Karl-Marx-Allee ( German: Karl-Marx-Allee - Karl Marx Alley) is a street in the Berlin districts of Mitte and Friedrichshain . Karl Marx Alley is famous for its monumental residential buildings in the style of socialist classicism, built in the 1950s .
At first, the alley was called Bolshaya Frankfurt Street ( German Große Frankfurter Straße ), but on December 21, 1949, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of I.V. Stalin, it was renamed the Stalin Avenue - the Stalin Alley ( German Stalinallee ), and from 13 November 1961 bears the name of the famous German economist. The Karl-Marx-alley starts from Alexanderplatz and goes through the Straussberger-Platz square to Frankfurter Tor, where it then passes into the Frankfurter Alley ( German Frankfurter Allee - Frankfurt Alley). The Karl-Marx-allee enters Federal Highway 1 ( German: Bundesstraße 1 ), which crosses Berlin on the way from Magdeburg in the direction of Küstrin-Kitz , as well as Federal Highway 5, which connects Frankfurt an der Oder with Hamburg . Under the Karl-Marx-Alley there is a U-Bahn 5 line connecting Alexanderplatz with Hyunov . Residential buildings on the Karl-Marx Alley were built as “palaces for workers” and were designed to reflect the power of engineering in the GDR .
Content
City map position
The Karl-Marx-alley together with the Frankfurter-alley is one of the eight radial roads of the German capital, starting in the historic city center, from Hackescher-Markt and Alexanderplatz. Clockwise is:
- Oranienburger Strasse ( German Oranienburger Straße ) / Schossestrasse ( German Chausseestraße )
- Rosenthaler Strasse ( German: Rosenthaler Straße ) / Brunnenstrasse ( German: Brunnenstraße )
- Schoenhauser Alley
- Prenzlauer Allee
- Otto-Braun-Strasse ( German: Otto-Braun-Straße ) / Greifswalder Strasse ( German: Greifswalder Straße )
- Landsberger Allee ( German: Landsberger Allee )
- Karl-Marx-Allee ( German: Karl-Marx-Allee ) / Frankfurter Alley ( German: Frankfurter Allee )
- Holzmarktstrasse ( German: Holzmarktstraße ) / Mühlenstrasse ( German: Mühlenstraße ) / Stralauer Allee ( German: Stralauer Allee )
History
June 17, 1953
The street was at the center of the events of June 17, 1953 , known as the Berlin crisis of 1953 . Workers at the construction site, then still in the Stalinallee, began a strike on June 16 in connection with the general increase in labor standards adopted by the Central Committee of the SED . Demonstrations spread throughout Berlin and were picked up throughout the GDR.
Stage one: houses with covered galleries
After the Second World War, the architect Hans Sharun prepared a project for the restoration of Berlin, the so-called “collective plan” , which provided for a new rigid division and decentralization of the city, with free development and an abundance of greenery between individual residential complexes. The start of this plan was planned in the heavily damaged Friedrichshain district in the Soviet occupation sector of Berlin . In 1949, two houses were built with covered galleries that met Sharun's ideas (houses 102-104 and 126-128). After that, the collective plan was canceled, and the ideas underlying it were called formalist , elitist and pro-Western decadent . The houses with galleries turned out to be isolated and alien objects in a completely different urban and architectural environment. Monumental Soviet architecture became a model in the GDR formed in 1949, and in front of the houses with galleries, they were planted, which soon closed them from the gaze of poplar.
Second Stage: Socialist Realism and National Architectural Tradition
Frankfurter Tor Square Tower Dome
Facade of a residential building
Facade of a residential building
Facade detail
Stalinalle, 1950
Stalinallee, 1959
A series of postage stamps "Five-year plan." 1953. Family in front of the high-rise building an der Weberwiese
Berlin, Stalinallee
For informational purposes, a special delegation from the German Democratic Republic visited Moscow, Kiev, Stalingrad and Leningrad. The first prize in the 1951 competition for the Karl-Marx-Alley development project was won by Egon Hartmann. The final version of the project was developed with the participation of four other winners of the competition: Richard Paulik, Hans Hopp , Karl Zouradna and Kurt Loicht, as well as Moscow architect A.V. Vlasov and vice-president of the Academy of Architecture of the USSR S.I. Chernyshev. Stylistically, the Karl-Marx-Alley buildings turned out to be close to the main building of Moscow University and the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw . Already in 1952, in the immediate vicinity of the Karl-Marx Alley, the high-rise building of An der Weberwiese , designed by Herman Hanselmann , appeared, leaving its mark on the architecture of the street.
The monumental wide street was conceived not just as a transport highway of the city, but had to correspond to the capital status of Berlin. Marches and parades were held along the Karl-Marx Alley. The magnificent boulevard, surrounded by large residential quarters, reaching a height of 13 floors, stretched in a straight line for several kilometers. The facades of the houses are made using the stylistic elements of Berlin classicism , in some places you can find antique quotes, such as Doric or Ionic orders , decorative pediments with architraves and friezes . This construction was very different from what was happening at the same time in West Berlin, where the heavily destroyed Hansafirtel quarter was also being restored. The rivalry of architectural projects has become the rivalry of political systems. Both the Stalinallee and the Hansafiertel, which appeared at the same time, became the faces of two social systems.
To the west of Straussberger Platz, 13-storey high-rise buildings by Hermann Hanselmann, similar to the city gates and reminiscent of the style of American Art Deco architecture of the 1930s, border the boulevard. In the east, the Karl-Marx Alley is bordered by Frankfurter Tor with two towers, which Hanselmann created after the towers of the German and French Gontard Cathedrals on Gendarmenmarkt .
Stage Three: 1959-1965 Modernism
The unified building style could not be maintained throughout the Karl-Marx Alley to Alexanderplatz. The reason was the high cost of building representative "palaces for workers" and the ensuing change in architectural styles. Therefore, on the site from Straussberger-Platz to Alexanderplatz, simple ten-story panel buildings with large green courtyards appeared. Tribunes were also usually erected on this site to guide the country for annual demonstrations. The most striking buildings are the Moskva cafe, the Mokka-Milh-Aisbar ice cream parlor and the International cinema (built in 1961-1963), behind which is the 13-story building of the Berolina Hotel (1961-1964, later "Interhotel" ). The construction of the second section of the Karl-Marx-alley to the Alexanderplatz square reconstructed by then was completed in 1965 .
After merging
After the reunification of Germany in 1990, residential buildings on the Karl-Marx Alley were sold to several investors, and expensive reconstruction work was carried out in them. Today, apartments in these houses are very popular. Since 1990, discussions on the return of the street to its former historical name Grosse-Frankfurter Strasse have not stopped.
The building of the Berolina Hotel was demolished in the spring of 1996, and a new one was erected in its place, where the Mitte County Administration has been located since March 2, 1998.
Literature
- Herbert Nicolaus, Alexander Obeth: Die Stalinallee. Geschichte einer Deutschen Straße. Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-345-00605-7
- Andreas Schätzke: Zwischen Bauhaus und Stalinallee. Architekturdiskussion im östlichen Deutschland 1945-1955. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1991, ISBN 3-528-08795-1
- Mathias Wallner und Heike Werner: Architektur und Geschichte in Deutschland . S. 140-141. München 2006, ISBN 3-9809471-1-4
- Birk Engmann: Bauen für die Ewigkeit: Monumentalarchitektur des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts und Städtebau in Leipzig in den fünfziger Jahren. Sax-Verlag. Beucha. 2006. ISBN 3-934544-81-9
- Köhler, Tilo: Unser die Straße - Unser der Sieg. Die Stalinallee, Berlin 1993
Links
- Wikimedia Commons has media related to Karl Marx Alley
- Photos about the construction of the Stalin Alley
- Die Zeit: "The New Life of Stalin's Alley" (German)
- Official Berlin Tourism Portal visitberlin.de (German)