Cité Foch

Avenue Charles de Gaulle in the Cité Foch

The Cité Foch is a residential area in the Berlin district of Wittenau in the Reinickendorf district . The settlement was essentially built between 1952 and 1976 as a residential area for the French armed forces in Berlin and their relatives. It is limited to the north by the Packereigraben , to the west by the Steinbergpark , to the south by the tracks of the Tegel – Friedrichsfelde industrial railway and to the east by Jean-Jaurès-Strasse and Cyclopstrasse .

history

The Cité Foch (initially also Cité Tucoulou ) had developed over time into the largest of the French residential areas. On around 47  hectares there were 785 apartments (80 buildings), the highest number of residents reached the settlement in 1991 with 2,600 people. Originally the Cyclop machine factory was located here , whose warehouse was moved into by French units as a makeshift in August 1945 and was named "Camp Foch" (after Ferdinand Foch , a French marshal in World War I ). As there were also military facilities on the site, the Cité Foch was not open to the public.

Location of Cité Foch as a district of Wittenau

After German reunification , the property fell to the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks (BImA). After the withdrawal of the French , the Federal Intelligence Service used the antenna mast and an administration building on Rue Montesquieu for a while . In the early 2000s the Cité Foch threatened to become a ghost town. The apartments were difficult to rent because they were too big for new tenants. In accordance with the construction period, they were poorly cut, ailing and mostly only limited-term rental contracts were offered. Only after a renovation by the BImA around 2000 did the situation improve. Between 2007 and 2010, the vacancy rate was reduced from 33 to 7%.

Facilities in the Cité Foch

Overgrown shopping center

• Collège Voltaire at 33 avenue Charles de Gaulle - The Collège Voltaire (French school abroad) moved to Tiergarten in 2010 . So that the now vacant school building in the Cité Foch does not become neglected, a pilot project for " guarding by living " based on the Dutch "Antikraak" model was set up here.
• Victor Hugo primary school at 4 Place Molière with sports hall, sports field and canteen (“Restaurant Scolaire”). The school renamed Romain-Rolland-Gymnasium is a high school with a French focus.
• Saint-Exupéry preschool at Place-Molière 1 was taken over by the education authority as a branch of the Münchhausen elementary school.
• Indoor swimming pool at 8 Rue Georges Vallerey (built: 1972) - closed since 2002. According to BImA, renovation is unlikely, so the bathroom should be demolished.
• A large shopping center with a cinema, culture and health center at 9 Avenue Charles-de-Gaulle, 10/14 - was sold to a private investor in 1998, had been empty since 2006 and was in a neglected state. The building was completely demolished in the summer of 2016 and work ended in November of the same year. New houses with around 400 apartments are to be built on the area (as of 2016).
• The Catholic Church Ste.-Geneviève next to the former shopping center was desecrated and has also been demolished.
• Center Talma youth center at Hermsdorfer Straße 18a became a sports and leisure facility.

Urban situation

From a planning point of view, the Cité Foch, like other former Berlin residential areas of the Western Allies, today suffers from the fact that they were not built using German planning law . Since there was no division of parcels during the development , the streets and green spaces in the settlement are not public, but private property. Most of the supply and disposal systems are located outside of the country's roads. When developing the buildings, little consideration was given to possible construction loads , as there was no difference between public and private properties.

In the Cité Foch in particular, there is also the problem that the civil facilities that are concentrated here were planned with the French military in mind and, since the troops withdrew, do not necessarily correspond to the actual local needs. At that time, the approval of these facilities was not subject to German planning law. For example, the immission control regulations were not observed with regard to the protective distances between residential buildings and surrounding industrial buildings. This affects a large part of the southern residential area around Hermsdorfer Straße 70 (a company according to Seveso II directive ), where a safety distance of 200 meters should actually be observed.

For the area south of the Packereigraben, bounded by the property areas Jean-Jaurès-Straße 3/7, 7a and 21, Hermsdorfer Straße 55, the property areas Hermsdorfer Straße 56-69 and east of the Steinbergpark (Rosentreterbecken) and a section of the Jean-Jaurès Straße and Hermsdorfer Straße in the Reinickendorf district, Wittenau and Waidmannslust districts (part of the Cité Foch), the development plan XX-277a was drawn up in 2007 (supplemented in 2012). This created the legal planning basis for this location in the district and the streets were dedicated . The development plan XX-277a was introduced in order to "secure the existing residential buildings in terms of planning law, to create the planning law requirements for structural redensification and green areas and to enable the state of Berlin to take over the existing streets".

See also

• List of allied institutions in the western sectors of Berlin

literature

• Ulrike Wahlich, Dorothea Führe, Ingolf Wernicke: The French in Berlin . Occupying power, protecting power, partner for Europe. Ed .: District Office Reinickendorf of Berlin. Jaron Verlag, 2002, ISBN 978-3-932202-12-4 .

Web links

Commons : Cité Foch  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Development plan XX-277a Cité Foch
• Pictures from the mall
• Pictures from the Franzosenbad
• The citizens' initiative for the Cité Foche (Refugee Initiative Cité-Foche)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rainer W. During: Bonjour Tristesse: The Cité Foch . In: Der Tagesspiegel . August 2, 2010 ( online ).
2. ↑ Ulrich Paul: Too big, too expensive, too unattractive . In: Berliner Zeitung . May 16, 2008 ( online ).
3. ↑ Christian Bartlau: In the Houses of Others . In: Berliner Zeitung . July 14, 2012 ( online ).
4. ^ Cité Foch in Berlin ailing shopping center is being demolished , on tagesspiegel.de
5. ↑ Development plan XX-277a - Cité Foch in Berlin-Reinickendorf
6. ↑ Reasons for the development plan XX-277a ( Memento of the original from April 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Coordinates: 52 ° 36 ′ 6 ″  N , 13 ° 19 ′ 13 ″  E