Bundesallee (Berlin)

Bundesallee until 1950: Kaiserallee
Street in Berlin
The Church of the Good Shepherd at the confluence of Schmiljanstrasse and Bundesallee at Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz
Basic data
place	Berlin
District	Wilmersdorf , Friedenau
Created	1872-1874
Newly designed	1960s
Hist. Names	Kaiserstraße, Kaiserallee
Connecting roads	Joachimsthaler Straße (north) , Schloßstraße (south)
Cross streets	(Selection) Spichernstrasse , Hohenzollerndamm , Nachodstrasse , Berliner Strasse , Badensche Strasse , Detmolder Strasse , Wexstrasse , Südwestkorso , Wiesbadener Strasse , Schmiljanstrasse , Rheinstrasse
Places	Friedrich-Hollaender-Platz , Bundesplatz , Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz , Walther-Schreiber-Platz
Buildings	Bundeshaus , Church of the Good Shepherd
use
User groups	Pedestrian traffic , bicycle traffic , car traffic , public transport
Technical specifications
Street length	3700 meters

The Bundesallee (until 1950: Kaiserallee ) is a 3.7 kilometer long street in the Berlin districts of Wilmersdorf and Friedenau , which, as the main traffic axis , connects western Berlin city center with the southwestern parts of the city.

course

The Federal Avenue runs north-south from the border with the district of Charlottenburg , where she from the Schaperstraße the Joachimsthalerstrasse continues. The Hohenzollerndamm and Nachodstrasse cross at the level of Spichernstrasse and form the center of the Wilmersdorfer “Carstenn figure” , an urban development feature in which the Bundesallee forms the center of a circulating street. This oval street is captured by four squares ( Fasanen- , Nürnberger , Prager and Nikolsburger Platz ). Passing Trautenaustrasse and Güntzelstrasse , the main lanes of Bundesallee in the Wilmersdorfer Tunnel cross under Berliner and Badensche Strasse in order to return to normal street level at the Wilmersdorf Park . After the confluence of Hildegardstrasse and Durlacher Strasse , the main lanes now cross under Bundesplatz and in Friedenau also come back to normal level at Ortrudstrasse . Behind Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz, the road bends slightly, only to end at Walther-Schreiber-Platz on the border with Steglitz after crossing Stubenrauch- / Handjerystraße (which here represent the semicircular street of the Friedenauer “Carstenn figure” ) . Here the Bundesallee joins the Rheinstrasse and the Schloßstrasse at the so-called “Rheineck” .

The following underground stations on the U9 line are located directly on or under Bundesallee:

• Spichernstrasse ,
• Güntzelstrasse ,
• Berliner Straße (crossing with the U7 line ),
• Bundesplatz (crossing with the Ringbahn ),
• Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz and
• Walther-Schreiber-Platz .

history

Kaiserstrasse

The street was laid out between 1872 and 1874 under the name Kaiserstraße . Their main task was to connect the then still independent city of Charlottenburg with the still undeveloped parcels in Wilmersdorf and the rapidly growing villa colony Groß-Lichterfelde . The parcels in Wilmersdorf like the villa colony were developed by the Hamburg entrepreneur Johann Anton Wilhelm von Carstenn , who also financed the construction of the road. The full length of the street was completed by 1877. However, the Kaiserstraße did not begin at the district boundary, but continued a little further to the northeast to Tauentzienstrasse .

Kaiserallee

The southern section of the imperial road from the border was on March 16, 1888, exactly one week after the death of Emperor I. Wilhelm , in Kaiserallee renamed. The northern section, however, was named Rankestrasse . In July 1890, the Berlin Steam Tram Consortium opened the first tram line through Kaiserallee from Zoologischer Garten station to Steglitz. The Kaiserallee quickly received the desired status of a north-south axis in the western Berlin area. In 1945, the Wilmersdorf district court had its seat briefly at Kaiserallee 35 .

The most striking building on Kaiserallee was the Be-Ba-Palast Atrium (Bundesallee 178/179) completed in 1927 , based on the designs by Friedrich Lipp and based on the model of the Roman Coliseum . The client was the cinema owner Herbert Polke, who opened a large cinema with the atrium with 2025 seats. It had a stage, an orchestra pit and a Welte cinema organ . The seating was made of mahogany wood and covered with cardinal red fabric, and there was an illuminated dome over the hall. During the Allied air raids in 1943, the building was badly damaged by bombs and burned down. The lower part of the facade was left standing, but the ruin was removed in 1953.

The children's novel, as well as the film Emil and the Detectives based on it, are set mainly in the Kaiserallee on the corner of Trautenaustraße and in the Café Josty there , where the author Erich Kästner also wrote the novel. Today there is a gas station there.

Bundesallee

Volksparksteg from 1971. The cable-stayed bridge connects the Volkspark Wilmersdorf over the Bundesallee

The war damage was considerable. In the section between Spichernstrasse and Wilhelmsaue , almost all the houses were in ruins. On the occasion of the inauguration of the Bundestag building , Kaiserallee was renamed Bundesallee on July 18, 1950 between Ranke and Spichernstrasse by the then Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer . From its inauguration until 1990, the Bundeshaus housed the representatives of the Federal Government in Berlin.

In the 1960s, the federal avenue was expanded in sections similar to a motorway , with the exception of the tram . Examples of this are the two tunnels at Bundesplatz and under Berliner Strasse. In this context, the street layout of the Bundesallee at Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz was redesigned in such a way that the original anger shape of the square was created by laying the Bundesallee tangentially with a "kink" at the southern end (in front of the portal of the neo-Gothic style Protestant church Zum Guten Shepherds ) has been lost. Walther-Schreiber-Platz was also redesigned to meet the new traffic requirements. For this reason, the development on the edge of the Bundesallee was kept strikingly unadorned during the reconstruction.

Line G (today: Line U9 ) of the Berlin U-Bahn was laid out in two sections and crosses the entire length of the Bundesallee. The opening of the underground line from the north to the Spichernstraße station took place on August 28, 1961, and the extension to the Walther-Schreiber-Platz underground station was put into operation on January 29, 1971.

In the state it was created in the 1960s, the Bundesallee is still of considerable importance for inner-city traffic, and a move away from the car-friendly city is taking place relatively slowly, for example through the "Quartier Bundesallee" (Bundesallee corner Nachodstrasse), which was completed by 2018 .

Prominent residents of Bundesallee

Memorial plaque on the house at Bundesallee 79

• The entrepreneur James Simon lived from 1927 to 1932 at Bundesallee 25 (corner of Trautenaustraße). Berlin owes the patron and sponsor u. a. the bust of Nefertiti (memorial plaque).
• The actress Marlene Dietrich lived in 1929 at Bundesallee 54 (memorial plaque),
• the writer Georg Hermann lived at Bundesallee 68 and 108,
• the Berlin theater critic Friedrich Luft lived at Bundesallee 74,
• the satirist and writer Kurt Tucholsky lived at Bundesallee 79,
• the resistance fighter Edith Wolff , who is commemorated by a plaque at Bundesallee 79.

literature

• Gudrun Blankenburg: Friedenau - artist's place and idyllic residential area. The history of a Berlin district . Frieling, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-8280-2350-9 (with register and enclosed monument map)
• Christel and Heinz Blumensath: The other Friedenau - walks through 125 years of art, literature and building history . District Office Schöneberg, Berlin 1996
• Alfred Bürkner: Friedenau - streets, houses, people . Stapp-Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-87776-065-1
• Hermann Ebling: Friedenau - From the life of a rural community, 1871-1924 . Zinsmeister and Grass, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-9801309-0-8 .
• Hermann Ebling, Evelyn Weissberg: Friedenau tells: Stories from a Berlin suburb - 1871 to 1914 , edition Friedenauer Brücke, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-9811242-1-7 .
• Stefan Eggert: Walks in Schöneberg. Berlin reminiscences. Volume 78. Haude & Spener, Berlin 1997. ISBN 3-7759-0419-0
• Peter Lemburg, Gabriele Schulz, Dietrich Worbs: Monuments in Berlin, Schöneberg district, Friedenau district. Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany . Ed. v. Landesdenkmalamt Berlin and from the Schöneberg district office of Berlin. Willmuth Arenhövel, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-922912-52-4 .

Web links

Commons : Bundesallee  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Bundesallee. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  • Kaiserallee . In: Luise.
• Berlin address books from 1799 to 1943 (Central and State Library Berlin)
• The original Carstenn figure in the district lexicon at berlin.de

References and comments

1. ^ Wolfgang Kramer, Uwe Kerl: Berlin steam tram 1886–1889 (part 2) . In: Berliner Verkehrsblätter . Volume 2, 2012, p. 19-24 .
2. ^ The previously existing Bundesallee in Berlin-Westend (after the states of the North German Confederation ) was therefore renamed Länderallee on July 31, 1950 . See: Bundesallee . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein .

Coordinates: 52 ° 28 ′ 43 "  N , 13 ° 19 ′ 42"  E