Grunewald (forest)
The Grunewald is a forest area of around 3000 hectares in the western Berlin districts of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Steglitz-Zehlendorf . The forest is the namesake of the villa colony, the district of Grunewald , the S-Bahn station Grunewald and the local forest office Grunewald of the Berlin Forests .
To the west, the Grunewald forest is bounded by the Havel . It is traversed by a chain of smaller lakes, the Grunewaldseenkette named after it . The largest of these are the Grunewaldsee , the Schlachtensee and the Krumme Lanke . Located on the Havel is the Grunewald Tower on the Karlsberg .
The old Grunewald-Forst cemetery and the 120.1 m above sea level are also located on the Grunewald site . NHN - after the Arkenberge - second highest elevation in Berlin: the Teufelsberg heaped from rubble from the Second World War .
Ice Age, Sand and Pine
Geologically, the Grunewald belongs to the Berlin-Brandenburg landscape of Teltow , the name of which goes back to the original term "Telte" for the Bäkeflow . From a geomorphological point of view, the Teltow is a typical plate north of the Brandenburg ice edge . It was formed a little more than 20,000 years ago in the Vistula Ice Age . For the most part, it is occupied by flat undulating ground moraine surfaces. The special thing about the Grunewald is that the marl boulder typical of ground moraines is largely missing and therefore older deposits, meltwater sands from the advancing phase of the inland ice , are on the surface of the earth. In the Grunewald they are also extraordinarily powerful (20 meters and more) and over a large area disturbed by the pressure of the advancing ice ( compression moraine , see map).
The landscape of the Grunewald is cut through by several glacial gullies - for example the Grunewald chain of lakes - which give the area a very lively relief by Berlin standards.
In the post-glacial period, brown earths developed on the sands , which mostly have features of podsolisation and are only poorly productive. The dry sandy soils typical of the Teltow shape the character of the Grunewald today.
The trees are predominantly made up of pines (56%) and oaks (26%), with a few birch and beech trees . The forest is used for timber , but its importance as a recreational area and the consideration of the ecological function is increasing. The composition of the vegetation has changed since it was used for forestry in the Middle Ages , so the Grunewald was originally a mixed forest with little pine trees .
history
overview
In the forest area initially called Teltower Heide or Spandower Heide , a hunting lodge was built for the Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg in 1542 by the builder Caspar Theiss . It was named the Green Forest and gave its name to the later forest. From then until 1904 the Grunewald was mainly used as a stately hunting area and from 1849 to 1904 it was enclosed by a game fence from Wannsee to Pichelsberg .
After the completion of the Havelchaussee and with the transport connection via the Grunewald train station on the Wetzlarer Bahn that cut through the Grunewald in 1879, the Grunewald developed into a local recreation area in Berlin. Some areas of the Grunewald were rededicated for settlement construction in the following years, for example the villa colony of the same name Grunewald in 1889 and the Eichkamp settlement in 1919. Other parts that originally belonged to the Spandauer Heide, such as the Murellenberge, Murellenschlucht and Schanzenwald , were after Construction of the Grunewald racecourse 1907–1909 on today's Olympic site and Heerstraße gradually cut off from Grunewald in 1910.
The Berlin street seller Im Grunewald, there is a wood auction in Grunewald , the text of which was written by Otto Teich in 1890, commemorates the clearing actions at the end of the 19th century .
Shield horn
In the 1880s, the Schildhorn headland on the east bank of the Havel and the neighboring restaurants on the Jürgenlanke were regarded as the "favorite destination of Berlin's Sunday excursionists". The Schildhorn is also a symbol of the foundation of the Mark Brandenburg . The Schildhorn legend , according to which the Slav prince Jaxa von Köpenick is said to have saved himself in 1157 while fleeing from Albrecht the Bear through the Havel to the headland, was artistically implemented by Friedrich August Stüler in the Schildhorn monument in 1845 using pencil sketches by Friedrich Wilhelm IV . Wilhelm Schwartz wrote in 1869 in the style of the time:
"The German history of our country begins on the Schildhorn, the foundation for the Mark Brandenburg was laid on the Schildhorn, so the legend calls out to us, and the patriotic and poetic feeling gladly believes its sounds."
Purchase in 1915 in the permanent forest contract
With the permanent forest contract (also permanent forest purchase contract or contract of the century), the municipal association for Greater Berlin bought considerable forest areas in the Berlin area from the Prussian state , including parts of the Grunewald. Today's city of Berlin , which emerged from the Zweckverband five years later, entered the contract as the legal successor, so that Grunewald has been owned by Berlin ever since. The forest management is carried out by the Berlin Forests .
The reason for the permanent forest contract was, among other things, the escalating soil speculation at the beginning of the 20th century, especially in the Grunewald, the forest destruction caused by it should be contained for ecological and health-political reasons. As an expression of the first German environmental movement , on the initiative of two Berlin newspapers in 1904, around 30,000 signatures were collected in a protest against the destruction of the Grunewald. Both the state (including the neighboring Dahlem domain ) and private forest owners participated in the speculation that went further . In 1909, speculation with forest areas in the Berlin area reached an extent of around 1,800 hectares. The "Second Berlin Forest Protection Day" on January 16, 1909 vehemently opposed ruthless speculation and forest destruction. According to Forestry Councilor Martin Klees, the "concern of the population [...] found its renewed expression in a special print published by a Groß-Lichterfelder Zeitung with the headline: 'The Grunewald is doomed'".
The conclusion of the permanent forest contract with the purchase of the Grunewald is not least due to the pressure of the first German environmental movement.
Usage by U.S. Forces during the Cold War
During the Cold War , the US occupation forces stationed in West Berlin blocked considerable parts of the Grunewald forest in their sector for various military purposes: on the Keerans Range shooting range, which is 15 soccer fields near the southern AVUS curve, the GIs mainly practiced shooting Guns, pistols, and even tanks. Uncontrolled projectiles caused ricochets in the immediate vicinity, for example repeatedly in the Wannsee lido , about two kilometers away , where not only buildings were hit, but a bather was shot in July 1951, and a seven-year-old child was shot by a stray infantry bullet in August 1952 was seriously injured and in 1955, despite the protective walls that had been erected in the meantime, another woman was unable to work after being shot in her liver.
The Dachsberg Area and Grunewald Area ammunition depots were also located in Grunewald, as well as an antenna station in Jagen 87 and an eavesdropping center on Teufelsberg . With the exception of the latter, all of the former military bases have been demolished and their areas have now been largely renatured , so that the Grunewald landscape protection area has increased by more than 40 hectares. To this day, however, the Grunewald blasting site is still used for the (temporary) storage and rendering harmless of found ammunition by the Berlin ordnance disposal service.
Forest area of the year 2015
The Association of German Foresters awarded the Grunewald the Forest Area of the Year 2015 award . The reasoning mentions , among other things, the large number of different forest biotopes and the lakes and small bodies of water, dunes, poor and dry grasslands, heather areas, sand pits and moors as valuable habitats for plants and Animals pointed out. In addition, the capital's forest succeeds particularly well in reconciling the high number of visitors of several million forest walkers per year with nature conservation and forest use.
Exhibition 2017: Forest. Berlin. Climate.
On April 13, 2017, the exhibition Wald. Berlin. Climate. opened. Along a four-kilometer circular route, eleven information islands, the so-called “forest living rooms”, staged numerous topics on the adaptation of Berlin's forests to climate change . The exhibition provided information about the connections between climate change, forests and their significance for the city of Berlin. The overarching theme of the exhibition was the adaptation of Berlin's forests to climate change. In addition, the exhibition was one of the 13 decentralized branches of the International Garden Exhibition 2017 in Berlin.
literature
- Martin Klees: The Berlin forest ownership through the ages . In: AFZ - Allgemeine Forstzeitschrift , Volume 18, No. 29, 1963, pp. 450–454.
- Reiner Cornelius: history of forest development. The change in forests due to forest use and pollution since the Middle Ages (= monitoring program natural balance . Volume 3). Published by the Senate Department for Urban Development and Environmental Protection , Public Relations Department, Berlin 1995, ISSN 0946-3631 .
- Hans Wolfgang Behm: Ten Thousand Years of Grunewald. The natural and development history of a forest near a big city. Kulturbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1957.
Web links
- Berlin Forests at the Senate Department for Urban Development
- NATURA 2000 area Grunewald at the Senate Department for Urban Development
- The Grunewald in the mirror of the times - extensive collection of pictures and information
Individual evidence
- ↑ The virtual forest walk - Havelhöhenweg - in the Berlin forest Grunewald Senate Department for Urban Development Berlin.
- ↑ Kurt Pomplun : Schildhorn - "Favorite destination of Berlin's Sunday excursionists". In: Kurt Pomplun: Of houses and people. Berlin stories. 2nd Edition. Bruno Hessling, Berlin 1976, pp. 55-59
- ^ Wilhelm Schwartz: The Schildhorn near Spandau and the last Wendenkönig . In: Mittheilungen des Verein für die Geschichte Potsdams 4 (IV. Part). Published by Louis Schneider, Gropius'sche Buch- und Kunsthandlung (A. Krausnick), Potsdam 1869, p. 282
- ^ Letters: Cornelia Froboess . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1952, pp. 34 ( online ).
- ↑ Shots at Wannsee . ( Memento from May 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Der Tagesspiegel , April 30, 2007.
- ↑ The wagtail is already breeding at the firing range . In: Berliner Zeitung , May 29, 1997.
- ↑ 2015 - The Grunewald. ( Memento of the original from June 16, 2018 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. Association of German Foresters (Ed.): Forest area of the year .
- ↑ The Grunewald is forest area of the year 2015. ( Memento of the original from March 4, 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. Green League Landesverband Berlin e. V .; accessed on August 1, 2015
- ^ "Forest area of the year 2015" - Berlin-Grunewald Grunewald, a forest for everyone . In: Berliner Zeitung , November 28, 2014.
- ^ Hymn of praise for the Grunewald. Forest area of the year 2015. In: Berliner Zeitung , November 21, 2014, p. 15.
- ↑ forest. Berlin. Climate. - The exhibition in the forest. Retrieved August 22, 2017 .
Meulenwald (2012) | Solling (2013) | Schönbuch (2014) | Grunewald (2015) | Usedom (2016) | Franconian Forest (2017) | Wermsdorfer Wald (2018) | Urban Forests Rhine / Ruhr (2019)
Coordinates: 52 ° 28 ′ 0 ″ N , 13 ° 15 ′ 0 ″ E