Westend villa colony

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Branitzer Platz

The villa colony Westend (often Alt-West End is called) is a local situation of Berlin hamlet Westend in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf . The villa colony was built in the 1860s between Akazienallee in the north, Ahornallee in the east, plane tree avenue in the south and Kirschenallee in the west. The villa colony with Branitzer Platz in its center is the nucleus of the Westend district, which was formed in 2004 by resolution of the district council assembly . Due to the strict rectangular pattern, the street layout differs from the organically curved street layout of the New West End, which was laid out in the early 20th century and is adjacent to the west .

history

Original parceling plan for the Westend villa colony ( south ) by Martin Gropius, 1866
Oldest villa Lindenallee 7 from 1867
Turkish General Consulate at Kirschenallee 21a

On May 1, 1866, the limited partnership on Actien Charlottenburger Baugesellschaft Westend was founded by Albert Werckmeister (together with Johannes Quistorp , the builder Martin Gropius , the banker Eichhorn and the lottery taker Tuchen). As the parceling plan shows, in which most of the plots are only around 800 m² in size  , the target group was initially the upper middle class . A fine example is the oldest surviving house in the settlement from 1867, Lindenallee 7, which, with its small size and simple style, stands in stark contrast to many of the later villas. The first buyers, however, were mostly from the upper class, wealthy merchants, many from the personal circle of the founders. The location west of the industrial metropolis of Berlin is explained by the fact that the prevailing westerly winds usually carry industrial exhaust gases in an easterly direction and therefore the western suburbs have better air quality. In addition, the settlement was on the heights of the Teltow , about 25 meters above the nearby Spree and the up-and-coming city of Charlottenburg . Without exception, the streets were given the designation of an “ avenue ” in connection with the tree species planted in the street. Branitzer Platz is the center of the settlement. The originally designed much larger square was intended to house a school, a church, the rectory and the market, which is why it was initially called Kirchplatz .

The time of the foundation fell into a phase of uncertainty due to the German-Austrian war . The company ran into financial difficulties after a short time. Only 24 buyers had been found by 1868 out of around 400 projected plots. After Werckmeister's resignation and the subsequent dissolution of the company in 1868, the business was transferred to the Westend-Gesellschaft H. Quistorp & Co. zu Berlin , in which Heinrich Quistorp - younger brother of Johannes Quistorp, who shortly after established the Westend in Szczecin - and Ferdinand Scheibler were personally liable partners.

Heinrich Quistorp now took the further development of Westend into his hands. He was married to an English woman and had lived with her in Glasgow , in the Ibrox district, which is now famous primarily for the Ibrox Park football stadium . In memory of this, he named his English-style property Villa Ibrox . Today there is only one outbuilding (with a tower) on Ulmenallee, which gives an idea of ​​the dimensions of the villa. He also had big plans for Westend. He secured the support of the monarch, King Wilhelm I , by setting up a bust of Wilhelm on Königsplatz, the then eastern end of the plane tree avenue on Ahornallee. While a small waterworks and a gasworks for supplying Westend were planned on the first parceling plan between Rusternallee and Platanenallee, of which the waterworks with a small water tower was also implemented shortly afterwards, Quistorp built a much larger waterworks on Teufelssee, today's nature conservation center Ökowerk Berlin , which at that time could also have supplied the city of Charlottenburg with water. His biggest project was the Germaniaturm , a huge water tower (80 meters high and 60 meters in diameter) on the edge of the settlement on Platanenallee. The tower, which was never completely finished, was demolished in 1892. In the brief economic boom after the Franco-German War , Quistorp also founded numerous companies, including a bank .

With the collapse of Quistorps Bankgesellschaft in the founding crisis of 1873, the Westend-Gesellschaft had to file for bankruptcy. Construction came to a standstill and some villas were vacant. From the end of the 1870s the situation eased again. Due to the population explosion in the Berlin area, Westend experienced an upswing, so that by the turn of the century the originally parceled area was essentially built on. The colony quickly developed into a popular residential area for the wealthy bourgeoisie and senior civil servants. In 1878 the villa colony was incorporated into Charlottenburg.

Traffic and settlement structure

Map with the outlines of the planning area and the Westend conservation area

In contrast to most of Berlin's other villa colonies, such as the older villa colony Lichterfelde-West and the younger villa colony Grunewald , the villa colony Westend is located off the main traffic axes. On the first parceling plan, a green strip was even planned as a separation from Spandauer Damm . Even so, Westend had a transport connection through Germany's first horse-drawn tram line, which ended in 1865 at the nearby Charlottenburg horse station on Spandauer Damm / Sophie-Charlotten-Strasse, when it was founded . On November 1, 1871, the Westend-Gesellschaft opened a connecting line between the horse-drawn train station and Kastanienallee. The company was run by the Berlin Horse Railway , which owned the line in 1878. For the line leading steeply up the Spandauer Berg to Westend, you had to change to one-story wagons with two horses at the horse station. The route was continued in 1879 to the Spandauer Bock restaurant where the Reichsstrasse joins the Spandauer Damm.

On November 15, 1877, the Westend station was opened with the commissioning of the Ringbahn . As early as March 29, 1908, the area was connected to the subway network with the opening of the then line A , the terminus was the then Reichskanzlerplatz station . For the opening of the German Stadium in 1913, the U-Bahn line was extended beyond the Reichskanzlerplatz to the newly built Stadion station and in 1929 to the present end point in Ruhleben . Today the M45 bus runs on Spandauer Damm between Bahnhof Zoo and Johannesstift in Hakenfelde . On Reichsstraße , the 104 bus runs between Brixplatz and Alt-Stralau .

The planning area Branitzer Platz is the defined area "04020312" in the Berlin administration within the district region Westend and essentially comprises the villa colony Westend. The settlement structure of the planning area is mainly characterized as a homogeneous single-family house area and comprises 2460 residential units with 4615 inhabitants on an area of ​​71.6 hectares. 80 percent of the apartments are divided into single-family houses, 15 percent housing developments from the 1950s and five percent housing developments from the 1920s to 1930s.

To this day the area is a preferred residential area. The conservation ordinance for the “Westend” area has been in force for large parts of the villa colony since 1985 in order to preserve its urban character as one of the oldest villa areas in Berlin. The characteristic that is worth preserving is justified by "the characteristic interaction of public green street space with high-quality designed squares and the villa-like individual house development on horticultural land" . The conservation area has a high density of cultural monuments: there are 47 architectural monuments, four monument areas and three garden monuments. As a special feature, the gas street lighting there is still in operation (as of 2018).

Public facilities

Mental hospital in Nussbaumallee

The Charité Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy is located at Eschenallee 3 . It was founded in 1887 as a "private insane asylum", from which in 1910 the "Kuranstalten Westend" emerged. In 1952 the spa facilities were taken over by the Freie Universität , which had been founded four years earlier, and rededicated to the psychiatric clinic and polyclinic. Since June 1, 2003, after the merger of the two Berlin university hospitals of Freie Universität, the Benjamin Franklin Clinic and the Humboldt University - the Charité - the clinic has been officially called "Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Clinic and University Outpatient Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy ”.

Diplomatic missions

Residence of the Ambassador of Kazakhstan at Rusternallee 18

The "diplomatic quarter Westend" includes numerous embassies (B), consulates (K) and residences (R):

Prominent residents

See also

literature

  • Stephan Brandt: Berlin-Westend. Sutton, Erfurt 2009, ISBN 978-3-86680-458-6
  • Harry Balkow-Gölitzer , Bettina Biedermann, Rüdiger Reitmeier, Jörg Riedel: celebrities in Berlin-Westend. be.bra, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-8148-0158-2
  • Helmut Börsch-Supan (text), Michael Haddenhorst (photos): Westend. Nicolai, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-87584-664-8
  • Annemarie Weber (text), Nikolas von Safft (photos): Westend. Edition of the Divan, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-925683-01-1
  • Willy Bark: Chronicle of Alt-Westend. Mittler, Berlin 1937 (modified reprint edition of the Divan, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-925683-00-3 )
  • Nicola Bröcker: Individual country houses for the urban periphery (August Endell's country houses for Westend). In: Nicola Bröcker, Gisela Moeller and Christiane Salge (eds.): August Endell 1871–1925. Architect and form artist. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2012, pp. 236-251, ISBN 978-3-86568-654-1
  • Dorothea Zöbl: The Berlin Westend: On the way to the bourgeois Arcadia. In: Heinz Reif (ed.): Berlin villa life. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 2008, pp. 199-22, ISBN 978-3-7861-2589-1

Web links

Commons : Westend villa colony  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Villenkolonie Westend district office Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
  2. ↑ Zöbl, 2008, p. 201 f. Zöbl also refers to the publication Das Westend and the Housing Question published by Werckmeister, which explains that rents in the nearby city of Charlottenburg are higher than the interest rates to be expected for home ownership in Westend.
  3. ↑ Bark 1937, p. 23 ff.
  4. ^ Author collective: Tram archive 5. Berlin and surroundings . transpress, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-344-00172-8 , pp. 16 .
  5. ↑ Housing structure - planning areas 2010
  6. ↑ Preservation ordinance for the “Westend” area at berlin.de ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 143 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.berlin.de
  7. ↑ Counting according to the outline of the conservation area and the monument map of the State of Berlin
  8. ↑ Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 58 ″  N , 13 ° 16 ′ 16 ″  E