Road of Nations
The Street of Nations is one of the most famous streets in Chemnitz . It connects Neumarkt in the city center with Emilienstraße in Schloßchemnitz and crosses Brückenstraße , Müllerstraße and August-Bebel-Straße. The part between Brückenstraße and Theaterplatz was designed as a shopping street in the GDR ; the street still fulfills this function to a limited extent.
course
Starting from Neumarkt, the Street of Nations leads as a pedestrian zone in a north-easterly direction to Brückenstraße, only trams, buses and taxis are allowed to run here. On the left you pass the Galerie Roter Turm shopping arcade , the Red Tower as the last remaining part of the city wall and the city hall with city hall park and the adjacent Mercure Hotel Kongress . To the right is the old post office building, which was renovated and rebuilt in 2006 to accommodate the district court, the Deutsche Post branch and retail stores, followed by the Rawema house.
From the intersection with Brückenstraße you can see the Karl Marx Monument on the left . After the intersection, the lanes for trams and buses are separated from those for private transport. On the left are some shops and the house of the Chemnitz Chamber of Commerce and Industry . The right side of the street is characterized by three, comb-like apartment blocks with a concluding street-side development for shops, with the Café Moscow marking the end .
Then the Theaterplatz joins, on the opposite, right-hand side, the Carolastraße. The tram tracks have a branch to Carolastraße at this intersection. In addition to the Theaterplatz with the opera house , the König-Albert-Museum, seat of the Chemnitz art collections , and the Petrikirche , the Bauhaus-style Hotel Chemnitzer Hof, built in 1930, completes the square. This is followed by an inner-city green area with the Schillerplatz, which was inaugurated in 1859 . On the opposite side is the Böttcherbau of the Technical University with the seat of the rector. At the junction of Georgstrasse is the bus station on the left , the starting point for numerous city, regional and long-distance bus routes.
After the bus station, the street is lined with numerous houses from the Wilhelminian era, but from here on the street of the nations no longer has any significance for the whole city. It only has a connection function to August-Bebel-Straße and Müllerstraße, which are both federal highways.
history
The old city center of Chemnitz was largely destroyed by bombing during the Second World War . There was a dispute over the reconstruction between the advocates of two different city plans. The "wrestlers" pleaded for a reconstruction of the city according to the historical city plan with the ring road surrounding the inner city, the "crusaders" on the other hand fought for two spacious streets with a large intersection, which should form the new city center. With the renaming of the city to Karl-Marx-Stadt and the associated elevation to the socialist model city, the model of socialist urban development was to be realized from now on , in contrast to the previous small-scale redevelopment such as on the Innere Klosterstrasse . This was officially established in 1960 with the general development plan, which only rarely used the old floor plans as a basis.
The new city center was to be built at the intersection of the two main axes, Straße der Nations and Karl-Marx-Allee. In contrast to Karl-Marx-Allee as a political demonstration street, the Street of the Nations was to become a new shopping street with overall city significance. In addition to shops, the concepts for the main thoroughfare also included apartments, which was intended to manifest the new socialist social order. The model for the construction of this new inner-city axis was the Rotterdam Lijnbaan , inaugurated in 1953, Europe's first pedestrian zone. Around 1960 the building area up to Theaterplatz was built, the building of the council of the district as well as the Chamber of Industry and Commerce should be the link to the Theaterplatz.
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 50 ′ 11.1 " N , 12 ° 55 ′ 30.7" E