Lenné triangle

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Aerial photo with the border line before July 1, 1988. Below the top left of the center is the M-Bahn terminus at Kemperplatz

The Lenné triangle is the area between Lennéstrasse , Bellevuestrasse and Ebertstrasse on Potsdamer Platz in the Berlin district of Tiergarten ( Mitte district ). This unofficial name comes from Lennéstrasse; this in turn is named after Peter Joseph Lenné , who transformed the Great Zoo into a landscape park in the 19th century . The area became famous because of the curious border between East and West Berlin , as it was west of the Wall, but belonged to East Berlin, and its occupation in 1988 by political activists . After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Beisheim Center and Henriette-Herz-Park are located here.

history

Before the division of Germany

Columbushaus , 1932: Bellevuestrasse on the left, Ebertstrasse on the right
Beisheim-Center from Bellevuestrasse, left on Lennéstrasse
Glass architecture in the Lenné triangle, Ebert corner Lennéstrasse

The area was created with the expansion of the Berlin city wall around 1735. A parade ground was created to the north in front of the Potsdamer Tor , which was bordered by the excise wall (Ebertstraße), the avenue to Charlottenburg (Bellevuestraße) and the Kanonenweg ( Lennéstraße ). A comparable, but considerably larger parade ground was built in front of the Brandenburg Gate - today's Platz der Republik . Under Friedrich II , however, the area at Potsdamer Tor was found to be too small for the military exercises. The king donated it in 1749 as a school garden to the economic-mathematical secondary school , directed by Johann Julius Hecker .

By 1825 the school botany had given way to entertainment venues. Soon afterwards, villas were built on the site as a continuation of the “ privy council quarter ”. In the founding years from 1870, they were replaced by representative four-story hotels and commercial buildings. A historic-architectural highlight was in 1931, the Columbus House by Erich Mendelsohn as a corner building between Bellevue Street and Ebertstraße. This high-rise was to be the start of a complete redesign of Potsdamer Platz .

During the division of Germany

As part of a reform of the administrative districts, the Lenné triangle had moved from the former Tiergarten district to the Mitte district on April 1, 1938 . During the division of Berlin, the property therefore belonged to East Berlin. In war-damaged Columbushaus an agency which was People's Police established that the uprising June 17, 1953 was stormed and set on fire. When the last building in the Lenné triangle became unusable, it was demolished and in 1956/1957 the entire ruined area of ​​the Lenné triangle was leveled. In 1961 the Berlin Wall was erected along the Ebertstrasse. At the Lenné triangle in front of the wall, however, the GDR represented the actual border line only by a simple fence. This fence was trampled on in several places by West Berliners. This is how trails emerged as a shortcut across the territory belonging to East Berlin.

On March 31, 1988, an agreement was signed between West Berlin and the GDR on an exchange of territory, through which 96.7  hectares (to which the Lenné triangle belonged) went to West Berlin with effect from July 1, 1988. In return, the GDR received land with a total size of 87.3 hectares and a compensation payment of 76 million marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around 68.4 million euros). West Berlin wanted to build a connecting road on the Lenné triangle (according to the original plans a section of the western bypass ).

occupation

On May 25, 1988 - before the handover became effective - leaflets were distributed at the large demonstration on the first anniversary of the census calling for people to occupy the Lenné Triangle. Some left-wing alternative West Berliners arrived in the late afternoon or early evening on the overgrown area and discussed how to proceed. They decided to rename the Lenné triangle in "Kubat triangle" and to advertise with another leaflet in the city for further supporters of the occupation. Norbert Kubat was arrested on the morning of May 2, 1987. He was accused of breaching the peace during the riots on May 1st, 1987 . On May 26, Norbert Kubat took in custody life. A release from prison had been refused. During the course of the first evening, East Berlin border policemen appeared through the door set into the wall in this area and instructed the occupants to move to the edge of the area. There they gradually built a tent and hut village. It was intended to protect the largely untouched nature there, as well as to prevent the urban motorway section of the western bypass that the Berlin Senate had planned for a long time. The occupation was favored by the complicated political situation: the West Berlin police were not allowed to enter the East Berlin territory, but blocked it with metal fences and tried to monitor the remaining narrow entrances on the wall strip like sluices, while the GDR authorities on the Conflict were not interested.

  • Wall at Potsdamer Platz , June 1988

  • Lock to the "Kubat Triangle" monitored by the police, June 1988

  • Occupied "Kubat Triangle", June 1988

  • "Kubat triangle", evacuated and destroyed by the police, July 1st, 1988

  • GDR border guards followed the evacuation of the "Kubat Triangle" on July 1, 1988

When the handover took effect on July 1, 1988, the Lenné triangle was evacuated by hundreds of West Berlin police. 182 people, squatters and adventurous tourists climbed as so-called " wall jumpers " over self-made ladders and bars from the fence by the Berlin police over barricades on the wall to East Berlin. In death strip trucks were available who received the people and brought in a canteen in East Berlin, where they were given a breakfast. Then they left the GDR in smaller groups via regular border crossings . In the run-up to the “escape campaign”, some occupiers had made contact with the GDR. The book author Martin Schaad describes these contacts recorded in Stasi files as follows:

“There were several attempts to contact the GDR authorities - once through the SEW (Socialist Unity Party West Berlin), then by addressing a major of the border troops directly, and finally by calling the Ministry for State Security. The evidence for these events can be found in the archive of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the Ministry for State Security; here especially in the action plan of the main department I / GKM from June 29, 1988, in: MfS HA I 14319, p. 31, but also in the files MfS HA IX 17457, p. 24, MfS HA XXII 242/2, p. 28, and MfS HA XXII 1702, p. 168. "

- Martin Schaad : "Then go over there": over the wall to the east.

After reunification

After the political change , the Lenné triangle was taken over by the state of Berlin and in 1991 it was given to the Hertie department store for a D-Mark with the intention of setting up its headquarters there. In 1994 Hertie was taken over by Karstadt , whereby Karstadt became the owner of the property at the Lenné triangle. The Karstadt Group did not feel bound by the Hertie commitment to the Senate and turned the precious Senate gift into a profitable business: the same piece of land was sold to Metro owner Otto Beisheim in 2000 for 145 million euros . The Karstadt Group was sentenced to pay compensation to the original property owner, the Wertheim family .

Since the final redesign of Potsdamer Platz in 2004, the Lenné triangle has been in the immediate vicinity of the Sony Center and the Eisenbahnower . In the eastern area, the Beisheim Center was built on a large part of the site , in which the Ritz-Carlton and a Marriott Hotel are located, and the Henriette-Herz-Park was laid out in the western triangle.

literature

Web links

Commons : Lenné triangle  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lenné triangle on www.berlin.de - area exchange
  2. ^ Friedrich Tietz: From the lost school garden . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 1, 1999, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 65–72 ( luise-berlin.de - report around 1826).
  3. ^ Columbushaus at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Erich Mendelsohn. In: Bauwelt , vol. 22 (1931) issue 46, rotogravure supplement, pp. 29–32
  4. ^ Peter Pragal: Five weeks in June . In Berliner Zeitung , June 20, 1998.
  5. ↑ Made over to the GDR . In: Der Tagesspiegel , July 2, 2003
  6. ↑ The western bypass
  7. ^ Citizens' initiative Westtangente
  8. ↑ West bypass : The never built motorway. In: Der Tagesspiegel , March 18, 2006
  9. ↑ The abandoned motorway extension - the end of the Berlin west bypass. In: withberlinlove , September 28, 2017
  10. ↑ Ch. Links, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-516-4 . P. 139 ff.
  11. ↑ Otto Köhler : Aryanized, cheated, sold . In: Friday , March 11, 2005.
  12. ↑ Karstadt settles a dispute with Wertheim heirs . In: Die Welt , March 30, 2007.
  13. ^ Legitimate law, financial interests, historical burden . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 4, 2005

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 39 ″  N , 13 ° 22 ′ 30 ″  E