Karl-Marx-Allee

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B1B5 Karl-Marx-Allee
until 1961: Stalinallee
coat of arms
Street in Berlin
Karl-Marx-Allee
Karl-Marx-Allee - in the foreground the Strausberger Platz , in the background the towers of the Frankfurter Tor
Basic data
place Berlin
District Mitte ,
Friedrichshain
Created around 1700
Hist. Names Grosse Frankfurter Strasse ,
Frankfurter Allee ,
Stalinallee
Connecting roads Alexanderstraße (west) ,
Frankfurter Allee (east)
Cross streets Schillingstrasse ,
Berolinastrasse,
Lichtenberger Strasse,
Lebuser Strasse,
Andreasstrasse,
Koppenstrasse,
Strasse der Pariser Kommune
Places Strausberger Platz
use
User groups Pedestrian traffic , bicycle traffic , car traffic , public transport
Technical specifications
Street length 830 m in the middle
2100 m in Friedrichshain

The Karl-Marx-Allee is a after the philosopher and social theorist Karl Marx named street in the Berlin districts of Mitte and Friedrichshain .

The longer, Friedrichshain section is characterized by apartment blocks and towers in a style mix of socialist classicism and the Prussian Schinkel School , which was built in the 1950s. The section in the middle is dominated by prefabricated buildings from the 1960s. The tower buildings at Frankfurter Tor and Strausberger Platz by architect Hermann Henselmann are the urban highlights of the complex.

The street was originally called Grosse Frankfurter Strasse west of the Frankfurter Tor of the Berlin Customs Wall (about the intersection with the street of the Paris Commune ) and was opened on December 21, 1949 (the then official 70th birthday of Josef Stalin ) together with the east adjoining Frankfurter Allee in Stalinallee renamed. Since November 13, 1961 it has been called Karl-Marx-Allee . The Frankfurter Allee was separated at the same time again under its old name, but it no longer starts since then east on original Frankfurter Tor, but the same name in 1957 designated space. The residential buildings, which stretch from Strausberger Platz to over Frankfurter Tor and into Frankfurter Allee, were designed as “workers' palaces” and were intended to represent the strength and engineering skills of the GDR .

location

Overview plan Karl-Marx-Allee: Architects and construction phases

Karl-Marx-Allee leads from Alexanderplatz via Strausberger Platz to Frankfurter Tor, where it turns into Frankfurter Allee. It is part of the federal highway 1 , which crosses Berlin from Magdeburg in the direction of Küstrin-Kietz , and the federal highway 5 , which runs from Frankfurt (Oder) to Hamburg .

The street, together with Frankfurter Allee, is one of the eight radial arterial roads leading to the north, northeast and east, which start from the historic center of the city, from Hackescher Markt and Alexanderplatz. These are clockwise:

history

The beginnings

Barricades in the Great Frankfurter Straße corner Lebus road during the November Revolution ,
postcard, 1919

Frankfurter Strasse , which was named around 1701, already bore the name Große Frankfurter Strasse in the city ​​maps of 1786 and 1789 at the latest .

A plaque on the corner of Karl-Marx-Allee at Haus Berlin on Strausberger Platz commemorates the defenders of the barricade in Große Frankfurter Straße during the March Revolution of 1848 . Around 70 years later, after the First World War , the street was again the scene of barricade fighting during the November Revolution.

Grosse Frankfurter Strasse did not begin at Alexanderplatz, but between the confluence of Schillingstrasse and Kleine Frankfurter Strasse, which was dissolved in the 1960s. With the construction of the underground line E (today: Line U5 ) from 1926/1927 to 1930, the street was extended to what was then Landsberger Straße and thus adapted to the straight course of the underground line. This section was again called Frankfurter Straße until it was renamed Stalinallee in 1949 .

First construction phase: arcade houses

Ruins on Stalinallee, 1950
Eastern arcade house (No. 126–128) by Ludmilla Herzenstein

After the Second World War , the architect Hans Scharoun developed a concept for the complete redesign of the whole of Berlin, the so-called “ collective plan”, which provided for a rigorous redistribution and decentralization of the city, as well as a loose development with lots of green between the individual residential units. In the particularly badly damaged district of Friedrichshain in the Soviet-administered eastern part of the city, the plan was to be implemented for the first time on a large scale in the area around Weberwiese in the form of the "Friedrichshain living cell". Along the Stalinallee, two arcade houses were built for this living cell in 1949/1950 , based on Scharoun's ideas (Karl-Marx-Allee 102/104 and 126/128). Then the collective plan was suspended; the ideas on which it was based were henceforth formalistic , elitist and western decadent. For ideological reasons, due to the advanced personality cult and the renaming after Stalin, any building for this street was no longer an option. As the construction work continued along the avenue, the arcade houses became isolated objects in a completely different urban and architectural environment. The Soviet monumental architecture became the benchmark for the main building project of the GDR, which was founded at the end of 1949 - the Stalinallee was created as a representative thoroughfare. Since the arcade houses were built a little further south to the rest of the building line on the south side of the street, fast-growing poplars were planted in front of them to hide the buildings behind them.

Second construction phase: Socialist Realism / National Building Tradition

South back of Karl-Marx-Allee with arcade house (left) in front of Weberwiese with the high-rise building and the initial development for the Friedrichshain living cell (center), 1963

Principal considerations

In 1950, a government delegation traveled to Moscow , Kiev , Stalingrad and Leningrad to study urban planning in the Soviet Union to make suggestions for a representative design of the avenue that corresponded to its intended significance . “16 principles of urban planning” emerged from this study trip . Egon Hartmann won first prize in the 1951 design competition . Although it seemed to offer the best solution in terms of urban development, the final development plan was worked out together with the other four winners of the tender, Richard Paulick , Hanns Hopp , Karl Souradny and Kurt W. Leucht , to which the Moscow chief architect Alexander W. Vlasov and Sergei I. Chernyshev, Vice President of the Academy of Architecture, gave their advice. The resulting development is stylistically similar to the Lomonossow University in Moscow and the Palace of Culture in Warsaw .

In November 1951 the SED published a call for the construction of Berlin. The “ National Development Program Berlin ” envisaged the Stalinallee as the focus of a district of residential and high-rise buildings and as a model for the capital's architecture and urban planning. For this purpose, the population was asked to volunteer, unpaid work to clear the ruins. At the beginning of 1952, the excavation began for the E-Süd block between the arcade houses and in February, Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl laid the cornerstone symbolically for the entire newly designed street.

Skyscraper on the Weberwiese

The high-rise building on Weberwiese , which was completed in 1951, is the prototype that the whole street was built on. With this building, the architect Hermann Henselmann had found the architectural style that the political leadership of the GDR had been looking for for the reconstruction: a decorative regional historicism . This was based on the example of the “Socialist Classicism” of the Soviet Union of the Stalin era and the so-called “national building tradition”, such as Berlin Classicism , which was largely influenced by Karl-Friedrich Schinkel .

German sports hall and Stalin monument

German sports hall, 1951

In addition to the arcade houses, the Friedrichshain ensemble is interrupted by two blocks of prefabricated buildings located between Andreasstrasse and Koppenstrasse. Here on the north side originally stood the monumental neoclassical German sports hall designed by Paulick , which was built in 1951 for the III. World Festival of Youth and Students was built in just 148 days and in the avenue was the first completed building of this style. For political reasons, the special steel girders for the elaborate roof construction were not supplied from the Federal Republic of Germany , so that a temporary auxiliary roof had to be built, the pillars of which were not useful for visibility in the hall.

Stalin monument , 1953

Since the Berlin City Palace was removed during the construction period , copies of four monumental sculptures from the Schlüterhof were placed in front of the entrance terrace of the sports hall, which was intended as a representative building. In 1969 the hall was closed due to structural damage and demolished in 1972.

Opposite the sports hall was the Stalin monument - a 4.80 meter high bronze statue of Stalin on a terrace with a high base, which was unveiled on August 3, 1951. After the de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union, the monument was torn down overnight in late autumn 1961 and the bronze statue was then crushed and melted down. During the fall of the monument, the name of the avenue was changed with the street signs.

Popular uprising of June 17, 1953

The street gained special importance during the uprising of June 17, 1953 . The workers on the large construction sites of what was then Stalinallee began on June 16 with strikes against the general increase in labor standards ordered by the Central Committee of the SED . The demonstrations eventually spread to large parts of the city and continued throughout the GDR.

The protest in Stalinallee began at the Rosengarten , an open space up to Weidenweg with Block 40, opposite the western Laubenganghaus (Block 1) and Weberwiese. Today there is a memorial plaque there.

Workers palaces

View into Karl-Marx-Allee with Frankfurter Tor in the foreground
Block C North between Koppenstrasse and Paris Commune Street
Strausberger Platz ,
design of the fountain: Fritz Kühn

The above-average wide street was not only intended for urban traffic, but was also intended to meet East Berlin's claim as the capital and to be used for marches and parades. Since 1977 the demonstration on May 1st and since 1979 the annual parade of honor of the National People's Army (NVA) on the occasion of the holiday of the founding of the GDR on October 7th took place there; the grandstand for the inspection of the elevators was in the second section between Strausberger Platz and Alexanderplatz. The last parade of its kind was held in 1989. In addition, the East Berlin Magistrale also served as part of the protocol route for state visits.

The splendid boulevard stretches for two kilometers as a dead straight line, each lined with five large apartment blocks with up to 13 floors. The façades received - under the ideologically tinged slogan of historical heritage  - a considerable proportion of stylistic elements of Berlin classicism , an epoch that was more than 120 years ago; Quotations of ancient individual forms can be found in many places, for example Doric or Ionic columns, ornamental gables with architraves and friezes , etc. This all stood in sharp contrast to another major project that was started and carried out almost at the same time in West Berlin : the rebuilding of the largely destroyed Hansaviertel . As part of an international building exhibition, well-known architects tried the same concept of relaxed, green urban development with modern individual buildings that Scharoun had represented in a similar way. Not only did urban planners and architects contest the direction, but also a contest between the political systems. Stalinallee and Hansaviertel were built almost simultaneously, both as demonstration objects for the efficiency of the respective social system .

The boulevard is bordered in the west by Strausberger Platz with its appropriately designed blocks. Its 13-storey high-rise buildings by Henselmann look like a city gate and are based on the American Art Deco architecture of the 1930s. In the east of the boulevard, shortly before the end of the representative development on Frankfurter Allee at the corner of Proskauer Straße, the Frankfurter Tor with its two towers, which were also designed by Henselmann, forms the second architectural highlight. The domes are based on the Gontard towers of the German and French cathedral .

DEFA newsreels and cultural films

Scene from the DEFA culture film The new apartment with the planner Richard Paulick on a model of Stalinallee

The state- owned GDR film company DEFA accompanied the construction work on Stalinallee with propaganda newsreels and cultural films . In 1952 DEFA made the cultural film Die neue Wohnung . The architect Richard Paulick took part in a film scene that took place in the German Sports Hall . Using a model of Stalinallee erected there, he explained the importance of the "large socialist buildings" under construction. In 1954 the DEFA film History of a Street was released , in which the film collective around Bruno Kleberg described historical stations on Stalinallee - omitting the uprising of June 17, 1953.

Third construction phase: the “modernized” 1959–1969

Cinema cosmos

Two less wide interruptions in the classical ensemble are located exactly opposite the arcade houses. The east of the two, near the intersection with Warschauer Strasse , is occupied by the Kosmos cinema building , which is also set back from the building line. It was built in 1961/1962 according to plans by the architect Josef Kaiser . With 1001 seats, it was the largest and most modern film theater in the GDR. From 1996 to the end of July 2005 there was a multiplex cinema operated by the UFA for 3400 viewers. Since March 2006 the building has been used as a multi-purpose complex for conferences, evening events, cinema and theater.

Kino International (left), Hotel Berolina and Mokka-Milch-Eisbar , 1964
Cafe Moscow restaurant , 2004

Contrary to the original plans, the street was not built uniformly up to Alexanderplatz. A major reason for this was the high construction costs of the representative workers' palaces and a change in style that had occurred in the meantime. Between Strausberger Platz and Alexanderplatz, in contrast to the splendid confectioner's style, simple eight to ten-storey prefabricated buildings were erected as residential buildings with wide green spaces facing the street and between the blocks. The most striking buildings in this ensemble are the Café Moskau Restaurant (No. 34, built 1961–1964), the Kino International (No. 31, 1961–1963) and the 13-storey Hotel Berolina (No. 33 , 1961–1964), which was later operated as an Interhotel . This group of buildings, which was created under the overall artistic direction of Josef Kaiser, also includes two-storey sales pavilions based on designs by Josef Kaiser, Walter Franek and Horst Bauer . Originally, eleven sales pavilions were to be built along the entire 700-meter-long and 125-meter-wide second construction phase, but only five of them between Strausberger Platz and Schillingstrasse were realized within the same overall period. The most famous of these is the Mocha Milk Ice Bar (No. 35); Furthermore, Kunst im Heim (no.45), the Schuhhaus Centrum (no.46), the Babette beauty salon (no.36) and the Madeleine fashion salon together with the south entrance to the Schillingstraße underground station and the flower shop Interflor ( no.32 ) executed. The hall buildings with an open gallery floor are recognizable as a special group with their extensive glazing and their yellow ceramic tiles. After 2020, the six missing pavilions will be added to them. ( see section future planning )

On the western north side of the second construction phase was the location of the functionaries' stand for the annual central large-scale demonstrations until the end of the GDR. In contrast to the earlier buildings, the hinterland was also built on in this section with two residential complexes for a total of 14,500 inhabitants.

In the second half of the 1960s, the construction of the second section of Karl-Marx-Allee in connection with the redesign of Alexanderplatz was completed and the straight connection of the avenue was finally completed. Only the House of Health , which is now a listed building, has been preserved from the abandoned Landsberger Strasse . This former corner house was incorporated into Karl-Marx-Allee with its location at number 3, which is diagonally offset from the new street, and is its oldest building, built in 1913. The last two blocks of flats were completed in 1967 on the western north side. Between them and the road there were still two four to five-story rows of apartments from the time of the new Frankfurter Strasse, which only disappeared in 1968 or 1969. The last new building was built in 1969 - in time for the 20th anniversary of the founding of the GDR - opposite the teacher 's house, the House of Statistics and was given house number 1.

After reunification

Name question, renovations

Kino International and Rathaus Mitte

After the political change , a renaming of Karl-Marx-Allee as well as many other streets in East Berlin that were named in GDR times was discussed. The responsible districts decided against renaming the Karl-Marx-Allee. In the autumn of 1993 the Berlin Senate set up an independent commission to develop proposals for renaming various streets. However, the Senate did not implement your proposal to rename the western part of Karl-Marx-Allee Hegelallee.

The residential buildings on the avenue were bought by various investors after German reunification and mostly renovated at great expense.

The Hotel Berolina was demolished in the spring of 1996 and then replaced by a new building similar in shape and color, in which the district office in Mitte started operations on March 2, 1998. In 1997, the Vitro Plaza was built as a 14-storey high-rise office building , another new building set back behind a forecourt on the southeast corner of the Paris Commune Street .

Paulick candelabra before renewal, April 2006

The general appearance of the street was disturbed by the dilapidated condition of the 215 street lamps that Richard Paulick had designed. A gradual restoration of belonging to a cultural monument Paulick candelabra was originally scheduled for 2006, but the call for cost reasons postponed due to the repetition in the second half of 2007. In December 2007, then the first faithfully reconstructed candelabra at the intersection of Karl-Marx-Allee / Lebuser Straße put up again.

Future planning

Plans for the redesign of the part facing Alexanderplatz (construction phase III) and the areas adjacent to the north and south are coordinated in a separate planning workshop. In May 2018, a project was presented to the public to complete the pavilions built in the 1960s by the GDR architects Josef Kaiser , Werner Dutschke and Walter Franek . Eleven were planned, only five were actually built: Madeleine fashion salon / Blumenhaus Interflor , mocha milk ice cream bar , Babette cosmetic salon , art in the home and Schuhhaus Centrum . These are listed and will continue to be used. After an invitation workshop competition for a further six glass pavilions carried out in 2017 by the district office in Mitte and the owner of the space, the WBM , five designs were submitted and will be presented in the town hall in Mitte . Interested parties and residents can assess it and also have a say in how it will be used later. An actual start of construction has not yet been determined.

traffic

Local public transport

The entire length of the Karl-Marx-Allee is undercut by underground line 5 , which connects Alexanderplatz with Hönow . The line was opened on December 21, 1930 under the then Große Frankfurter Straße / Frankfurter Allee with the four stations today: Schillingstraße , Strausberger Platz , Weberwiese and Frankfurter Tor . At night, these stations are served by the N5 night bus .

At the intersection with Andreasstraße and Lebuser Straße, the avenue is crossed by bus line 142 and at the Frankfurter Tor underground station by tram lines M10 and 21.

Bicycle traffic

Most of the cycle traffic between the Niederbarnimstrasse / Proskauer Strasse intersection and Alexanderplatz has been on a separate bicycle lane next to each motor lane since the avenue was completed. Only at the intersection with Frankfurter Tor does the cycle path run directly on the street. The clarity of the road crossings and thus the safety of the cyclists is very different along the entire length.

The Senate's traffic concept provides for the road to be converted from 2020 onwards so that up to four meters wide protected cycle paths are to be created on both sides of the road.

Oddities

In February 2009, an anonymous author added the Wikipedia article on the street to the claim that in GDR times the street was also popularly referred to as “Stalin's bathroom” in Berlin because of the facade tiles. This designation took up in the following period several media and repeated that it was a common expression in the GDR. Evidence for the actual use of this term in the GDR could not be given.

After a letter to the editor in the Berliner Zeitung had doubted the popular use of this expression, a journalist of this paper stated that he was responsible for the fictitious Wikipedia entry. As a motive, he named his anger at various existing Berolinisms that are actually not popular.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Karl-Marx-Allee (Berlin)  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Frankfurter Allee. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  2. ↑ Grosse Frankfurter Strasse . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
  3. ^ March Revolution 1848 - Barricade Große Frankfurter Strasse . In: Gedenkenafeln-in-berlin.de
  4. ↑ Compare city ​​map excerpts from Berlin around 1926 ( old Berlin city map archive ).
  5. ↑ Compare city ​​map excerpts from Berlin around 1932 ( old Berlin city map archive ).
  6. ^ Thomas Flierl : Two German Architectures - Karl-Marx-Allee and Interbau 1957. Confrontation, Competition and Coevolution in Divided Berlin in: Application for UNESCO World Heritage Site 2013 .
  7. ↑ Jens-Axel Götze: Neoclassicism for youth and athletes . In: Friedrichshainer-Chronik.de February 2006.
  8. ^ Arnold Bartetzky: Urban planning as a promise of happiness. The propaganda for the reconstruction of Warsaw and East Berlin after the Second World War . In: Arnold Bartetzky, Marina Dmitrieva, Alfrun Kliems (eds.): Imaginations des Urbanen. Conception, reflection and fiction of the city in Central and Eastern Europe . Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86732-022-1 , p. 73, books.google.de
  9. ↑ History of a Street . ( Memento from May 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) tvmovie.de, accessed on May 24, 2014.
  10. ↑ Monument Karl-Marx-Allee, center, complete complex . Senate Department for Urban Development
  11. ↑ Street names: For Marx comes Hegel . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 18, 1994.
  12. ↑ All that remains of the flagship hotel is a pile of rubble . In: Berliner Zeitung , May 20, 1996.
  13. ↑ Withdrawal from life. Today the new district office in the middle starts operations. It is mainly used for administration . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 2, 1998.
  14. ^ Vitro Plaza
  15. ↑ Lanterns remain in a sad state. In: Berliner Morgenpost , November 8, 2006.
  16. ↑ Karl-Marx-Allee receives new candelabra ( Memento from February 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) . In: Berlin-Magazin , December 21, 2007.
  17. ↑ Monument Karl-Marx-Allee 32 & 33 & 34 & 35 & 36 & 45 & 46
  18. ^ Birgit Nikolait: A GDR plan for Karl-Marx-Allee . In Berliner Zeitung , May 4, 2018, p. 9. (print edition); "Contemporary interpretation". New glass pavilions planned on Karl-Marx-Allee . (online edition), accessed May 17, 2018.
  19. ↑ Peter Neumann: New Senate List: The next bollard cycle paths are to be built here. February 27, 2019, accessed March 3, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Version difference in the Wikipedia article Karl-Marx-Allee from February 16, 2009
  21. ↑ The longest architectural monument in Europe. In: Berliner Morgenpost , March 1, 2011.
  22. ^ Maria Neuendorff: Lots of space, few customers . In: Märkische Oderzeitung , November 16, 2010.
  23. ↑ Eva-Maria Hilker: A crude mixture . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 25, 2011.
  24. ↑ Letters to the Editor . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 1, 2011.
  25. ↑ Andreas Kopietz: How I created Stalin's bathroom . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 24, 2011.

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 4 "  N , 13 ° 26 ′ 7"  E