Potsdam Gate

View of the gatehouses from Potsdamer Platz with the traffic tower in the foreground, around 1930

The Potsdamer Tor of Berlin was part of the Berlin customs wall (excise wall ). It was built in 1734 and replaced in 1824 by a new building by Karl Friedrich Schinkel . The remains of the foundations of the two gatehouses were demolished in 1961.

The old Potsdamer Tor from 1734

The Potsdamer Tor was built in 1734 as part of the construction of the Berlin excise wall, which encompassed the newly created electoral cities and other suburbs and as a result of which the old fortress walls were razed . The Akzisemauer limited by at this point I. Friedrich Wilhelm again extended Friedrichstadt . The gate, which marked the passage through the customs wall in the direction of the royal seat of Potsdam , took on the function of the previous Leipzig Gate on the same street from Berlin to Potsdam between Friedrichstadt and Friedrichswerder - for a long time the old Potsdamer Gate was therefore synonymous with the New Leipzig Designated gate . The old Leipziger Tor near the later Spittelmarkt replaced the Gertraudentor of the old city wall of Berlin / Cölln after the Berlin fortress was built in the 17th century .

The Potsdamer Tor, built in 1734, had sandstone pillars decorated with columns and trophies in the Baroque style. On its inside, as part of the expansion of Friedrichstadt, an octagonal square, the Octagon , was created as the end point of the old Leipziger Strasse, which was called Leipziger Platz in memory of the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig in 1813 . On the outside, the Ringweg around the excise wall crossed the Berlin-Potsdamer Chaussee , which began there and was expanded as the Prussian State Office from 1788 . Today the part of it that starts at Potsdamer Platz is Alte Potsdamer Straße .

The new Potsdamer Tor from 1824

View to the southwest over Leipziger and Potsdamer Platz with the two gatehouses from 1824 into (today's) Alte Potsdamer Strasse

Since the old gate had become dilapidated , the New Potsdamer Thor was built in 1824 by Karl Friedrich Schinkel , who was also responsible for many other representative buildings of this time in Berlin . The two gate pillars were replaced by two new gatehouses in the classical style, which were built a little towards the city at the exit of Leipziger Platz. Schinkel built two buildings facing each other, each with a row of four columns in front of them in the Doric style . In the place of the old Potsdamer Tor he put a green area to receive the Berlin visitor. The facility first called the square in front of Potsdamer Thor was renamed Potsdamer Platz in 1831.

“That of Schinkel's buildings which contains most of the direct application of Greek forms is the Potsdamer Thor in Berlin; but it is therefore not yet a repetition of a specific ancient building, as one can see in England and elsewhere. The conditions were very suitable for such a close connection to ancient structures. The gate is not actually a gate, but a barrier, a cast-iron grating, but on the city side the room is enclosed by two identical buildings; one of them is the guard, the opposite the customs house. The need required only one storey, and for both purposes an existing portico was in a high degree appropriate: in fact, a case would seldom be found in modern architecture which fitted so closely to the conditions of the ancient structure. The chosen style is Doric , as it seems to correspond perfectly to the concept and essence of a guard. Here we actually see for the first time the Doric style revived in its purity after the best classical patterns, a purity that wants to say even more here than in any other style, precisely because the Doric architecture with the simplest means is still in the greatest and most conscientious closeness of the construction and renouncing all more decorative elements, is based in its hard and austere beauty on a strict as well as fine development of the proportions and forms. One only needs to compare this gate with the Brandenburg Gate , which is barely 1000 paces away and which is said to have been built in the Doric style, in order to illustrate the great gap between the art education of our century and the previous one. "

- Appreciation of the gate in the obituary for Schinkel in the Allgemeine Bauzeitung (1842)

The two gatehouses were preserved when the Berlin customs wall was demolished in 1867 and, with their classicist architecture, shaped the squares on both sides of the now open gateway.

The southern gatehouse stood in front of the Hotel Fürstenhof , which was expanded into a luxury hotel from 1906–1907 and had the address Leipziger Platz 1 . It was owned by the Reich Treasury and housed in 1937 pay phones, a public telephone station, a telegram acceptance and the pneumatic tube - and telegraph -Betriebsstelle the post office W9.

The northern gatehouse stood in front of the Palace Hotel, built between 1892 and 1893, and had the address Leipziger Platz 20 . It was owned by the Deutsche Reichspost -Direktion Berlin, under management by the Pneumatic Post and Telegraph Post Office W9 (Potsdamer Bahnhof), the telegraphic dispatch was housed here. Historical recordings from the 1930s often show ambulatory newspaper vendors between the pillars. The northern gatehouse was thus an internal transfer station for the pneumatic tube carriers , while the southern gatehouse was used by the public.

During the Second World War , the two gatehouses of the New Potsdamer Tor were almost completely destroyed, with only the foundations and stumps remaining as ruins. These remains stood in the way of the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and were razed on this occasion.

Controversy about the reconstruction of gate buildings after 1990

In the course of the rebuilding of Potsdamer Platz and Leipziger Platz in the 1990s, two new, open entrances to the underground S-Bahn and regional train station Potsdamer Platz were built exactly where the two gatehouses stood .

Two simple pavilion structures originally planned for these locations and designed by Oswald Mathias Ungers were not implemented.