Ludwigkirchplatz

Ludwigkirchplatz
Place in Berlin
	; St. Ludwig's Church
Basic data
place	Berlin
District	Wilmersdorf
Created	1891
Hist. Names	Strasbourg square
Confluent streets	Emser Strasse, ; Ludwigkirchstrasse, ; Pfalzburger Strasse, ; Pariser Strasse
Buildings	St. Ludwig's Church
use
User groups	Pedestrians , cyclists
Technical specifications
Square area	6000 m²

The Ludwigkirchplatz is a town square in Berlin district of Wilmersdorf . The elongated octagonal square is already shown on the Sineck site plan from 1891 as Straßburger Platz in section V1 of the Hobrecht plan . In 1895 it was given its current name after the St. Ludwigs church inside .

location

Ludwigkirchplatz is located between Ludwigkirchstrasse and Pfalzburger Strasse as well as Emser and Pariser Strasse in the middle of a middle-class nightlife and residential area south of Kurfürstendamm . The square interrupts Pariser Strasse in its course, as does Pfalzburger Strasse at the eastern end, which is set up as a pedestrian zone . On the south side, the passage to Pariser Straße is interrupted, the street ends here as a dead end.

history

Set up as Platz A according to the development plan from 1885 , it was laid out as Straßburger Platz by Richard Thieme around 1890 and renamed on November 4, 1895, a few months after the laying of the foundation stone for the Catholic Church of St. Ludwig on June 29, 1895. At that time, Wilmersdorf experienced a rapid population development, so that the number of inhabitants rose from 5,000 to 30,000 between 1890 and 1900 and reached 110,000 in 1910. When St. Ludwig's Church was built, there was still large areas of undeveloped arable land all around. In addition to the church, there were predominantly upper-class, four- and five-story apartment buildings with richly ornamented facades and elegant apartments in the making, which still largely characterize the immediate surroundings. The decisive factor for the new church building in 1890 was the donation of the building site by Wilmersdorfer Terrain-Aktiengesellschaft . The prince-bishop's delegate, Prelate Joseph Jahnel , as a representative of the prince-bishopric of Breslau, had received the Strasbourg square , later renamed Ludwigskirchplatz, as a gift to alleviate the church hardship in Wilmersdorf .

Buildings

Foundation Science and Politics

The central building is the eponymous St. Ludwig's Church, built from 1896 to 1899 in neo-Gothic style based on a design by the architect August Menken . On the north side (Ludwigkirchplatz 3/4) is the neo-baroque building of the former Federal Supervisory Office for the Insurance Industry , originally the Imperial Supervisory Office for private insurers. It was built between 1903 and 1905 based on a design by the architect Ernst Ehrhardt and is used today by the Science and Politics Foundation and the Center for International Peace Operations . Other preserved old buildings are houses No. 1 and 2 on the north side and houses No. 11 and 12 on the south side. The other houses were destroyed or damaged during the Second World War and rebuilt in a modified or simplified form. The church was damaged in 1943 and restored between 1955 and 1961.

House no. 10 is the Sankt Ludwig house of the Catholic Sankt Ludwig community. Here you will find the parish office, a kindergarten with after-school care and a monastery, which is inhabited by five Fathers of the Franciscan order who are active as priests in the community.

Plaza

View over the square

Statue of Louis IX. and his wife Margarete, 1984

A green area shielded from the street by bushes extends to the western part with symmetrically laid out lawns, flower beds, seating and a fountain in the western entrance area. On the north side there has been a sculpture of the patron saint of the church, Saint Louis and his wife Margaret of Provence since 1984 . The three lilies in the pavement of the church portal indicate the family of those von Wilmersdorff , whose family coat of arms goes back to the appointment of Ludolf von Wilmersdorff in 1151 as "Colonel on Horseback" by the French King Ludwig VII (1120–1180) during the Second Crusade .

To the east of the church, the square was redesigned in the 1980s. A large children's playground was laid out on the southeastern part , the other part was paved with chess and mill game patterns.

local residents

Around the square there are mainly spacious apartments in a formerly upper-class residential area. Ludwigkirchplatz is currently one of the most sought-after residential addresses in Berlin and a very lively and popular meeting place with numerous bars and some exclusive shops on the square and in the surrounding streets. The constitutional lawyer Hans Peters lived here around 1930 . Political celebrities continue to live or have lived there, such as the former Federal Minister of Economics Günter Rexrodt , ex-State Minister of Culture Michael Naumann and media greats such as Sabine Christiansen .

Restaurants / cafes
Weyers Restaurant
Café Ottenthal
Ice cream factory
Restaurant Kuchel-Eck
Honca restaurant

Stumbling blocks

Ludwigkirchplatz 2: Rose Friede (March 19, 2011), Else Gottscho (March 19, 2011)
Ludwigkirchplatz 7: Rebecca Jacobsohn (March 19, 2011), Max Rosenbaum (March 19, 2011)
Ludwigkirchplatz 8: Martha Heimann (March 19, 2011)
Ludwigkirchplatz 9: Memorial stone for Hertha Lichtenstein
Ludwigkirchplatz 12: Leonhard Holz (April 9, 2009), Vera Nathan (March 29, 2008), Adolph Welsch (March 29, 2008)