Germany A-Z: Prenzlauer Berg Last month, at the celebrations of 25 years since the end of divided Germany, memories turned to the joyous scenes of Berliners chipping away at the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburger Tor. But the first place East Berliners managed to get through to West Berlin was from the inner suburb of Prenzlauer Berg, on the east side of the Bösebrücke rail bridge on Bornholmer Straße. Following the announcement by the East German government that borders would open, a noisy crowd of citizens gathered at the post that had been sealed to them for 28 years, demanding the guard unit let them through. After tense minutes, and lacking clear official orders despite his desperate phone calls, the post’s officer in charge resolved to open the gate. Today, Platz des 9. November 1989 commemorates the moment the first East Berlin residents were able to cross to West Berlin. Information boards record the history of the border post and the night it reopened forever. It was also in Prenzlauer Berg, at the corner of Eberswalder Straße and Bernauer Straße near the popular weekend market area now known as Mauerpark, that the first formal crossing was created through the Wall, 15 minutes after midnight on November 10. The tumult surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall began the latest phase of the history of what had long been a working-class suburb. In the early 1990s many of the district’s streets were shabby hangouts for a youth frustrated during the declining years of the GDR, in need of social investment. This soon gave way to counter-culture lifestyles. But now parts of Prenzlauer Berg rank among Berlin’s prestigious addresses, thanks to the gentrification that has transformed parts of Berlin since reunification. Kollwitzplatz is the focal point of a new, upwardly mobile Prenzlauer Berg. There is an irony in this. In the playground is a copy of a work by the proletarian artist-sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, who lived in the precinct for more than 50 years and now lends her name to the square. Prenzlauer Berg’s working-class traditions go with the period of Berlin’s growth from the 1870s. The conversion has been profound. Hundreds of the buildings from the late 19th century that survived World War II have been heritage-listed. Kollwitzstraße, now lined with restaurants, bars and cafes, is one of the most leafy and desirable streets of today’s Berlin among young families. Kastanienallee and Sredzkistraße (linked by Oderberger Straße) are streetscapes for high-value apartments and eateries, cafes and occasional boutique shop fronts. Nearby, on Knaackstraße, there is a darker past to remember. On a hill once dotted with windmills, the city authorities in 1875 built a water tower that is now an attractively restored industrial monument, surrounded by a small public garden. But it was also the site of what was probably the first Nazi concentration camp. Dissidents were confined, tortured and killed in the water tower’s engine house and boiler room from 1933 and a memorial to the victims today marks the spot. Another monument to the industrial heritage of the Prenzlauer Berg is the Kulturbrauerei, the former Schultheiss beer site on Schönhauser Allee that in its heyday was one of the world’s great breweries. It has been transformed to a centre for performance, cinema, bars and shops, with a small tourist office and a museum maintaining a standing exhibition on everyday life during the GDR period. Prenzlauer Berg shares Berlin’s green heritage of parks and gardens, but not through the foresight and planning of Berlin’s 19th century landscape architects. Volkspark Prenzlauer Berg was created in the 1960s from three mounds of World War II rubble from the centre of Berlin. There were already hills and gardens on the 30 hectare site but these were enlarged by millions of cubic metres of debris. Walking paths were laid and small sculptures were added in the 1970s. Prenzlauer Berg retains some of its urban grit around busy Schönhauser Allee, Eberswalder Straße and Danziger Straße. Here, budget visitor accommodation, largely aimed at the young, has increased to balance the several mid-priced small hotels and pensions around Kastanienallee. But it is impossible to forget the Wall. Bernauer Straße was one of the centres of the drama surrounding the raising of the border. A string of open-air memorials and exhibition sites known as Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer is linked to the reconstructed documentation centre opposite. Between Nordbahnhof and Brunnenstraße are the remains of barriers, information boards, audio and visual posts and memorials to victims. Small plates on the footpath mark some of the successful escapes through the barrier. An exhibit in the Nordbahnhof station subway explains the strange divided rail network of the Cold War years and how the guarded ‘ghost’ stations of East Berlin were closed to the West Berlin rail passengers who travelled under East Berlin territory. ravenguides
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 12:17:09 +0000
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