Bersarinplatz
| Bersarinplatz | |
|---|---|
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 Bersarinplatz in autumn 2009. Looking towards Thaerstraße (back center). Left side: Petersburger Straße, foreground: the "gravel garden" |
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| Basic data | |
| place | Berlin |
| District | Berlin-Friedrichshain |
| Created | from 1880 |
| Newly designed | 20th century, 21st century |
| Confluent streets | Petersburger Strasse , Weidenweg, Rigaer Strasse , Thaerstrasse |
| Buildings | Residential buildings with ground floor shop areas on the roundabout |
| use | |
| User groups | Pedestrians , trams , private transport around the roundabout |
| Technical specifications | |
| Square area | 10,500 m² |
The Bersarinplatz [ bɛʁˈzaːʁin -] is a town square in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain , Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district . The layout of the square goes back to Hobrecht's development plans from 1862 and 1882. In 1895 the traffic area was officially designated as Baltenplatz , which it kept until 1947. Since then the small complex has been named Bersarinplatz after Nikolai Bersarin , the first Russian city commandant in 1945. After controversial discussions in the 1990s about the role of Bersarin in history, the Berlin Senate decided to keep this name for the square.
Location of the place
The oval square with a total area of around 10,500 m² forms a crossing point between Petersburger Strasse , which runs in north-south direction, and Weidenweg, which runs diagonally in northeast-west direction . Rigaer Straße also leads to the east and Thaerstraße to the northeast, the extension of which was drawn beyond the square after 1975. The north-eastern part of the Weidenweg and Thaerstraße have no transport links to the square. On the other hand, the tram lines M10 meet here at Bersarinplatz along Petersburger Strasse and line 21, coming from the southern part of Petersburger Strasse and then heading north-east into Weidenweg. The tracks and the road lead around the fortified and greened square today.
Origin and history of the place
19th century to the end of World War II
The area considered here did not belong entirely to Berlin in the 19th century, but was located on the Berlin Feldmark , on the border between the municipality of Lichtenberg and the property of the city of Berlin, known as the Magistrate . In 1862 James Hobrecht developed the first development plan for a future city expansion of Berlin. He gave the place on the eastern city limits the working designation Platz N in Department XIII, Section 2. This plan was revised again in 1882 and now took into account existing buildings at this point. This was on the one hand bone mill and Leimsiederei of reindeer Schulz other hand, a home of J. G. Möses, the one near to Lichtenberger corridor Dutch windmill operation. The property of the bone mill bought from Heinrich Ferdinand Eckert agricultural machinery factory and iron foundry emerged Actien Society for the construction of agricultural machines and implements for car manufacturing on. When the square N, initially planned as a square, was refurbished from around 1880, other people, especially craftsmen, settled here. In the final stage of expansion, seven streets ran towards the square, which was given an irregular shape in the form of a pentagon . It was not one of the so-called jewelry places, so it was a traffic junction from the start. Now a brisk construction activity started around the square and one after the other the Hotel Mecklenburger Haus was built on the corner of Petersburger Strasse and Thaerstrasse. Its owner and operator, Albert Brauer, had a five-story building built with a light tower, balustrades and some decorative elements on the facade. Other five-story residential buildings with butt corners in the Wilhelminian style soon added to the development. With the completion of the peripheral buildings on April 4, 1895, the official name of the pure traffic area took place. It was now called Baltenplatz after the people who lived in the Baltic on the Baltic Sea . Around the square there were numerous shops and service facilities in the residential buildings, especially on the ground floor area, such as the "Gebrüder Groh, Butter", the "Concordia Butterhandlung", a "tooth studio", the "photo studio" by A. Birkholz, a "breakfast room" and small restaurants. Tram tracks soon cut through the square, right in the center there was a paved sidewalk with benches around a few bushes.
After the First World War , Baltenplatz was redesigned like a roundabout. He received a low planting with flower beds in a lawn. Around the green area, the paving was adapted to the round of the square.
From 1925 onwards, the Berlin city planners developed the idea of erecting a memorial to the recently deceased President Friedrich Ebert on the square . Due to political differences of opinion with those responsible for the district, the majority of whom belonged to the KPD , this project was not carried out.
Just two years later, however, another object by a sculptor was to dominate the square. Hugo Lederer had received the order in 1927 to design a fertility fountain. The commissioned work was completed in 1932, and because of its impressive figures, it was also given the name Ochsenbrunnen or Stierbrunnen . Lederer was inspired for the motifs by the nearby central cattle yard. This well with all its parts finally had a weight of around twelve tons . Now the construction experts found that the Baltenplatz is not suitable for installation due to its construction with the cast-iron gas, water and sewage pipes laid underground. And relocating the pipeline system would have been far too expensive, the estimated cost was 120,000 Reichsmarks . So the completed colossal work finally came to Arnswalder Platz in 1934 , where it still stands today.
During the time of National Socialism , numerous people were picked up for deportation from the residential area around Baltenplatz . As part of the “ Stolpersteine campaign ”, the fate of Gustav and Hermann Wegener (father and son), who lived in a no longer existing house directly on Baltenplatz, could be clarified in the years after 1990. They were members of the Saefkow-Jacob-Bästlein organization . The District Assembly had two memorial stones placed on the west side of the square - Petersburger Straße and Weidenweg.
1945 to 1989
The air raids and fighting around Berlin city center at the end of the Second World War ultimately led to the almost complete destruction of the buildings on Baltenplatz. The reconstruction work from autumn 1945 cleared the area and leveled the area. The residents then used every free patch of earth to improve the supply, for example by growing vegetables. After the fatal accident of the Soviet colonel general and first city commandant of Berlin Nikolai Erastowitsch Bersarin , the city administration renamed Baltenplatz to Bersarinplatz on July 31, 1947 . Petersburger Strasse was also named Bersarinstrasse at the same time .
In 1964, the Friedrichshain town hall was added as the first new building on the southwest corner of the square. This purely functional building served as the seat of the administration of the former Friedrichshain district until the fall of the Berlin Wall . A memorial plaque for Nikolai Bersarin, who had been made an honorary citizen of Berlin that year, was placed next to the main entrance . The bronze plaque with a portrait of Bersarin comes from the sculptor Fritz-Georg Schulz .
After the end of the Second World War, it would be almost forty years before the city council could plan and build a new residential area around Bersarinplatz . According to suggestions from the Magdeburg architects Claus Dieter Feldmann, Helga Hüller, Georg Timme and Fritz Ungewitter, five new corner buildings were erected between 1985 and 1987. The basis was the prefabricated residential building type from the 70 series (WBS 70 ) of the Berlin Housing Combine (WBK Berlin), which were adapted to the course of the square. The individual buildings have six storeys, the corner buildings with an oriel vertical have eight storeys directly on the square . All residential buildings were given commercial space on the ground floor. The urban design plans envisaged a straight-line relocation of the lanes and tracks across the square, which, however, should be redesigned as a small, polygonal square in an easterly direction. During the detailed planning it was found (again) that the supply and disposal lines running under the square cannot withstand the new load from the ever-increasing traffic without further construction work. It stayed at the small roundabout.
Bersarinplatz from 1990
After German reunification around 1995 there was a very controversial discussion about renaming or renaming Bersarinplatz . In contrast to Bersarinstrasse , which was renamed Petersburger Strasse, the square retained its name.
The town hall was given up in the 1990s, the district administration moved to new premises at the Samariterstraße underground station . After the merging of districts, the office building now houses the Bürgeramt 2, the registration office 62 and the social welfare office of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district as well as the administration of the "Kindergarten City - self-operated of the Berlin Senate".
In 2006 the buildings on the square were renovated, the facades were given thermal insulation and a uniform coat of paint. The new owners designed the plastered areas of the corner buildings on Bersarinplatz with colored gecko silhouettes. In front of the house on the northwestern edge, a wall drawing indicates the marketing name Geckohaus , which the property owners gave the renovated prefabricated building. All of the former commercial premises are newly rented. Around the square there are restaurants, an optician, a bank branch and other service providers.
Since the district did not have the means to plant the square, in 1995 it started a fundraising campaign together with the Berliner Zeitung to redesign the 4000 m² green space in the middle of Bersarinplatz, with the inclusion of small art objects. A lawn was created that is bordered by yew hedges and rose bushes towards the street. The green area was enlarged to a diameter between 60 and 85 meters by removing the footpath in front of the hedge. In 2006 the landscape planner Marc-Rajan Köppler designed a gravel garden on a voluntary basis with financial support from the district in the center of the square on an area of 500 m². Around 1,800 low-maintenance plants such as buddleia , yarrow and asters , surrounded by a low yew hedge , delight passers-by along with 20 boulders on a gravel surface.
literature
- Wanja Abramowski : The monument on Baltenplatz . Detailed description of the historical development of today's Bersarinplatz. In: mont klamott , monthly of the Friedrichshain history association Hans Kohlhase e. V. , March 2008 edition, pp. 1–19.
- Johanna Sänger: hero cult and love of home. Street names and names of honor in the official memory of the GDR . Chr. Links Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-86153-398-7 .
- Ralf Schmiedecke: Berlin-Friedrichshain. The archive images series . Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2006, ISBN 3-86680-038-X .
- Oliver Reschke: The struggle of the National Socialists for the red Friedrichshain (1925-1933 ) . Trafo-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89626-145-2 .
See also
Web links
-
Bersarinplatz. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near Kaupert )
- Baltenplatz . In: Luise.
- Petersburger Strasse near Luise
- Bersarinstrasse . In: Luise.
- Bersarinplatz . In: District lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
Individual evidence
- ↑ Abramowski: The monument on Baltenplatz ..., p. 2.
- ↑ a b c mont klamott , history association ...
- ↑ the described area on an old Berlin city map from 1895 ( 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.
- ↑ Heath Schlebeck: On 'ne Molle to August. Only Zille was still missing in the breakfast room on Baltenplatz . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 21, 2005.
- ↑ the described area on an old Berlin city map from 1926 ( 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.
- ↑ Database “Sculpture in Berlin” accessed on October 11, 2009
- ^ Architecture of the GDR; Trade journal from 1987. ( 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. Retrieved October 11, 2009
- ^ Architecture of the GDR; Trade journal 10/1988. ( 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. Retrieved October 11, 2009
- ^ Critical presentation of the Bersarin biography in the Russian Museum ( memento of October 31, 2009 in the Internet Archive ); Retrieved October 11, 2009
- ↑ From the prefabricated building to the Geckohaus on www.centacon.com; accessed on January 3, 2018.
- ↑ Heide Schlebeck: A place for art in the roundabout. If many join in, the now dreary traffic island can become an ornament again . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 18, 1995.
- ↑ Sabine Deck Werth: citizens will in: Berliner Zeitung , March 3, 1995th
- ↑ Information on the gravel garden on Bersarinplatz ( memento of the original from February 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on bersarin-platz.com; Retrieved October 11, 2009.
Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 7 " N , 13 ° 27 ′ 11" E