Mönchsturm (Berlin)

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View of the Berlin Fortress with the Mönchsturm, 1688. Detail from the Berlin view by Johann Bernhard Schultz.
Mönchsturm at the confluence of the moat in front of the Berlin city wall in the Spree, diagonally opposite the New Lusthaus, excerpt from the Memhardt plan.
The monk's tower was demolished after 1704 to make way for the construction of residential houses. Graphics: Johann Friedrich Walther, Georg Paul Busch.

The Mönchsturm in Berlin was part of the medieval city ​​fortifications of the twin cities of Berlin-Cölln . He rose on the eastern bank of the Spree at the mouth of the old city moat in the Spree. (Today: western end of Anna-Louisa-Karsch-Strasse .) The tower, which can be clearly seen on various older Berlin cityscapes, was demolished after 1704.

The Berlin medieval city wall

The twin cities of Berlin and Cölln had been surrounded by a city wall since the 13th century. The most important evidence for the existence and the course of the medieval city wall was the oldest known city map of Berlin, the Memhardt Plan , which depicts the topography of the twin cities around 1650. It shows that the medieval city wall on the eastern (Berlin) side was surrounded in a large arch from the Stralauer Tor northwest to the confluence with a double moat that emptied into the Spree behind the Spandauer Tor . Even the oldest fortification encompassed both parts of the twin city of Berlin-Cölln with a total length of 2.5 kilometers with an area of ​​around 70 hectares as a whole: Berlin in the east and north as the "Berlin Wall", Cölln in the south and southwest as the "Cölln Wall." ".

Condition of the city wall

Various excavations since 1948 have confirmed the course and also approximately the frequently cited description of the city wall by F. Holtze from 1859. After that, the wall was usually six feet thick (about 1.88 meters), but only three feet in some places , with low buttresses, some of which were added later, without careful foundations and without elaborate battlements. In the wall there were several towers up to 25 meters high and several half-towers open inside, so-called soft houses (Wikhäuser) at irregular intervals .

The monk's tower

In the 15th century, two trenches about 15 meters wide were dug in front of the wall, separated by a 7.50 to 10 meter wide earth wall. The so-called Berliner Stadtgraben, which ran around Berlin to the east and north, was only a "flood channel of around 1500 meters", while the so-called Cöllnische Stadtgraben ("Spree Canal") was primarily used to drain off the flood (Mühlendamm) with a flood lock.

At the north-western confluence of the double weir ditch into the Spree (at the location of today's Friedrichsbrücke near the former location of the Berlin Stock Exchange) the Mönchsturm rose to secure this location. It got its name from the "weir" which blocked the confluence of the city moat into the Spree at this point and which was also known as "Mönch" or "Mönnig" in medieval German. The monk's tower was a round tower on a strongly protruding foundation. In contrast to the oldest parts of the city wall, which rested on granite stones - it was only founded on field stone masonry and built in brick . This could indicate that it was built relatively late, possibly in the 15th century.

A pole barrier, the older substructure, ran through the Spree to the southwest of the Mönchsturm to the Cölln city fortifications.

When the Berlin Fortress was built by the Great Elector in 1658, the Mönchsturm (like the other towers of the Berlin city wall) lost its original function as a watchtower. It was later used as a powder magazine. When after 1704 the Heiliggeistviertel in Berlin received a denser residential development, the Mönchsturm was demolished.

literature

  • F. Adler: On the history of the Berlin city wall. In: Märkische Forschungen (Volume 8) 1863, pp. 213–220.
  • Richard Borrmann: The architectural and art monuments of Berlin. Verlag Julius Springer, Berlin 1893, (in particular: pp. 141 ff.).
  • Friedrich W. Holtze: History of the fortification of Berlin. In: Writings of the Association for the History of the City of Berlin. Booklet X, Berlin 1874, pp. 3-24.
  • Hans Jahn: Berlin in the year of the death of the great elector. Explanations of the perspective plan by Johann Bernhard Schultz from 1688. In: Writings of the Association for the History of Berlin. Issue 55.Berlin 1935.
  • Müller, Adriaan: nobleman, citizen, farmer, beggar man. Haude & Spener, 1979, ISBN 3-7759-0202-3 .
  • Heinz Schierer: The fortification of Berlin at the time of the Great Elector. Publishing house ES Mittler and Son, Berlin 1939.
  • Heinz Seyer: Berlin in the Middle Ages. The creation of the medieval city. VEB German publishing house of the sciences. Berlin 1987.
  • Herbert Schwenk: So the two cities were ... well insured all around. In: Berlin monthly journal. Issue 9, 1998, Edition Luisenstadt, pp. 12–20.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anneliese Bretschneider: The Brandenburg language landscape. Verlag W. Schmitz, 1981, p. 366.
  2. ↑ On the history of the Berlin city wall. In: Märkische Forschungen (Volume 8). 1863, p. 214.
  3. ↑ Müller, Adriaan, Edelmann ao: Citizens, Bauer, Bettelmann. Haude & Spener, 1979, p. 120.
  4. ↑ Johann Friedrich Walther: The good hand of God about the garrison church and school stalls in the Royal Prussian Residency Berlin, or historical news, when and how the garrison church and school were first founded and the same stalls under divine blessing up to the present Time has been received. Berlin 1737, p. 5.

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '14.8 "  N , 13 ° 24' 3.4"  E