Königstor (Berlin)
Königstor was the name of two Berlin city gates : at the beginning of the 18th century a gate in the fortress , the so-called "fortification", to which the medieval Berlin city wall had been expanded, and in the 19th century a gate in the later Berlin customs wall .
The Königstor of the old Berlin city wall
The medieval city gate leading out of Berlin to the northeast was initially called Oderberger Tor, later it was named Georgentor after the Georgenvorstadt that was built around the Georgenkirche in front of the city gates . It was located roughly on the site of today's Alexanderplatz and became a gate of the Berlin Fortress . After Friedrich I entered Berlin through this gate in 1701 after his coronation in Königsberg as the first king in Prussia , the gate was renamed Königstor, Georgenvorstadt into Königsvorstadt and Georgenstrasse into Königstrasse .
Since the city grew beyond the fortress, a new customs or excise wall about 15 kilometers long was built between 1734 and 1737 , which now also enclosed the suburbs of Berlin. With the demolition of the city fortifications built in the second half of the 17th century and now disruptive, the royal gate was also demolished in 1746.
The royal gate of the Berlin customs wall (excise wall)
The gate of the new excise wall on the Neue Königstrasse running northeast from Alexanderplatz was first called the Bernauisches Thor or Bernauer Thor in the 18th century because it was located at the beginning of the Bernauer Landstrasse leading via Weissensee to Bernau , roughly where the Otto- Braun-Strasse , Prenzlauer Berg, Greifswalder Strasse , Am Friedrichshain and Friedenstrasse meet on the border between the districts of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Pankow .
On December 23, 1809, the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III returned. and his wife Luise through the Bernauer Tor of Königsberg in East Prussia , where they had fled from Napoleon , back to Berlin. They were received here by the entire magistrate under the leadership of the Lord Mayor Carl Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach (1757–1813), the city councilors and the high clergy of Berlin. On the occasion of this event, the gate and Bernauer Landstrasse were renamed Königstor and Neue Königsstrasse respectively by cabinet order of April 10, 1810. On February 20, 1813, Captain Alexander von Blomberg fell at the Königstor in the service of Russia in an unsuccessful attempt to liberate Berlin from French occupation.
The gate and toll wall became more and more of an obstacle to the expanding city. They were demolished between 1866 and 1869. Only the Brandenburg and Potsdamer gates were preserved to decorate the city.
The "Platz am Königstor"
In the period between 1910 and 1914, the square of the former gate was officially dedicated to Platz am Königstor in addition to the short name Königstor, which is still in use . Since February 20, 1913, a memorial there has been commemorating Blomberg's death. Valued at the time of the GDR as a reminder of the German-Russian brotherhood in arms, it survived, while the name of its location was no longer used since 1975. The name "Platz am Königstor" has been used again as a place name since 1991. It cannot be used as a postal address because the site does not include any land.
Web links
- Place at the King's Gate. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near Kaupert )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bernauer-Thor . In: Karl Neander von Petersheiden: Illustrative Tables , 1799, street representations, p. 8 (name and location of the Bernauer Tor).
Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 41 ″ N , 13 ° 25 ′ 26 ″ E