the Invalidenfriedhof , part of which was leveled in 1961 for the border security systems.
Past the former border crossing in Invalidenstrasse , it runs along the Postenweg along the historic Charité campus on the East Berlin side and crosses the Spree at Luisenstrasse and leads past the Reichstag building , the Brandenburg Gate and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe to Potsdamer Platz.
Remembrance and memorial sites
The Wall Trail touches the most famous places of remembrance of the Wall, such as the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse, the memorial tower for Günter Litfin on the Berlin-Spandauer-Schiffahrtskanal, the White Crosses memorial on the Reichstag building for those who died in the Wall or the East Side Gallery .
At several points along the entire route, steles remind of all known wall dead, special events on the wall or special topographical situations.
As part of the Sakura campaign , several places in Berlin were planted with Japanese ornamental cherries from 1990, out of joy about German unity. A Japanese television station raised the funds for this in a fundraising campaign. In the area of the Wall Trail there are ornamental cherry plantings near Bornholmer Strasse , at the Lohmühlenbrücke in Treptow and at the "Japan-Eck" between Teltow and Berlin-Lichterfelde.
Movies
- Where was the wall actually? Documentation, Germany 2018. Shown in: Tagesschau24 , April 12, 2019, 8:15 pm - 9:02 pm.
literature
- Michael Cramer , Der Berliner Mauer-Radweg , 6th completely revised edition, Verlag Esterbauer , Rodingersdorf 2011, ISBN 3-85000-074-5 .
- Axel von Blomberg , Kai-Uwe Thiessenhusen , Berliner Mauerweg , green heart publishing house , Ilmenau 2013, ISBN 3-86636-135-1 .
- Berlin Wall Trail, cycling and hiking map with zigzag folds on a scale of 1: 20,000, 2nd edition 2014, Verlag Dr. Barthel, ISBN 978-3-89591-171-2 .
Web links
- Openstreetmap map
- Berlin Wall Trail on the sides of the Berlin Senate
Individual evidence
- ↑ Do stick figures and wheels keep the way clear? The cyclists are interested in the future of the border strip. In: Berliner Zeitung , August 13, 1990, p. 16.
- ↑ a b c Families unpack their sandwiches on the barbed wire. The border around West Berlin disappears under sand and restitution claims, and only a few want to keep “their” wall. In: Berliner Zeitung , April 14, 1992, p. 3.
- ↑ No entry into nature. Advice from the nature conservation association for vacation. In: Neue Zeit , May 8, 1991, p. 22.
- ↑ a b Cyclists demo for the preservation of the Grenzweg . In: Berliner Zeitung , August 5, 1996.
- ↑ A travel guide provides information about the “Wall Cycle Path” - on the move on the border strip. In: Berliner Zeitung , July 30, 2001, online .
- ↑ Berlin Wall Trail on the website of the Berlin Senate, accessed on May 25, 2012
- ↑ Tunnel is handed over . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung , Potsdamer Stadtkurier, July 31, 2004.
- ↑ The border strip is cordoned off - this time in Schönefeld . In: Der Tagesspiegel , September 24, 2013.
- ↑ Axel von Blomberg , Kai-Uwe Thiessenhusen, Berliner Mauerweg , Verlag grünes herz , Ilmenau 2013, ISBN 3-86636-135-1 , p. 44.
- ↑ The last gap in the Berlin Wall Trail will finally be closed. In: Signal , 1/2013, p. 19, online .
- ↑ a b But no tunnel under the Dresden Railway. In: Der Tagesspiegel . April 13, 2020, accessed April 22, 2020 .
- ↑ a b The Berlin Wall Trail within the urban area on the website of the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment, accessed on July 11, 2015.
- ↑ Die Grüne Stadtkante on the pages of the environmental initiative Teltower Platte, accessed on April 17, 2020.
- ↑ Sakura Campaign on the website of the Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection , accessed on April 17, 2020.
