Berlin city wall
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The Berlin city wall was a building in the Middle Ages that was built around the then twin cities of Berlin - Kölln , including several city gates in the passages.
location
The Berlin city wall ran east of the Spree roughly along Waisenstrasse, further parallel to the current route of the Stadtbahn to Burgstrasse in the north. In the Kölln area, the city wall followed the course of the Spree Canal, today's Friedrichsgracht, up to the lock bridge on the Kupfergraben . From there it ran eastwards to the Spree. When the Memhardt Plan was drawn up, this part of the city wall was already built over with the Berlin City Palace .
There are still remnants of the old city wall between Littenstrasse and Waisenstrasse. They were saved from grinding because they served as the boundary wall of residential buildings. In 1948 the remains of the wall were secured and listed as a historical monument .
history
With their emergence in the 12th and 13th centuries, the cities of Berlin and Kölln initially protected themselves from external enemies with ramparts , palisades and ditches . Beginning around 1250, a fortified city wall , made of field stones and up to two meters high, was added, whereby the Spree, as the border between the two cities, was spared, so that there was no wall between the cities.
In the 13th century, the city wall was repaired with bricks and raised up to five meters. Loopholes , towers and Wieck houses were built in at irregular intervals for defense . In the 15th century two trenches about 15 meters wide were dug around the city wall and an earth wall up to ten meters wide was piled up between them.
The city wall fell into disrepair over time, it was razed in the 17th century and replaced by a new fortress with several bastions , which encompassed an expanded urban area and was in turn razed again from 1734.
Gates of the city wall
The Berlin city wall had three gates east of the Spree, i.e. on the Berlin side:
- in the north the Spandauer Thor at the end of Spandauer Straße ,
- in the northeast the Oderberger Thor , also known as "Georgentor" or later as " Königstor ", at the end of Rathausstrasse ,
- in the southeast the Stralauer Thor in Stralauer Strasse, near Waisenstrasse.
On the Kölln side west of the Spree were:
- in the south the Köpenicker Thor at the Roßstrasse bridge at the northern end of the Neue Roßstrasse,
- in the south-southwest the Gertraudenthor at the Gertraudenbrücke , where today the Gertraudenstraße leads over the Spree Canal.
In the first urban expansion that Friedrichswerder said:
- the “New Thor” or “Neustädtische Thor” approximately at the height of the current buildings of the Neue Wache and the armory , in 1683 that came instead of the Gertraudenthores
- Leipziger Thor between new and Gertraudenthor added.
Gates of the fortress and customs wall
With the construction of the Berlin fortress after 1650, the four gates (Spandauer, Stralauer, Köpenicker and Neues Thor) of the city wall were moved in front of the ramparts and rebuilt there under the same name. A new building was also built for the other two, albeit with a different name; the Oderberger became the Georgen gate and the Gertrauden gate became the Leipzig gate. Like the medieval city wall gates, the second generation of Berlin gates, the fortress gates, soon disappeared completely from the cityscape. Only certain streets such as Oberwallstraße or Kurstraße and the route of the light rail between Jannowitzbrücke and Museum Island are reminiscent of the former fortifications and their gates. During the construction of the customs or excise wall, which became necessary due to the rapid growth of Berlin, from 1734, new gates were built, some of them as representative structures.
Due to the city expansion with Dorotheen- , Friedrichstadt and other suburbs as well as their incorporation into Berlin, there was another demolition from 1866 to 1869, this time the customs gates. So the customs wall and almost all of its gates were razed. The fourth and last generation of Berlin city gates followed in a highly representative form. Examples of this are the Potsdam gatehouses designed by Carl Friedrich Schinkel and the New Thor , which should not be confused with the New Thor at the old dog bridge . But even these gates did not last. The only one of these structures that was not demolished is the Brandenburg Gate designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans at the end of the boulevard Unter den Linden .
Web links
- Medieval city wall. In: Urban Development. Edition Luisenstadt, 2004, accessed on October 12, 2016 .
- Memhardt plan. In: Urban Development. Edition Luisenstadt, 2004, accessed on October 12, 2016 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ June 15, 2015. Welt Online ; accessed on October 26, 2019
- ↑ Old center new center ?: Positions on the historical center of Berlin . Landesarchiv Berlin, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-8305-3053-4 , pp. 48, 53
- ↑ fortress (fortification) . In: Urban development , Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein .
- ↑ Kathrin Chod, Herbert Schwenk, Hainer Weisspflug: Customs and Excise Wall . In: Hans-Jürgen Mende , Kurt Wernicke (ed.): Berliner Bezirkslexikon, Mitte . Luisenstadt educational association . Haude and Spener / Edition Luisenstadt, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89542-111-1 ( luise-berlin.de - as of October 7, 2009).
- ^ Tanja Berneburg: Potsdamer Platz as a metaphor for Berlin. Berlin 1999. berneburg.de