City West (Berlin)

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The part of Berlin around Kurfürstendamm , Breitscheidplatz and Tauentzienstrasse in the districts of Charlottenburg , Schöneberg , Wilmersdorf and Tiergarten is referred to as City West ( known as the New West and the Zooviertel in the period before the Second World War ) . It is one of several main business centers in the city, which was the most important business center in West Berlin during the time of the division of Germany .

location

City West covers an area of ​​over 635  hectares and stretches from Stuttgarter Platz to Urania and from Tiergarten to Lietzenburger Straße with a variety of uses: as a shopping and entertainment mile, research center, cultural location, residential area and trading center.

history

New west

The New West or the Zooviertel developed during the imperial era from around 1895 as a counterpart to the old city center in the Mitte district and as the successor to the Old West (1860–1890) southwest of Potsdamer Platz, into a business and entertainment center that was accessible via the the border of the city of Berlin running here into the cities of Charlottenburg, Berlin-Schöneberg and Berlin-Wilmersdorf, which were independent until 1920. In addition to the Kaufhaus des Westens and the Café des Westens , important cultural institutions such as the Theater des Westens emerged .

Before that, the general procession had been laid out until 1880 , a generously laid-out sequence of streets and squares in memory of the Napoleonic Wars of Liberation, which began in Charlottenburg at what was then Auguste-Viktoria-Platz and continued across Tauentzienstrasse and Wittenbergplatz in Schöneberg to Kreuzberg and Rixdorf leads. In 1882 the area was connected to the rail network of the imperial city of Berlin with the Zoologischer Garten station . The eponymous zoological garden was opened in 1844 and is therefore the oldest zoo in Germany and still the most species-rich in the world.

During the Weimar Republic , the New West became a synonym for the “ Golden Twenties ”.

In the course of the Second World War there was severe damage , especially in the eastern part of Charlottenburg around the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and in Schöneberg .

Post-war years

After the Second World War, the area around the Bahnhof Zoo developed into the center of West Berlin as a result of the division of Berlin into a four-sector city during the Cold War . Vacant lots left by the Allied air raids in World War II were used to modernize the cityscape and make it more car-friendly, for example on the Knie , renamed Ernst-Reuter-Platz , where the first high-rise buildings in West Berlin were built in the 1950s the post-war years .

Probably the best-known example of the period of reconstruction is the ruin of the old Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the center of City West, which was preserved as a war memorial and was supplemented in 1961 by Egon Eiermann with modern new buildings, a chapel and a bell tower.

After the State Opera Unter den Linden in East Berlin was de facto separated from West Berlin , the new building of the Deutsche Oper was opened in 1961 on the site of the smaller pre-war building destroyed in 1943 during World War II.

From 1963  the  Europa-Center was built on  Breitscheidplatz  as an office and commercial building  in place of the Romanesque Café, which was also destroyed during the war  . The Europa-Center was to represent a landmark of the reconstruction and emphasize  the affiliation of West Berlin to the Federal Republic and the western world through the analogy to the  Kö-Center in  Düsseldorf  and the  Bonn-Center  in  Bonn . Another high-rise building was built on Kurfürstendamm as Kudamm-Karee , which integrated the preserved stages of the comedy and theater on Kurfürstendamm into the new building.

In the 1960s, the area was the scene of the West German movement of 68 , which reached its peak after the student Benno Ohnesorg was shot dead by the police officer Karl-Heinz Kurras for no apparent reason during the demonstration on June 2, 1967 on the occasion of Shah  Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's visit  had been. The legendary Commune I around Rainer Langhans recently moved into an empty old building on Stuttgarter Platz and tried out new ways of life, which the bourgeois tabloid press followed with disgust.

reunion

Refurbished bikini house on Breitscheidplatz , 2014

After German reunification , the center effect temporarily took a back seat, given the development of the historical center of the united city in the Mitte district , to which the north-eastern part of City West has belonged since 2001. Nevertheless, City West was able to maintain its status as an important shopping and business district in the federal capital, alongside Alexanderplatz , the Unter den Linden / Friedrichstrasse area and Potsdamer Platz . The promenade on Kurfürstendamm and Tauentzienstrasse with the largest department store in continental Europe , the KaDeWe , as well as numerous exclusive shops also contribute to this.

Since the 2010s, City West has again come into the focus of urban developers and investors. Examples of this are the 119-meter-high zoo window on Breitscheidplatz , which was completed in 2012 and which houses the luxury Waldorf Astoria Berlin hotel , and the neighboring - equally high - Upper West , which was completed in 2017.

Also on Breitscheidplatz, the Bikini House with the Zoo Palast cinema was extensively renovated between 2010 and 2014 . Further extensive investments are planned in the vicinity. Numerous “building sins” of the post-war years have now been eliminated, such as the Schimmelpfeng-Haus or the Alte Ku'damm-Eck .

In 2012, the exhibition center for photography C / O Berlin moved to the renovated Amerika Haus in the immediate vicinity of the Zoo train station. The station itself has been extensively renovated and modernized since 2015 in order to free it from the dirty image of the 1980s.

Asiatown "Canton Street"

The area around  Kantstrasse has been  developing into a " Chinatown " or "Asiatown" in the west of Berlin for many years , with many Asian residents, shops, gastronomic and cultural offers. There was already a small Chinese diaspora here at the beginning of the 20th century, and the Chinese embassy was not far from Kurfürstendamm at the time.

This tradition was followed up after the Second World War. Over three percent of the population of Charlottenburg comes from East Asia , and according to unofficial estimates, over 8,000 Chinese live in Berlin. The section between  Savignyplatz  and  Wilmersdorfer Straße  is  also referred to as the “Canton Road” in reference to the Chinese province of Guangdong .

Cultural institutions

Theaters and venues

Cultural centers

Museums and exhibition rooms

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. "Old West" was once called the area. From 1860 to 1890 the area was considered the “finest residential area in Berlin”, valued by wealthy people and art lovers.
  2. ^ History of City West . At Berlin.de
  3. Upper West is growing up.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.berliner-woche.de   In: Berliner Woche , July 31, 2013
  4. J. Fahrun, T. Fülling and I. Jürgens: How the railway wants to modernize the Zoo station from 2015. In: Berliner Morgenpost , January 23, 2014, accessed on July 12, 2017
  5. Berlin's Chinatown. In: Der Tagesspiegel , June 17, 2013, accessed on July 12, 2017
  6. How Kantstrasse became "Kantonstrasse". In: Berliner Morgenpost , December 9, 2010, accessed on July 12, 2017

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 17 ″  N , 13 ° 20 ′ 7 ″  E