Great zoo

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Great zoo
Coat of arms of Berlin.svg
Park in Berlin
Great zoo
Partial view of the Great Zoo on the Great Star
Basic data
place Berlin
District Zoo
Created as the hunting ground of the electoral court in the 16th century
Surrounding streets
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee ,
Spreeweg,
Ebertstrasse,
Tiergartenstrasse,
Stülerstrasse,
Budapester Strasse
Buildings Victory column, embassy building, bridges
use
User groups Pedestrian traffic , cyclists , leisure
Technical specifications
Parking area 2.1 km²
52 ° 30 '48 "  N , 13 ° 21' 30"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '48 "  N , 13 ° 21' 30"  E
Great Tiergarten (Berlin)
Great zoo
Great zoo, aerial view, general view

The Large zoo in Berlin is centrally located in the district zoo of the district center located park , based on 210  hectares extends (2.1 square kilometers). Several broad streets cut through the park, including the Strasse des 17. Juni ; they cross at the Great Star, in the middle of which stands the Victory Column .

history

Hunting area and baroque park

A first zoo was laid out in another location as early as 1527, namely near the Berlin Palace , west of the Cölln city wall . The small area has been expanded to the west and north through acquisitions since 1530, up to the boundaries of today's zoo and beyond. Wild animals were released and fences prevented them from escaping into the surrounding fields. The area served as a hunting ground for the Electors of Brandenburg . As the city of Berlin grew, the hunting area was gradually reduced.

During the reign of Frederick I , structures emerged that are still visible today. As an extension of the avenue Unter den Linden , a wide aisle was cut through the zoo as a connection between the city palace and Charlottenburg palace, built between 1695 and 1699 . The big star with eight and the Kurfürstenplatz with seven avenues were created. This began the gradual transformation of the game reserve into a forest park intended for recreation.

Frederick the Great did not appreciate the hunt. In 1742 he commissioned the architect Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff to pull down the fences and to transform the zoo into a pleasure park for the population. According to the taste of the Baroque, he had flower beds, borders and trellises planted in geometrical arrangements, labyrinths , water basins and ornamental ponds laid out and sculptures set up. Salons , small squares bordered by hedges or trees, which were furnished with seating, fountains and vases and offered the visitors peace and shade, arose along the avenues . A pheasantry was set up - the nucleus of the zoological garden , which opened in 1844. In the vicinity, two refugees - refugees from the Huguenot Wars or their descendants - have been allowed to set up tents since 1745 and sell refreshments to walkers, which is reminiscent of the street name In den Zelten . On March 6, 1848 , the year of the revolution , a first meeting called for the abolition of state censorship .

Landscaped garden

Tiergarten in 1833

Knobelsdorff's late Baroque forms of the zoo were gradually replaced at the end of the 18th century by the first examples of the new landscape garden ideal: the Bellevue Palace Park (1786–1790) and the Neue Partie with the Rousseau Island , created in 1792 by the court gardener Justus Ehrenreich Sello . In 1818 Peter Joseph Lenné , at that time still a horticultural journeyman in Sanssouci , was commissioned to redesign the zoo. He planned a landscape-like public park , which - in memory of the wars of liberation - should also become a kind of Prussian national park for the moral edification of visitors. King Friedrich Wilhelm III. however, Lenné's "ideal planning" refused. Against the resistance of a hesitant bureaucracy, Lenné implemented a modified planning concept that was implemented between 1833 and 1840. A landscape park based on the English model was created. In doing so, Lenné also took into account important organizational elements of his predecessor Knobelsdorff. Moist forest areas were drained, riding, driving and walking paths were created. Characteristic elements were wide lawns, criss-crossed by small watercourses and covered with groups of trees, lakes with small islands, numerous bridges - for example the Lion Bridge - and avenues. Meadows and clearings were combined into large rooms and lines of sight. Individual jewelry gardening facilities, such as the Luiseninsel and the rose garden , were added.

In the form that Lenné had given it, the park existed almost unchanged until the middle of the 20th century. Smaller changes concerned the furnishing with patriotic monuments (since 1849), including the Siegesallee , a splendid boulevard commissioned and financed by Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1895, which was completed in 1901, and the layout of the Königsplatz (later: Platz der Republik ) with the Victory Column. The park was in royal possession until 1881, after which it was incorporated into Berlin.

Animal sculptures and large-format hunting scenes in bronze adorn the park, numerous statues are reminiscent of celebrities, such as Prussia's popular Queen Luise and her husband, Friedrich Wilhelm III. (The monument was created by the sculptor Friedrich Drake in 1849 , the base reliefs allegorically praise the zoo); other sculptures show Goethe , Lessing , Fontane , Richard Wagner , Lortzing and, together on the so-called “ composer's monument ”, Beethoven , Mozart and Haydn - nicknamed the “musician's stove” due to its idiosyncratic neo-Rococo shape.

Victory Column and Tiergarten Lantern

During the time of National Socialism , the zoo was included in plans for the redesign of Berlin . The Charlottenburger Chaussee (since 1953 Straße des 17. Juni) was widened as an east-west axis from 27 to 53 meters and in this way divides the zoo until today. The Victory Column was moved to the vastly expanded Großer Stern.

World War II and post-war period

During the Second World War , the zoo was badly damaged by Allied air raids . Immediately after the end of the war, the east-west axis served temporarily as a flight runway, and a control post was stationed on the Victory Column. In the post-war period , trees and bushes were burned due to the lack of coal, potatoes and vegetables were grown in the open areas, a temporary use officially approved by the British occupation forces: around 2550 parcels were created. Around 700 of the former 200,000 trees were still standing. The waters were muddy, all bridges were destroyed, the monuments overturned and damaged. Plans to fill the pond and river landscape of the zoo with rubble failed because of the head of the Berlin Main Office for Green Planning, Reinhold Lingner .

Vegetable patch in the Großer Tiergarten near the Victory Column, 1945
Agricultural cultivation in the treeless zoo; in the background the Reichstag , the Soviet Memorial and the Brandenburg Gate , July 1946
Großer Tiergarten in Berlin, Großer Weg, opposite the Rousseau Island: Baumdank monument in memory of the tree donations by German cities after the Second World War for the Großer Tiergarten.

On July 2, 1945, the Berlin magistrate decided to restore the Great Zoo. Reinhold Lingner and Georg Pniower , professors for garden design at Berlin University , presented the first drafts for the redesign in 1946/1947. Both plans were dropped in the course of the division of the city and the reconstruction of the zoo was based on the shape that existed until 1945 according to the comparatively pragmatic plans of the zoo director Wilhelm Alverdes . Alverdes planned a recreational park that was as quiet and spacious as possible. As part of an emergency program , the zoo was reforested between 1949 and 1959. On March 17, 1949, Berlin's Lord Mayor Ernst Reuter planted a linden tree as the first tree . West German cities took on sponsorships, and a total of 250,000 donated young trees came to the city from all over Germany (during the Berlin blockade by plane). According to Alverdes' concept, however, the structurally still existing baroque parts were no longer up-to-date, the typical synthesis of baroque and landscape elements that had shaped the zoo until then was abandoned.

As a relatively natural park landscape, the Tiergarten was an important local recreation area for the West Berliners, who had been separated from their surroundings since 1952 and enclosed by the Wall from 1961.

The closure of the center of Berlin in August 1961 as a transit area for all road traffic between the south and north of West Berlin through the construction of the Berlin Wall resulted in a complete overload of the Great Star. The solution to the traffic problem resulted in the construction of the 1.2 kilometer long relief road in just 44 days . It ran like a snowy trail from the Swiss embassy over the Republic Square and the Strasse des 17. Juni to Lennéstrasse. The name was a functional designation to emphasize the temporary nature of the situation.

On the occasion of the 750th anniversary of Berlin in 1987 , the Carillon was built in the Tiergarten near the congress hall , today's House of World Cultures . The 42 meter high tower with its 68 bells is the fourth largest carillon in the world. The carillon sounds every Sunday in summer.

After 1990

New batch in autumn
On the Luiseninsel, in the background: Monument to Friedrich Wilhelm III.
Long grass meadow

Since the German reunification in 1990 and the determination of Berlin as the federal capital in 1991, some peripheral areas of the zoo have changed significantly: on the streets that border the park to the south, old embassy buildings that had survived decades as ruins have been repaired and others, such as the Nordic embassies , newly established. On the northeast side, the new Federal Chancellery and office building for the everyday work of the members of parliament were built, the Reichstag building as the old and new parliament was given a glass dome, and instead of the wild area from the years of German division , the one for picnics with or without a grill and for ball games was used, there are representative lawns and open spaces.

As a garden monument of the State of Berlin, the entire inventory of the Großer Tiergarten (with the exception of the Großer Stern) has been protected against tampering since 1991 .

The plan to replace the relief road with a north-south tunnel under the zoo with tunnel tubes, also for the connection of a Berlin main train station , aroused opposition from nature conservationists. They feared damage to vegetation due to lowering of the groundwater level and unsuccessfully demanded a construction freeze in court. Between 1996 and 2006 the mass event Loveparade took place on the Straße des 17. Juni along the zoo, with the number of participants (1999: 1.5 million) the ecological pollution of the park increased steadily . After the interest in the Love Parade seemed to wane, the event was canceled in 2005 and held again for the last time in summer 2006. The fan miles on Straße des 17. Juni during the 2006 World Cup and the 2008 European Football Championship were further attractions .

A final, major restoration program concerned the eastern part of the zoo, which, located in the shadow of the wall and separated from the main part of the park by the busy relief road, had been barely used and horticultural for a long time. Since the opening of the Tiergarten Tunnel in spring 2006, north-south traffic has been underground and the relief road has been dismantled. Only one mouth of the Tiergarten tunnel protrudes deep into the park from the south. This made it possible to reunite the parts of the zoo that had been separated by the relief road. In this area, former paths were reconstructed and overgrown areas were redesigned based on Lenné's historical plans. Through trees that had grown wild over decades, dead straight paths could be cut, such as the Floraweg in north-south direction as a visual axis to Floraplatz.

With the merging of six scattered animal sculptures and two lost animal sculptures by the sculptor Rudolf Siemering , the reconstruction of the monument ensemble on Floraplatz was completed in June 2020 .

Goals in the zoo

Pergola in the rose garden

English garden

At the suggestion of the British city ​​commander General Bourne and based on a concept by the landscape architect and head of the zoo administration Wilhelm Alverde , more than 5000 tree donations from King George VI's private gardens were supported . and British citizens redesigned part of the zoo southwest of Bellevue Palace into the English Garden. It was inaugurated on May 25, 1952 in the presence of the British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden , which is why the 40,000 m² facility was named after him for a long time by the Berliners "Garden of Eden". The “tea house” in it was built on the foundations of a former home by Gustaf Gründgens .

Memorials

Memorial to the murder of Rosa Luxemburg
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe murdered under National Socialism in Berlin in the Tiergarten by the Reichstag building : Neuengamme memorial stone

In 1945 the Red Army built a military cemetery designed as a Soviet memorial across Siegesallee on the north side of Charlottenburger Chaussee for those who fell in the conquest of central Berlin . A stele in the Tiergarten near the New Lake commemorates the murder of Karl Liebknecht . On the footpath under the Lichtenstein Bridge on the Landwehr Canal , a memorial commemorates Rosa Luxemburg . The murder of disabled people in the time of National Socialism as part of the Action T4 reminiscent memorial and information place murders for the victims of the Nazi "euthanasia" in the Tiergartenstraße. South of the Reichstag, the memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe murdered under National Socialism was inaugurated in 2012 . The Global Stone project is being built between the Brandenburg Gate and Lennéstrasse . The memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe is located on Ebertstrasse, south of the Brandenburg Gate . In 2008, a memorial to homosexuals persecuted under National Socialism was erected in the southeastern part of the zoo .

Panoramic view from the Victory Column

Paths through the zoo

South - north

Lower lock of the Landwehr Canal in Berlin-Tiergarten.
Sculptures with hunting scenes on Fasanerieallee

West East

Luis monument in the Großer Tiergarten, Großer Weg / Ahornsteig
  • From the Tiergarten S-Bahn station to the Brandenburg Gate: From Straße des 17. Juni, near the Tiergarten S-Bahn station, the Große Weg, a wide footpath, leads to the Großer Tiergarten. On the way are the memorial stele for Karl Liebknecht at the Neuer See and the hunting sculptures at the intersection with the Fasanerieallee. Then the Hofjägerallee and the Sternallee footpath are crossed. The Große Weg then runs between Rousseau Island and the Baumdank monument (thanks to the cities that donated trees to the reforestation of the deforested Großer Tiergarten after the Second World War). From the Großer Weg, the Ahornsteig branches off across the Luiseninsel with the white statue of Queen Luise . The Ahornsteig then crosses the Bellevueallee pedestrian promenade, leads over the Tiergarten Spreebogen tunnel and runs to the Brandenburg Gate.

literature

- sorted alphabetically by author -

  • Klaus von Krosigk : The Berlin Tiergarten . Berlin 2001. ISBN 3-8148-0030-3 .
  • Klaus von Krosigk: The great zoo in the mirror of painting and graphics. 200 years of Prussian cultural history in the service of monument preservation . In: Die Gartenkunst  15 (2/2003), pp. 241–258.
  • Susanne Twardawa : The Tiergarten in Berlin: adventure is around the corner . Motzbuch, Berlin 2006. ISBN 3-935790-08-2 .
  • Folkwin Wendland: The Great Zoo in Berlin - Its history and development over five centuries . Gebrüder Mann Verlag, 1993. ISBN 3-7861-1631-8 .
  • Folkwin Wendland, Gustav Wörner, Rose Wörner : The Berlin Tiergarten, past and future . Kulturbuch-Verlag. Berlin 1986.

Web links

Commons : Großer Tiergarten  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Großer Tiergarten  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. Folkwin Wendland: The Great Tiergarten in Berlin - Its history and development in five centuries , footnote on page 272, see: Literature .
  2. ^ FIS broker map display monument map Berlin - Großer Tiergarten
  3. https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/aktuell/pressebox/archiv_volltext.shtml?arch_2006/nachricht6897.html
  4. Stadtleben aktuell: 60 years of the English Garden and the Berlin Concert Summer 2012. ( Memento of the original from July 3, 2016 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. At: top10berlin on May 25, 2012  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blog.top10berlin.de
  5. ^ History of the steppe garden in the Berlin zoo. Quoted from Der Berliner Tiergarten - Past and Future , pp. 34–62, Ed .: Landesdenkmalamt Berlin: Contributions to the preservation of monuments , No. 9, Berlin 1996
  6. ^ Karen Noetzel: With the Heimatverein Tiergarten through the English Garden . In: Berliner Woche , May 5, 2014
  7. Franziska Felber: The zoo: "Like a British country seat" . In: Der Tagesspiegel , August 10, 2011
  8. Overview map in the Great Tiergarten in Berlin: District around the New Lake
  9. Overview map in the Great Tiergarten in Berlin: Quartier Rousseau-Insel and Luiseninsel.