Luisenstadt Canal

Luisenstadt Canal
Luisenstadt Canal, around 1905, view from Oranienplatz over the Luisenufer and St. Michael Church in northeastern direction
location	Berlin
length	2.3 km
Built	1848-1852
Covered in	1926
Beginning	Urban port
The End	Spree at the Schilling Bridge

The Luisenstädtischer Canal is a historic inner-city canal in Berlin's Luisenstadt , which connected the Spree with the Landwehr Canal . It was opened in 1852 and ran through the later districts of Kreuzberg and Mitte . In 1926 the canal was filled in except for the Engelbecken and transformed into a garden. With the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the border between East and West Berlin ran along the northern part of the canal until 1990 . The gardens , which had been destroyed since the Second World War , have been reconstructed in sections since 1991 .

planning

Course of the former Luisenstadt Canal (light blue) in the streetscape of the 2000s; The former sector border between East and West Berlin is shown in red

In 1825, chief building officer Johann Carl Ludwig Schmid prepared a development plan for the Köpenicker Feld, the southern part of Luisenstadt. Even in these first plans, which were never implemented, a north-south canal was planned for drainage and as a waterway. After Friedrich Wilhelm IV became King of Prussia in 1840 , the urban planning of Berlin was entrusted to the landscape architect and town planner Peter Joseph Lenné .

Based on Schmid's plans, Lenné conceived the draft of a development plan that better considered the space requirements of industrial and railway areas and was supposed to be more socially balanced. He wanted to make the Landwehr Canal navigable and take over the connecting canal from the Landwehr Canal to the Spree that Schmid had planned. For Lenné, the social tasks of urban planning were very important - he considered green spaces for local recreation and streets and squares with a high residential value as necessary for a functioning urban quarter.

In this sense, the Luisenstadt Canal should be more than just a waterway, it should rather be a street designed as an ornamental train to form the design center of the new district. So Lenné determined the course and design of the Luisenstadt Canal in his work Projected Jewelry and Border Lines from Berlin with the immediate vicinity , published in 1839/1840 .

construction

The dead of October
16, 1848

The construction of the Luisenstadt Canal began in 1848, two years after the Landwehr Canal was completed. The canal was supposed to serve as a transport route for building materials, to drain the city and to channel the floods of the Spree. Above all, however, the construction served as a job creation measure, around 5,000 workers were employed without any major technical aids. In October 1848 there were bloody riots by workers for fear of losing their jobs to construction machinery.

The canal was 2.3 kilometers long, 22.5 meters wide and 1.5 meters deep in medium water. The clinker bank walls, which are atypical for Berlin, towered over the water level by around three meters. It had only a minimal incline and was designed for ships up to a deadweight of 175  tons . The promenade was planted with "Kaiser linden ". At the point where the canal flowed through the then Berlin customs wall , a new gate, the water gate, was also built in 1848.

course

Cöpenicker lock

Luisenstadt Canal with Angel Basin , around 1900. View from St. Michael Church in southwest direction

Water gate, 1865

Wassertorplatz, looking towards Kottbusser Tor: on the right the water gate bridge, in the middle the swing bridge of the connecting railway , on the left the elevated railway viaduct, 1901

Elisabethufer , Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , 1913

The canal began at what was then Urbanhafen and ran in a north-easterly direction parallel to the road grid. It was divided by the Wassertorplatz , where there was a smaller pool, the Oranienplatz, the cast-iron Waldemar Bridge along the Waldemarstrasse and a larger water basin, the Engelbecken. At the Engel basin the canal branched off at right angles to the east and ran in an arc to the northeast to the Cöpenicker lock and the Spree. The lock was north of the Cöpenicker bridge . It served to overcome the different water level between the Spree and the Luisenstadt Canal and the Landwehr Canal and thus fulfilled the same purpose as the upper lock in the Landwehr Canal .

The angel basin is named after the Archangel St. Michael , whose statue is today again as a copy on the ridge at the front of the St. Michael Church . The original statue of the Archangel, created by August Kiß , in flight from the canal, was oriented towards the political "West" and was dismantled during the GDR times for ideological reasons. The Saint Michael Church is a result of Allied air raids during the Second World War a ruin .

The relatively distinctive lines with the right-angled bends at the Urbanhafen and the Engelbecken were due to the city's layout. From the point of view of shipping, it made little sense. The canal was created together with the late Classicist buildings erected on its riverside streets and together with them it also formed an urban ensemble. It is of urban planning significance insofar as it was an attempt to use water as an urban design element.

The street to the northwest between Oranienplatz and today's Heinrich-Heine-Platz was originally called Luisenufer and has been named Legiendamm after the union leader Carl Legien since July 31, 1947 . The street opposite, southeast of the canal and Engelbecken, has been called Elisabethufer since 1849 . Also on July 31, 1947, it was renamed Leuschnerdamm in honor of Wilhelm Leuschner . The houses on Legiendamm and Leuschnerdamm have consecutive, complementary house numbers. Houses on Legiendamm only have even house numbers, those on Leuschnerdamm only have odd house numbers.

As early as 1937, Luisenufer and Elisabethufer were each divided into two sections. The street names change at Oranienplatz. Since 1947 the continuation of the Legiendamm up to the Landwehrkanal Segitzdamm (after the SPD politician Martin Segitz ), that of the Leuschnerdamm is called Erkelenzdamm (after Anton Erkelenz , a member of the Reichstag of the German Democratic Party ).

bridges

Over time, the two sides of the canal were connected by a total of twelve bridges, including some pedestrian bridges. These were viewed from the Spree to the Landwehr Canal:

01. the twin bridge, 02. the Köpenicker bridge , 03. the Melchior Bridge, 04. the Adalbertbrücke , 05. the Elisabeth Bridge, 06. the Queen's Bridge, 07. the Waldemar Bridge ,

08. the Oranienbrücke, 09. the Luisenbrücke, 10. the new water gate bridge, 11. the swing bridge of the connecting railway , 12. the viaduct of the elevated railway ,

12. the old water gate bridge, 13. the Luisensteg , a jacketed overpass of gas pipes just before the canal joins the Landwehr Canal at Urbanhafen, which was used as a footbridge.

Of these bridges, only the Waldemar Bridge , which was reconstructed in 1995, has survived in its old form .

Green area

Barth's trick

The canal opened on May 15, 1852. It was never of great importance for water traffic. Due to the scarce traffic and the low gradient, the water was in the canal, which led to strong odor nuisance for the population. For these reasons, the Berlin magistrate decided on January 16, 1926 to have the canal backfilled - this measure was also a job creation program. Excavation material from the construction of the Gesundbrunnen-Neukölln U-Bahn ( GN-Bahn , later U-Bahn 8 ) was used to backfill the canal , its construction work in the nearby Reichenberger Straße, Moritzplatz and Neanderstraße (since 1960: Heinrich -Heine-Strasse ) were in progress.

In line with Lenné's idea of ​​green areas close to home for the densely populated district, the canal was redesigned into a green area under the direction of Erwin Barth , the newly appointed city garden director of Greater Berlin , and Leo Kloss. He solved the difficulty of an elongated and only 22 meter wide green area with a trick: he did not allow the canal to be filled to street level, but only to just above the original waterline. The brick walls were preserved, and Barth had parapets built for them. In order to make the green area varied, he divided it into ten sections with an independent character. He created sitting areas, verandas , children's playgrounds and fountains, even narrow water channels - the subject of water was decisive for Barth's plans. In between there were paved paths, lawns, flowerbeds, flowering bushes, trees and various ornamental gardens with dahlias , roses , forest and alpine plants.

The angel basin was preserved as a water surface, all around arbours. In the basin itself there were 16 fountains that were illuminated in the evening . The green area was completed in 1932 - but not as originally planned for reasons of cost. In particular, the southern section did not fully correspond to the original plans.

and display information about the image

Angel basin with 16 water fountains and the surrounding mix of new and old architecture

post war period

Covered canal in the death strip east of Adalbertstrasse, 1986

Death strip on the filled angel basin, 1987

After the Allied air raids in the final years of the war , a lot of rubble had to be cleared away. It poured numerous mountains of rubble and filled for the deeper parts of the Luisenstädtischer channel with debris.

In the post-war period , the border with East Berlin ran between the Spree and Waldemarstrasse; the part to the south of Waldemarstrasse belonged to West Berlin . After the wall was built in 1961, the canal and the basin were completely filled and leveled. A section of the death strip of the Berlin Wall was created on the surface .

For the International Building Exhibition 1984 (IBA) in Kreuzberg, the southern part of the garden was restored and given the shape it still largely has today.

After the turn

Aerial view of the Angel Basin, below the St. Michael Church, 2016

Green corridor along the Luisenstadt Canal, in the background the Engelbecken and St. Michael Church, 2004

Shortly after the political change and the reunification of Berlin in 1990, efforts were made to unify the two halves of the Luisenstadt Canal again and to restore the old design from the prewar period. As part of garden archaeological investigations, test drillings were carried out and it was unexpectedly found that the quay walls and the gardens were only slightly damaged; even remnants of vegetation could be found. Since 1991, the green space has been restored under the management of the Schumacher office and has since been opened to the public in sections. In April 1993 the evergreen garden between Engelbecken and Adalbertstrasse was reopened and in June 1995 the rose garden between Engelbecken and Waldemarbrücke.

As early as the early 1990s, the partial excavation of the Engel basin began as a search excavation. The reconstruction of the Engel basin came to a standstill due to financial problems. The basin therefore remained for a few years in a state that was only dredged along the edges, where the groundwater was already emerging. It was not until 1999 that the central area was also completely excavated. In the spring of 2006, the pool area was deepened and the dilapidated, partially slipped pool enclosure was rebuilt as a concrete enclosure for stabilization.

The reconstruction measures in spring 2006 also included the restoration of the 500-meter-long canal section further east between Adalbertstrasse and Melchiorstrasse and, in 2008, the remaining 200-meter-long section between Melchiorstrasse and Köpenicker Strasse as a green area. Since the 2010s, a footpath has led under a four-row lime tree avenue on around 2.5  hectares of park area in the former bed of the canal towards the Spree. To the south-east, the new green space is supplemented by the neglected area to be renovated at Künstlerhaus Bethanien and the redesigned Mariannenplatz .

The Luisenstadt Canal is included in Berlin's state monument list as a garden monument that is worth protecting .

literature

• Klaus Duntze: The Luisenstadt Canal. Berlin Story Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86368-014-5 .
• Klaus von Krosigk: Current tasks of the garden monument maintenance in Berlin . In: Berlin-Brandenburg Construction Industry. BBW, Vol. 44 (No. 14), 1993, ( ISSN  0940-3825 ), pp. 311-314.
• Klaus Lingenauber: The former Luisenstadt Canal, city district Mitte. In: Bund Heimat und Umwelt in Deutschland (Ed.): White paper on historical gardens and parks in the new federal states. 2nd, revised edition. Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-925374-69-8 , p. 32 f.
• Werner Natzschka: Berlin and its waterways. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-428-02374-9 .
• Horst Schumacher: Green corridor out of the water - Comments on the restoration of the Berlin green corridor Luisenstädtischer Kanal, whose history was and remains changeable . In: Garden & Landscape. Volume 103 (No. 10), 1993, ( ISSN  0016-4720 ), pp. 23-29.
• Herbert Schwenk: Lexicon of Berlin Urban Development. Haude & Spener, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-7759-0472-7 .
• Jürgen Wenzel: Peter Joseph Lenné - urban planner with cosmopolitan intent. In: Florian von Buttlar: Peter Joseph Lenné. Volkspark and Arcadia. ed. Senate Department for Urban Development and Environmental Protection. Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-87584-277-4 , pp. 73-77.

Web links

Commons : Luisenstädtischer Kanal  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Project Luisenstädtischer Kanal of the Hunsrück elementary school Berlin
• Bürgererverein Luisenstadt e. V.
• Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
• Article on the restoration of the park from 2005 from the Berlin city newspaper Scheinschlag
• Luisenstädtischer Kanal on landscape architecture today
• Luisenstädtischer Kanal: Year 1926 in the online exhibition 100 Years of Landscape Architecture from the Association of German Landscape Architects

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cöpenicker Strasse in Luisenstadt at köpenicker-strasse.de, accessed on January 29, 2020
2. ↑ H.-J. Uhlemann: Berlin and the Märkische waterways . P. 100
3. ^ To Berlin and its buildings , edited and published by the Berlin Architects 'Association and the Berlin Architects' Association. Berlin 1896, Volume 1, pp. 167-170
4. ^ Name according to the Grosser Verkehrs-Plan von Berlin and its suburbs in 1902, Verlag der Liebelschen Buchhandlung
5. ↑ Kathrin Chod: Waldemar Bridge . In: Hans-Jürgen Mende , Kurt Wernicke (Hrsg.): Berliner Bezirkslexikon, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg . Luisenstadt educational association . Haude and Spener / Edition Luisenstadt, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89542-122-7 ( luise-berlin.de - as of October 7, 2009).
6. ↑ Richard Eger: What does the Luisenstadt Canal do? The disadvantages of the fill . In: Vossische Zeitung , July 1, 1925.

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 21 ″  N , 13 ° 25 ′ 7 ″  E

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on June 17, 2005 .

	This article is available as an audio file:
	Save | Information  | 17:25 min (7.9 MB) Text of the spoken version (December 12, 2014)
	More information on spoken Wikipedia