great star

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Big Star (disambiguation) .

great star
Place in Berlin
Big star with victory column
Basic data
place	Berlin
District	Zoo
Created	around 1698
Newly designed	1938
Confluent streets	Strasse des 17. Juni , Altonaer Strasse, Spreeweg, Hofjägerallee
Buildings	Victory Column
use
User groups	Pedestrians , cyclists , cars
Space design	Hofjäger Hemmrich, General Building Inspector Speer

The Big Star is the central square in the Big Tiergarten in the Tiergarten part of Berlin's Mitte district .

history

The place was under Elector Friedrich III. (from 1701 Friedrich I , King in Prussia ) created around 1698 by the court hunter Hemmrich as a hunting star . From 1742 onwards, as part of the redesign of the zoo by Knobelsdorff and from 1833 to 1840 by Peter Joseph Lenné , the Großer Stern was expanded into a representative square. From the middle of the 18th to the beginning of the 19th century, there was a group of sandstone statues of ancient gods called The Puppets .

Today's expansion

Hubertusbrunnen by Cuno von Uechtritz-Steinkirch am Großer Stern, demolished in 1938 in order to redesign it

Today several of the city's major traffic axes meet here:

• the Strasse des 17. Juni
  • to the west over Ernst-Reuter-Platz , as Bismarckstraße or Kaiserdamm to Theodor-Heuss-Platz and further as Heerstraße
  • to the east over the Brandenburg Gate at Pariser Platz and the Unter den Linden boulevard to the Schlossbrücke at the Berlin Cathedral
• the Altona road to the northwest over the Hansa place to Gotzkowskybrücke
• the Spreeweg to the northeast to Bellevue Palace at the Luther Bridge
• the Hofjägerallee south over the Lützowplatz and Nollendorfplatz to Winterfeldtplatz

The Big Star is designed as a large, multi-lane spiral roundabout that is used by around 180,000 cars every day.

In the middle of the square stands the Victory Column with the gold -plated bronze sculpture of Victoria with a laurel wreath called Goldelse by the Berliners . The square got its current appearance in 1938. Its diameter was greatly enlarged and the Victory Column was moved here from Königsplatz, today's Republic Square, directly in front of the Reichstag building , adding a column drum - also for reasons of proportion. Towards the Victory Column again, only now in the direction of the Großer Stern, the Siegesallee , which was relocated to the Große Sternallee from May 1938, ran . The monuments of the winners from 1864–1871, which had previously surrounded the Victory Column, were again placed in a semicircle: Bismarck National Monument , Albrecht von Roon and Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke . The inauguration of the ensemble took place on April 20, 1939, Hitler's 50th birthday, on which a gigantic military parade also rolled over the Great Star.

• Monuments at the Big Star
• 

  Roon memorial by Harro Magnussen , 1904

• 

  Bismarck National Monument by Reinhold Begas, 1901

• 

  Moltke memorial by Joseph Uphues , 1904

Special events

• Numerous major events took place on the area of ​​the Großer Stern, such as the final rallies of the Love Parade between 1996 and 2003 and 2006 and the Fan Fest Berlin on the occasion of the 2006 World Cup , where every game in the tournament was broadcast on several large screens. The so-called ' fan mile ' counted up to 700,000 visitors every day.
• In 2005 the Live 8 music event took place here with around 100,000 spectators.
• Since 1987, the Berlin Marathon has been held every year in September over the square, in which thousands of runners, inline skaters and racing wheelchair users regularly take part. The course has been the center of the XRace course , a half marathon for inline skaters , since 2002 .
• In July 2008, the then US presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a speech at the Victory Column to an audience of around 200,000.
• On June 26, 2018, Greenpeace activists distributed 3,500 liters of yellow paint on the pavement to demonstrate for the coal phase-out . As a result, the road had to be cleaned at great expense. The costs for the removal and disposal of the paint amounted to 14,000 euros and had to be borne by Greenpeace. It used more than 135,000 liters of water. The criminal investigation of the crime is still ongoing.
• On October 7, 2019, Extinction Rebellion activists blocked access to the Great Star.

panorama

and display information about the image

All-round view from the Victory Column - the streets running towards the Großer Stern
From left: View to the east over south to northeast
Brandenburg Gate - Große Sternallee - Hofjägerallee - Ernst-Reuter-Platz - Altonaer Straße - Spreeweg

literature

• Hans Heuser : The redesign of the big star in the Berlin zoo . In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung , 60 (1940), pp. 157–166.

Web links

• Great star. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
• Entry in the Berlin State Monument List

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Greenpeace distributes 3500 liters of yellow paint on the Big Star . In: Berliner Morgenpost . ( Morgenpost.de [accessed June 29, 2018]).
2. ↑ Greenpeace is supposed to pay 15,000 euros for cleaning. Retrieved June 29, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Gelber Stern BSR invoices Greenpeace for cleaning costs of 14,000 euros. Retrieved October 4, 2018 . 
4. ^ Protest in Berlin: Extinction Rebellion paralyzes Big Star. In: welt.de . October 7, 2019, accessed October 7, 2019 . 
5. ↑ Extinction Rebellion in Berlin: Protestors paralyze Big Star. In: welt.de . October 7, 2019, accessed October 7, 2019 . 

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 52 ″  N , 13 ° 21 ′ 2 ″  E