Café octagon
Café Achteck is a joking name for certain public urinals in Berlin . These latrines consist of seven green painted cast-iron wall segments and form an octagonal plan. The eighth wall is missing and forms the entrance, where a screen in front of at least three segments forms a privacy screen. The design for these lavatories came from the city planner Carl Theodor Rospatt in 1878. In 1920 there were about 142 of these urinals in Greater Berlin . Even today, some preserved specimens can still be found in the cityscape. Inside, they offer standing room for seven male people.
history
The predecessor types, whose installation was arranged by the then police chief Guido von Madai at the beginning of the 1870s and which had to give way to the Café Achteck, carried the colloquial name Madai Temple . The emerging competition resulted in an octagonal but more rounded model from the Asten and Hirschberg group of entrepreneurs in 1889 , which the Berliners then called the rotunda because of its similarity to buildings of the same name .
The first two systems of the Rospatt type were set up in 1879 on Weddingplatz and Arminiusplatz (town hall forecourt in Moabit ). The type officially called Waidmannslust was soon adopted by the neighboring cities or municipalities of Berlin. These standing urinals with flushing water were a pure male domain . The outer walls consist of ornamentally decorated cast iron plates, and an eight-sided ventilation hood serves as the roof crown. The entrance is covered by a three-sided protective wall. Only around 1900 were there women's toilets on the squares. The system at Stephanplatz in Stephankiez was set up in 1899 based on a design from 1878.
Until 1997, all systems were in the area of responsibility of BSR , after that the street furniture supplier Wall AG . Since the beginning of the 1990s, a few copies have been renovated and are back in operation, including the system at Stephanplatz since 2000. The renovation of a Café Achteck in accordance with listed buildings cost around 250,000 marks . Some facilities were rebuilt and two separate toilets for both sexes were set up in the old iron structure.
On the Gendarmenmarkt
On the Rüdesheimer Platz
In the Stephankiez
Locations
Today there are still more than 30 institutions, some of which are no longer in their original locations.
- Corner of Chamissoplatz / Arndtstraße in Kreuzberg , ( location )
- Corner of Fellbacher Platz / Heinsestraße in Hermsdorf , ( location , converted for both sexes)
- Gendarmenmarkt , corner of Französische Straße / Markgrafenstraße in Mitte , ( location , converted for both sexes)
- Corner of Karl-Marx-Straße / Kirchhofstraße in Neukölln , ( location )
- Leuthener Platz , corner of Leuthener Straße / Naumannstraße in Schöneberg , ( location )
- Beijing Square in Wedding , ( location )
- Corner of Rüdesheimer Platz / Rüdesheimer Strasse in Wilmersdorf , ( location , converted for both sexes)
- Senefelderplatz , corner of Schönhauser Allee / Metzer Straße in Prenzlauer Berg , ( location )
- Stephanplatz, corner of Stephanstraße / Havelberger Straße in Moabiter Stephankiez , ( location )
- Unionplatz, corner of Siemensstrasse / Oldenburger Strasse in Moabit, ( location )
- Corner of Huttenstrasse / Wiebestrasse in Moabit, ( location , closed)
- Alt-Mariendorf underground station , corner of Friedenstraße / Mariendorfer Damm in Tempelhof , ( location ,Entry in the Berlin State Monument List )
- Corner of Schloßstraße / Berliner Straße, near Alt-Tegel underground station in Tegel , ( location )
- Corner of Malplaquetstraße / Utrecht Straße in Wedding , ( location , former location, now cleared)
literature
- Hilmar Bärthel: Temple made of cast iron . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 11, 2000, ISSN 0944-5560 , p. 26–35 ( luise-berlin.de ).
Web links
- Historic Berlin urinals
- Michael Hollenbach: Café Achteck - The history of public lavatories in German cities . Documentation by Deutschlandradio , August 13, 2004
Map with all coordinates: