Magdeburger Platz (Berlin)
| Magdeburg Square | |
|---|---|
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 Magdeburg Square |
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| Basic data | |
| place | Berlin |
| District | Zoo |
| Created | 1872 |
| Confluent streets |
Genthiner Strasse, Lützowstrasse, Kluckstrasse |
| use | |
| User groups | Pedestrians , cyclists , road traffic |
| Space design | Hermann Blankenstein |
The Magdeburg Place is a public green space in Berlin 's Mitte district . The square is located on the southern edge of the Tiergarten district and is framed by the rows of houses on Genthiner, Lützowstrasse and Kluckstrasse.
The square, which is around 100 meters long and 30 meters wide today, dates back to 1872 and was laid out as space A of department V in the Berlin development plan. Since July 23, 1874, it has borne the name of the then Prussian provincial capital and today's Saxony-Anhalt state capital Magdeburg . Until June 5, 1935, the adjacent Kluckstrasse also bore the name of the Mighty Castle as Magdeburger Strasse .
History, market hall V
Building history and hall
In the plans of the architect Hermann Blankenstein, Magdeburger Platz was planned as the location for one of the 14 Berlin market halls , which the Berlin magistrate had built between 1886 and 1892 for hygienic reasons and to optimize the food supply in the fast-growing city.
Since the residents resisted the development of the square with objections, construction work did not begin until April 3, 1888, contrary to the original plans. The market hall was built as a free-standing structure in the middle of the square and covered about a fifth of the square. She got the name Market Hall V . After a very short construction period, the hall began operating on November 21 of the same year, 1888. The hall covered a rectangle 68.54 meters long and 28.54 meters wide. Four entrances led in the middle of each side into the market hall, which was surrounded by a two-meter-wide sidewalk and a 6.5-meter-wide driveway.
The residents' protests had forced the city to reduce the floor space of the market hall to the bare minimum. Since the magistrate did not want to forego valuable stand space, the building owners reduced the space for the administration of the market hall, the market supervisor and the market police as well as the toilets to a minimum and built only a coffee kitchen instead of a dining restaurant as in the other market halls.
Markthalle V, a particularly carefully designed example of Berlin market hall architecture because of its free-standing location, was destroyed in World War II and not rebuilt. Today there are no remains of the building. The entire area serves as a green area again.
Capitalist symbol in Benjamin
The philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin was born at Magdeburger Platz 4 on July 15, 1892. In his stories from Berlin in the 1920s, the market hall had a decisive influence on his political socialization . In his images of childhood in Berlin, the market hall becomes a symbol of natural capitalism, which he experienced at an early age . Bernd Witte, whose habilitation thesis was about Benjamin's literary criticism, writes:
“Berlin as the capital of capitalism understood as a cult religion, this motif has been worked out into an emblematic image in the Paris version of 'Berlin Childhood' under the heading 'Market Hall' . [GS VII, 402] This, too, is a distorted name that reads 'Mark - Thalle', suggests the Greek word ' Thalassa / sea' and thus the moist element in which capitalism, understood as a natural myth of increase, is at home. Alluding to Bachofen's treatise on 'mother right', the central shopping location on Magdeburger Platz has been transformed back into that 'prehistoric' swampy world in which market women as priestesses of the commercially available Ceres , market women of all field and tree fruits, all edible birds, fish and mammals, matchmakers 'Untouchable knitted woolen' colossi appear. Unmistakably in these mythical invocations are the allusions to the conditions of hetarianism , which - and this is the critical moment of this text - is located in the heart of the commodity society itself. In the optics of the child - tellingly, it is called the 'brood' here - it is nothing more than the insane natural urge to reproduce that is inherent in all living beings: 'It did not boil, swell and swell under the hem of their skirts, it wasn't that truly fertile soil? Didn't a market god himself throw the goods in her lap? ' An experience that goes deeper than that of the average citizen, namely that of the child, reveals the mythical structures that determine the most advanced form of society based on the laws of the free market and networked with the latest communication technologies. "
Magdeburger Platz in the 21st century
The square is designed as a park-like green area, areas with old trees alternate with strips of green lawn. In the middle, on the square of the historic market hall, there is a children's playground . Among the surrounding houses, the Wilhelminian style architecture of the Magdeburger Platz 3 apartment building, which the architect J. C. Forkert built in 1873/1874 and which is a listed building, stands out. The Berlin Labor Court and the Berlin-Brandenburg Regional Labor Court are housed in the building complex Magdeburger Platz 1 at the corner of Genthiner Strasse .
Due to its close proximity to the problem area Potsdamer / Genthiner Strasse, one of the Berlin neighborhood managements bears the name Magdeburger Platz. It's not right on the square, but on Pohlstrasse.
In September 2015, the entire Magdeburger Platz was closed due to massive pollution from prostitution and drug use . After almost a year of closure, the site was released again and has only been closed at night since then.
literature
- Walter Benjamin : Berlin childhood around nineteen hundred. With an afterword by Theodor W. Adorno and an editorial postscript by Rolf Tiedemann , final version and fragments from earlier versions. Frankfurt a. M. 1987.
Web links
- Magdeburg Square. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near Kaupert )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bernd Witte: Pictures of Memory. Walter Benjamin's childhood in Berlin . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Quote p. 10
- ^ District management at Magdeburger Platz
- ↑ Syringes instead of sand molds: District blocks playground. In: Der Tagesspiegel . September 25, 2015, accessed July 4, 2016 .
- ↑ Magdeburger Platz reopened. quartiersmanagement-berlin.de, August 24, 2016, accessed on February 26, 2019 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 13 ″ N , 13 ° 21 ′ 38 ″ E