Archaeologists have unearthed Berlin’s oldest street, and it is actually pretty cool. Even though it was likely built in the 13th century, the wooden planks look surprisingly fresh.
From the 1860s through the Second World War, Berlin was notoriously crowded, with many of its working-class residents packed into suffocating Mietskasernen (“Rental Barracks”).
On November 14, 1990, approximately 3000 police from across Germany forcibly evicted several hundred mostly young squatters from 13 buildings along Mainzer Straße, in the eastern district of Friedrichshain.
It was one of the largest street battles in Berlin since the (failed) revolution of 1953, and had repercussions that continue to be felt.
If, like me, you’ve spent a lot of time traveling Berlin’s S-Bahn ring, you might have noticed the large empty space directly to the east of the Frankfurter Allee S-Bahn station. It looks like any number of former industrial sites in the city: run-down, abandoned, with a few remnants here and there.
I was surprised to learn that this particular space wasn’t just a random factory: it was a so-called “Containerbahnhof,” where shipping containers could be on- and off-loaded to and from railcars.
Berlin has committed itself to building 100 kilometers of express bike lanes (Radschnellverbindungen) in the next 5 years or so. I made a deep-dive into one section of that network: the route from the Tiergarten to Alexanderplatz and beyond. What I found is very exciting, but construction is still a long way off.
In 1933, Hermann Tietz & Co., one of the largest department store firms in Germany, was forcibly expropriated from its Jewish owners as part of the Nazi policy of Aryanization. It was renamed Hertie, and remained one of Germany's largest retailers until it was purchased in 1994. The heirs of Georg Karg, who took over the firm from its rightful owners in 1933, set up a foundation in his honor shortly after his death.
The Eis Fabrik Berlin, or 'Berlin Ice Factory' on Koepenickerstraße is an abandoned (you guessed it) ice factory along the River Spree. According to Wikipedia (warning: German version), it's one of the oldest surviving ice factories in Germany, and churned out blocks of ice up to 1.5 meters long from its construction in 1914 until its parent company ceased to exist in the early 1990s. There have been plans to demolish it since at least 1995, but the building is still standing today and is currently controlled by TLG, a real estate management company in the city.
The facade of Anhalter Bahnhof (Anhalter Train Station), located at the intersection of Stresemann Straße and Schöneberger Straße in the Mitte section of Berlin, is the most visible remnant of what was once a bustling and enormous commuter and freight hub. You can see what remains of the facade in the below photograph.
