Friedrichshain

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History

The largely working-class district was created in 1920 when Greater Berlin was established by referendum, incorporating several surrounding settlements. Friedrichshain united the Frankfurter Vorstadt, already part of Berlin, and the villages of Boxhagen and Stralau. It took its name (meaning ‘Frederick’s Grove’) from the Volkspark (‘People’s Park’), which was planned in 1840 to commemorate the centenary of Frederick the Great’s coronation. Much of the district was settled in the rapid industrialization of the 19th and early 20th centuries, led by growth in manufacturing and crafts. It owed much to the opening of the railway line between Berlin and Frankfurt (Oder) in 1846 (which terminated near the site of today’s Berlin Ostbahnhof), and the opening of the first waterworks in 1865 at Stralauer Tor. In 1874 the Krankenhaus im

Friedrichshain was opened, Berlin’s first hospital beside the university clinic Charité. In the early 1900s, the district’s largest employer was theKnorr-Bremse brake factory; the Knorrpromenade, one of Friedrichshain’s most attractive streets, was built to house the management.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the district was renamed Horst-Wessel-Stadt after the Nazi activist and writer of the Nazi hymn whose slow death, after being shot by communists, in Friedrichshain hospital in 1930 was turned into a propaganda event by Joseph Goebbels.

During World War II Friedrichshain was one of the most badly damaged parts of Berlin, as Allied strategic bombers specifically targeted its industries. As late as the nineties, some buildings still displayed bullet holes from the intense house to house fighting during the Battle of Berlin. After the war ended, the boundary between the US and Sovietoccupation sectors ran between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. This became a sealed border between East and West Berlin when the Berlin Wall was built in 1961.

Stalinallee (previously Große Frankfurter Straße) was built in Friedrichshain in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a prestige project; the architecture of its ‘workers’ palaces’ is strongly reminiscent of the ostentatious Soviet-era Moscow boulevards and is sometimes mockinlgy described as Zuckerbäckerstil (‘wedding cake style’). It was in these construction works that the 1953 uprising had its origins, when increased work quotas led to protests that would spread throughout East Germany, and were only put down by armed Soviet intervention.

In the period of De-Stalinization following the Soviet leader’s death, the boulevard was renamed Karl-Marx-Allee at one end and Frankfurter Allee at the other. From this time onwards, Friedrichshain often featured on East Berlin’s cultural map: in 1962 the Kosmos, East Germany’s largest cinema was opened, followed in 1981 by the country’s most ambitious swimming and sports complex, theSport- und Erholungszentrum. Neither of these buildings serve their original function today.

Lifestyle

In the course of the changes following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the free elections in March 1990 and leading up to German reunification the following October, Friedrichshain began to develop a reputation as a young, dynamic district, thanks in part to low rents and the many empty apartments that also attracted the attention of squatters including many from former West Berlin. On 14 November that year, Friedrichshain experienced violent clashes when hundreds of squatters were forcefully evicted from houses in Mainzer Straße by police acting on the orders of the Senate of the recently united city, an act which would trigger the fall of the governing coalition when the Green Party withdrew in protest. In the following years further squatters were evicted under the hardline conservative Senator for the Interior, but others were able to buy the houses they lived in, and they remain a distinct (counter-)cultural influence in the district to this day.

Alongside the neighboring districts of Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, and Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain is now considered one of Berlin’s most fashionable areas^{[by whom?]}, and is home to numerous design and media companies including MTV Central Europe. It is known for its many bars, clubs, pubs, and cafes, concentrated in the vicinity of Simon-Dach-Straße and Boxhagener Platz. There were numerous squats in Friedrichshain, with many in and around Rigaer Straße, Mainzer Straße and Scharnweber Straße. In contrast to the districts of Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte, which have experienced high levels of demographic change and rented accommodation is higher, it is only since the late 1990s that Friedrichshain has undergone a similar trend. Following German reunification, the availability of comparatively cheap rented accommodation attracted students and artists. Nowadays numerous restoration works are under way and Friedrichshain is developing at a fast pace becoming more and more gentrified itself.

At the opposite end of the district, the Volkspark Friedrichshain is a large park serving the densely populated area of Prenzlauer Berg on the other side. Its distinctive features include the Märchenbrunnen (Fairytale Fountain) and two green and pleasant “mountains” consisting purely of rubble and the ruins of two World War II Flak towers.

KB Stammhaus.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)