Rudolph Wilde Park

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Rudolph-Wilde-Park (formerly: Stadtpark Schöneberg ) is located in the Schöneberg district of Berlin . The public green and recreational area bears the name of the first Lord Mayor Rudolph Wilde , on whose initiative the town hall of the then still independent city of Schöneberg was built between 1911 and 1914 .

View from the Carl-Zuckmayer-Brücke into the western part of the park

The elongated, narrow park with an area of ​​seven hectares begins at the town hall and stretches from Martin-Luther-Straße for around 650 meters to the west to the district border at Volkspark Wilmersdorf an der Kufsteiner Straße . Tree-lined promenades, playgrounds and sunbathing lawns, the Carl-Zuckmayer-Brücke monument with the above-ground Rathaus Schöneberg underground station and the deer fountain in the spa park-like eastern section shape the image of the heavily frequented park.

Ice Age gutter

Gently curved lawns
Carl-Zuckmayer-Brücke with subway entrance
Eastern part, view of the bridge with the underground station below

Geologically, the garden monument Rudolph-Wilde-Park is located in a branch of the glacial channel of the Grunewald chain of lakes . The area belonged to a swampy fen that was formed at the end of the last Ice Age and originally flowed from Nollendorfplatz along the Teltowrückens to the Lietzensee . An information board on site explains:

“Deposits made this ditch shallower and shallower and finally the channel split into a chain of small lakes and ponds. The so-called Schwarze Graben , also known as the Hauptgraben or Fauler Graben by the villagers, also flowed through this channel, as the Schöneberg sewage was discharged into it until it was filled in in 1887. "

This remaining drainage channel began south of the former Mühlenberg, on which the town hall was built. The duck pond in front of the underground station Rathaus Schöneberg today is the last eastern waters of the lowland, posing as around 2.5 km long and 150 meters wide inner-city green corridor westward from the adjacent public park Wilmersdorf and Fennsee to the city ring extends . The side channel continues after its interruption through sports fields and enclosed grounds at the Hubertussee and meets the Herthasee at the Koenigssee perpendicular to the Grunewaldrinne.

The park today

The gently curved sunbathing lawns in the western part and the tree-lined paths that are often used by joggers in the elevated peripheral location still show the channel of the meltwater today. The valley character of the park can be seen particularly clearly at the Rathaus Schöneberg underground station.

Carl Zuckmayer Bridge

Memorial plaque for Carl Zuckmayer on the property at Fritz-Elsas-Straße 18

The subway line 4 divides the park into an eastern and a western section. The engineers used the entire width of the park for the layout of the underground station, which with its two glazed sides is open to the park and is one of the most beautiful underground stations in the city. The subway runs underground to the park channel and steps in the park to the surface that has been converted by the station in order to dive back underground on the other side of the station and park. Despite the open location, the station is not on the ground floor, i.e. accessible from both sides of the park, but, like any underground station, has to be accessed from above using stairs. This “top” or the roof of the train station forms the historical “Carl-Zuckmayer-Bridge” with stone figures and vases on an artistic parapet, from which wide stairs lead down to the two parts of the park. The bridge connects the northern and southern parts of Innsbrucker Straße across the park valley, but is closed to through traffic and is reserved for pedestrians and cyclists. It bears its name after the writer Carl Zuckmayer , who worked with Bertolt Brecht as a dramaturge at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1924 and lived directly at the southern end of the bridge.

The bridge and the underground station underwent a lengthy and complex renovation between 1995 and 2005 , which was made more difficult by the still muddy-swampy subsoil. During the construction of the new staircases, for example, it turned out that the oak posts in the swamp under the stairs were rotten and were too short. As a replacement, 21 meter long concrete piles were driven deep into the ground. The necessity for the extensive renovations resulted from a sagging of the area in front of the station by around sixty centimeters; the "Deer Fountain" and the "Milchhäuschen" in the eastern part of the park also threatened to sink underground.

Duck pond and weeping willows

To the west, directly in front of the bridge or in front of the glazing of the underground station, is the little duck pond, which - like the adjoining sunbathing area - has already been raised to the new level. While the eastern part of the park has now been completely renovated, the work on the duck pond took longer and was not finally completed until October 2005 after ten years of construction. The pond was restored to its original function as a “reflecting” connection between the architecture of the station and the landscape garden “in the style of an orangery ”. According to an information sheet on site, the district office planned:

Ententeich in winter from the Carl-Zuckmayer-Brücke over the
underground station
Controversial weeping willow

“The renovation of the duck pond is being carried out in the listed garden ensemble Rudolph-Wilde-Park. The construction work will begin in July 2005. As a prerequisite for the pond renovation, it is necessary that the trees around the pond are cleared. The trees in the shoreline do not correspond to the original layout, but were added later or were created from tolerated wild growth. They impair the effect of the water surface as a mirror of the underground station in the style of an orangery and are in contradiction to the original low bank vegetation. Another important reason for clearing is the entry of organic materials, e.g. B. by leaves, which severely impair the water quality. As part of the renovation of the duck pond, the rear wall is also being revised. The planned construction work will be completed in October 2005. "

In April 2005, fifteen trees were felled around the duck pond in an action that was surprising for the population. Two weeping willows with bird nests, over which a violent argument had broken out, remained on the bank for the time being. While building city councilor Gerhard Lawrentz ( CDU ) and the upper monument protection authority continued to advocate the felling for the reasons described, district mayor Ekkehard Band ( SPD ) supported its preservation. Since the remedial measures and also the “ deforestation on the duck pond” ( Berliner Morgenpost dated April 23, 2005) are financed through “ecological compensation measures ”, the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Berlin (BUND) is considering a lawsuit against the district office for misappropriation of the funds. The quickly formed park initiative Save the Weeping Willows put a poster on a willow with the inscription “This tree remains standing”. According to the Berliner Morgenpost on April 26, 2005, Ingrid Winkler from the initiative protested , among other things, against "the cynical reasoning of the felling by the monument authority, the trees interfering with the effect of the underground station as a monument in the pond's water surface."

Fish and algae in the duck pond

At the end of 2005, construction work on the duck pond was completed. A natural sealing made of clay replaces the previous asphalt basin of the pond. The water supply now comes from a deep well at the southern end of the underground station. The fresh water and the pond water sucked off the bank can be enriched with air oxygen by means of circulation pumps . Together with a biological filter system, the marshy reed belt on the north bank, this measure is intended to keep the nutrient concentration in the pond within limits and thus prevent algae growth.

Spa park character in the eastern part

Eastern part of the park
Park begins at Schöneberg Town Hall
Great Fenn and Mühlenberg, 1860

While work on the duck pond in the western part of the park, which is more “natural landscape”, is still ongoing, the restoration of the smaller eastern part, which takes up around a third of the total area, was completed in 2001. This part begins directly at the Schöneberg town hall and is known as the “architectural part” or “geometric part” with a representative spa park character.

At a historic and renovated milk house, a wide staircase leads down to a large fountain with fountains, in the middle of which there is an 8.80 meter high column crowned by a golden stag, the heraldic animal of Schöneberg. The stag is the work of the sculptor August Gaul .

  • Deer fountain

  • Golden deer

A wide parapet surrounds a meadow as far as the Carl-Zuckmayer Bridge in a semicircle, which is lined with wide tree-lined paths. A public television broadcast was held on this meadow in 1951. Many benches and in summer a beer garden by the milk house invite you to linger.

In addition to the stabilization of the milk house and the well system on the boggy subsoil and their renovation, the renovation also included extensive new plantings and the creation of flower beds. The total renovation costs for this approximately two hundred meter long section of the park were around five million euros. The renovation of the direct train station area was the responsibility of its owner, the BVG .

Founding history of the park

Naming

Around 1900, city planning officer Friedrich Gerlach drew up a development plan for Schöneberg, which provided for a park in the approximately 7.5 hectare Talfenn, which was to continue in the neighboring town to the west to the former Wilmersdorfer See , which was between today's Bundesallee and Uhlandstrasse and was filled in from 1915. The Volkspark Wilmersdorf was therefore long called “Seepark”, while the Schöneberg section was originally designed as “Stadtpark Schöneberg”.

The old station name

The underground station was also called "Stadtpark". The name was changed to Rudolph-Wilde-Park in 1963 when, after the murder of Kennedy, in his honor and in memory of his famous speech on the town hall forecourt on June 26, 1963 with the legendary confession " I am a Berliner ", the square in John F.-Kennedy-Platz was renamed - until then the town hall forecourt had been called Rudolph-Wilde-Platz .

Planning and construction data

The concept of the park design emerged from various award-winning works in a supraregional competition in 1906, the implementation planning of which was carried out by the City Planning Council Gerlach. The winner of the competition was garden architect Otto Kruepper . However, Gerlach did not take on a competition design in its pure form, but rather developed a combination of different contributions that came closest to the design of the second prize winner Fritz Encke - the Fritz-Encke-Volkspark in Cologne-Raderthal is named after Cologne's gardening director Encke . The division of the Schöneberg Park, which still exists today, into the western part with a scenic and the eastern part with a representative character goes back to the original planning, which placed tranquility and nature observation in the foreground and thus, contrary to today's use, excluded play and sport. Playgrounds, if unavoidable, should be integrated as inconspicuously as possible. The garden architects planted around 500 trees up to 20 meters high for the greenery.

The layout of the park posed considerable problems for the planners, as a swamp up to 30 meters deep had to be drained and filled with sand. All the buildings in the park had to be placed on oak posts to anchor them in the muddy ground. The work was carried out between 1910 and 1912 and coordinated with the construction of the subway , in that the excavation of the railway shafts in a total volume of around 850,000 m³ was used to fill the Fenn . The information board recalls the memory of a Schöneberg citizen who experienced the building up close as a child:

“We loved to visit the construction site where the subway was supposed to cross the desolate terrain of the former 'Black Trench'. Here field trains drove masses of earth into the boggy terrain, where the ground wobbled and swayed and where until now nobody could have built a house. So far we children had let off steam. Now, however, as a visible result of a day's work, high walls of sand protruded every evening. But the next morning they were devoured. After a while, however, the boggy subsoil was saturated with earth and came to rest. In front of us was a barren sandy area. "

- Information board at the park

Up to 500 workers were involved in such a "day's work". The landscape parts were essentially ready for the subway opening in 1910, the deer fountain and the stairs to the town hall followed in 1912.

Figure group Triton with nymph

The construction of today's underground line U4 , which at that time represented an independent Schöneberg line separate from the Berlin underground network, began in 1908 and the line was ceremoniously opened on December 1, 1910. The underground station “Stadtpark” (today: Rathaus Schöneberg) and the Carl-Zuckmayer-Brücke go back to a design by the architect Johann Emil Schaudt , who designed the KaDeWe in 1907 . The building is characterized by a strict vertical and horizontal structure. The four groups of figures on the parapets are by Richard Guhr and, according to the information board , represent " tritons from mythical times who carry nymphs on their backs from one bank to the other across the fen area that once consisted of a chain of lakes".

The town hall construction on the southeastern part of the neighboring Mühlenberg followed between 1911 and 1914 under the successor of Rudolph Wilde, the Schöneberg Lord Mayor Alexander Dominicus , who in turn gave the historic Mühlenweg the current name Dominicusstraße . Towards the end of the 1920s, minor alterations and changes took place in the park. It was during this time that the citizens who were looking for open spaces and play facilities for their children began to get annoyed after Schöneberg was almost completely closed. In 1928, the district opened the meadow in the east for general use on three afternoon afternoons.

In 1954, the two female statues Der Morgen and Der Abend by the artist Georg Kolbe , which had stood in the nearby Ceciliengärten settlement (near Innsbrucker Platz ) and after the Second World War on Wittenbergplatz since the late 1920s , came to the park. On the occasion of the 750th anniversary of Berlin in 1987, both sculptures were returned to their original place in the now restored and listed complex of the Cecilien Gardens between Hauptstrasse and Rubensstrasse . The sculpture The Morning was already in 1929 in the German Pavilion at the World Exhibition in Barcelona .

Integration into the district

Path in the western part of the park
Historic town house, Hewaldstrasse
Memorial plaque to the persecution of the Jews

Townhouses and salons

After 1912, the landscape architects increasingly included the adjacent street sections in the park design. The park sides of the two adjacent streets - Freiherr-vom-Stein-Strasse in the north and Fritz-Elsas-Strasse in the south - have been integrated into the path system. Both roads are speed-restricted zones. Between 1919 and 1957 there was a street Am Stadtpark that is now unmarked. The representative former building of the RIAS is on the corner of Kufsteiner Straße and Fritz-Elsas-Straße , and that of the FHW (until 1959: DHfP ) on Badenschen Straße . The predominantly quiet residential areas by the park are today characterized by middle-class tenement houses, which largely replace the magnificent former town houses of the Wilhelminian era , which in large numbers fell victim to the Second World War.

In the immediate vicinity of the park is the Bavarian Quarter , which was designed around 1900 specifically for an upper-class audience. Financially strong sections of the population were to be won over in order to generate more tax income for the independent city of Schöneberg, which was independent until 1920. In addition to the villa district in Grunewald and the venerable Fichtenberg in Steglitz , the Bavarian Quarter was soon one of the most elegant living areas in southwest Berlin.

Elegant facades, huge apartments with salons, charming squares and the city's own subway line characterized the wealth of the district, in which doctors, lawyers, civil servants in higher positions and many prominent artists and intellectuals of the 1920s quickly settled. These included Albert Einstein , Arno Holz , Gottfried Benn and Erwin Piscator . The architecture of the houses was in the style of the buildings of small Bavarian towns and led to the designation Bavarian Quarter or earlier also Little Nuremberg , sometimes called Jewish Switzerland due to the very high proportion of Jewish citizens . The architecture of the underground station and the Carl-Zuckmayer-Brücke as well as the design of the Rudolph-Wilde-Park fit harmoniously into the image of the streets.

against forgetting

Against the forgetting of the deportations , from which the citizens of the Bavarian Quarter were particularly affected, there are 80 memorial plaques and several information boards with orientation plans, which are attached to lamppoles as a comprehensive monument under the title Places of Remembrance in the Bavarian Quarter - Exclusion and Disenfranchisement, Expulsion , Deportation and murder of Berlin Jews in the years 1933 to 1945 are distributed throughout the Bavarian Quarter.

The district, which was 60 percent destroyed in the Second World War, with its street structure and front gardens, has survived to this day, but the destroyed buildings have largely been replaced by unadorned post-war blocks. In his wife's apartment on “Meraner Strasse”, which leads to the park, the rubble aroused the following feelings in the writer Hans Fallada in 1947 :

“The wind sometimes makes the badly stretched cellophane paper rattle in the window frame, a door slams in the burned-out courtyard building. There are always mysterious noises outside. Trickling rubble -? Rats looking for terrible things in the basements -? A destroyed world that every will, every hand is needed to rebuild. "

- The nightmare . 1947

The structures in Rudolph-Wilde-Park survived the Second World War unscathed, with the exception of the central section of the underground station.

swell

Some of the information listed here is based on the representations on the large display board at the park that the Schöneberg District Office has put up. In addition to a detailed “summary” for the English-speaking guests of the park and town hall, the board contains various historical photos. The quote for planning the duck pond comes from a separate information sheet directly at the pond.

literature

  • Horst Günter Lange: The Rudolph-Wilde-Park in Berlin-Schöneberg , on behalf of the Senator for Urban Development and Environmental Protection - Garden Monument Preservation. Berlin 1986
  • Guido Wenzel: Where the ground swayed and swayed. The Schöneberg City Park . In: Rural and Urban Green . District Office Schöneberg, Berlin 1987
  • Herbert Mayer: History lesson in the Bavarian Quarter . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 4, 1998, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 73-78 ( luise-berlin.de ).

Newspaper articles

Web links

Commons : Rudolph-Wilde-Park  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ First public television broadcast in Schöneberger Stadtpark, photo Max Schirner ; German Historical Museum
  2. ↑ Hans Fallada - Places of Living . ( Memento of March 6, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Wenzel-Orf

Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 1 ″  N , 13 ° 20 ′ 32 ″  E

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on June 20, 2005 in this version .