Leipziger Strasse (Berlin)

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B1 Leipziger Street
coat of arms
Street in Berlin
Leipziger Street
Looking east into Leipziger Strasse
Basic data
place Berlin
District center
Created in the 17th century
Newly designed last in 1969/1970
Connecting roads Potsdamer Strasse (west) ,
Gertraudenstrasse (east)
Cross streets (Selection)
Wilhelmstrasse ,
Mauerstrasse ,
Friedrichstrasse
Places Leipziger Platz ,
Marion-Gräfin-Dönhoff-Platz ,
Spittelmarkt
Buildings see article text
use
User groups Pedestrian traffic , bicycle traffic , car traffic , local public transport
Technical specifications
Street length 1500 meters

The Leipziger Strasse in Berlin is one of the main roads in the district center and part of the Bundesstraße 1 . It connects Leipziger Platz with the Spittelmarkt . From there, the street from Gertraudenstrasse , Mühlendamm , Molkenmarkt , Grunerstrasse and Alexanderstrasse continues to Alexanderplatz .

Leipziger Strasse, which was laid out in the 17th century, has been an important link between City West ( Kurfürstendamm , Breitscheidplatz and Tauentzienstrasse ) and Alexanderplatz and the northeastern Berlin districts of Pankow , Lichtenberg , Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Marzahn-Hellersdorf since the fall of the Wall .

The different street widths are striking: from Leipziger Platz there are two lanes in each direction of travel and from the intersection Charlottenstraße to the east, Leipziger Straße is expanded to four lanes.

history

City plan from 1789

In the course of the expansion of Berlin and the creation of Friedrichstadt , today's Leipziger Strasse was laid out in 1688. The name comes from the trade and military route to Leipzig , which used to run in the immediate vicinity, and which began at the Leipzig Gate of Fortress Berlin , which was built in 1683 . Within the fortress, this continued up to the Jungfernbrücke and was later referred to as Alte Leipziger Straße . With the city expansion, today's Leipziger Strasse was laid out south of it, which now led from Spittelmarkt through the new city quarter and initially ended at Mauerstrasse . It was called An der Spitalbrücke . With the further expansion of the southern Friedrichstadt it was extended to the new city gate - the Potsdamer Tor  - in 1734 . In 1775 the entire street was given the uniform name "Leipziger Straße".

City map from 1846

In the 1860s, a new concert house was built at Leipziger Straße 48 (on the corner of what was then Dönhoffplatz ) , which from 1867 was the first venue for the previous orchestra of the Berlin Philharmonic , the Bilse Orchestra . During the same period, the street changed from a purely residential street to a busy commercial street. From 1871 to 1894 (completion of the new Reichstag building ) the parliamentary seat of the representatives of the German Empire was located at Leipziger Strasse 4 . The street received the city's first electric street lights in 1882. In April 1929 the Moka Efti opened on the corner of Friedrichstrasse , Berlin's most important dance hall during the Weimar Republic .

City map from 1884

Until the end of the Second World War, the Wertheim department store , which was praised as the “most beautiful temple of consumption in Germany”, was located on Leipziger Platz , the ruins of which were demolished in the 1950s after being destroyed in the war. The techno club Tresor was built in 1991 in the preserved vaults . The eastern part of the street was the location of department stores and shops until World War II. Today there are mainly high-rise buildings with apartments and offices . There were numerous government buildings between Wilhelmstrasse and Leipziger Platz.

Leipziger Strasse, 1981
Postage stamp of the German Post of the GDR, year 1979

Most of the buildings on Leipziger Strasse were destroyed in the Second World War. After clearing the rubble, it remained in its historical width until the end of the 1960s as a street lined with fallow land and a few restored buildings, which after the construction of the Wall in 1961 led westwards as a dead end, so to speak, into nowhere. Their importance for road traffic decreased accordingly. Tram line 74, which runs through Leipziger Strasse for its entire length between Spittelmarkt and Leipziger Platz, was switched to bus operation on August 24, 1970 .

From 1969 on, Leipziger Strasse was redesigned as part of the redesign of Berlin's inner city between Spittelmarkt and Charlottenstrasse, with eight lanes and a median in a "car-friendly" manner. This did not correspond to the importance of the road for traffic, as the volume of traffic remained relatively low, especially due to the lack of through traffic until the fall of the Wall on November 9, 1989 and the opening of a border crossing at Potsdamer Platz.

On both sides of the widened street section, multi-storey residential buildings were built between 1969 and 1982, removing the few remaining old buildings , with shops moving into the ground floor area. While the north side of this street section was built with elongated 14-storey building blocks, eight 23- to 25-storey high-rise residential buildings with functional bases were built on the south side, arranged in pairs. In the area of Dönhoffplatz , which was converted into a green area in 1969 , the baroque Spittelkolonnaden was reconstructed by Carl von Gontard in 1979 .

The section between Charlottenstrasse and Leipziger Platz remained at the previous width and has only been gradually rebuilt since the 1990s.

The Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development is planning to re-establish a tram line for Leipziger Strasse, which will initially run from Alexanderplatz via Potsdamer Platz to the Kulturforum , for which tracks were laid between Wilhelmstrasse and Leipziger Platz in the 1990s. In the long term, the construction of an underground line (a new line U3 ) along the street is planned. On the other hand, in the summer of 2019, when the M48 Metrobus line was shortened, Leipziger Strasse was one of the first main thoroughfares to be removed from the Berlin metro network .

Leipziger Strasse is part of a pilot project for a gradual speed limit of 30 km / h on Berlin's main roads. This has been in effect since April 9, 2018 on the section between Markgrafenstrasse and Potsdamer Platz . On June 1, 2018, the Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection announced that the speed limit from 9 a.m. on June 4, 2018 would also apply to the section between Potsdamer Platz and Heinrich-von-Kleist-Park if the traffic lights were changed .

Buildings and sights

Spittelmarkt underground station at the eastern end of Leipziger Strasse
View from the Kollhoff Tower to the east on Leipziger Platz and Leipziger Strasse
Leipziger Strasse from Mauerstrasse towards the east
Tietz department store, 1916

From west to east there were or are the following buildings and sights on Leipziger Strasse:

Residents of Leipziger Strasse

literature

Web links

Commons : Leipziger Straße  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Horst Rathunde: The Leipziger Strasse. Where to come by ... Information in the BZ in the evening , August 22, 1981, p. 7
  2. ^ Leipziger Strasse. In: Street name dictionary of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  3. ↑ saschateichmann.de
  4. ↑ Communication from July 22, 2019 on bvg.de.
  5. ↑ dpa : From Monday Tempo 30 on Potsdamer Straße . Ed .: Berliner Morgenpost . June 1, 2018 ( archive.org ).
  6. ^ A b Maritta Adam-Tkalec: Berlin around 1890 - How Berlin got a city . In: Berliner Zeitung , November 20, 2017, p. 10.

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 37 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 25 ″  E