Misplaced Pages

#39960

31-616: It was laid out between 1889 and 1892 in the course of the urban development in the western suburbs of Berlin's Wilhelmine Ring according to the Hobrecht-Plan . The square was then part of a major boulevard running from Kreuzberg to Charlottenburg with numerous sections named after victorious commanders in the German Campaign during the Napoleonic Wars, colloquially called Generalszug . The westernmost section

62-407: A large scale incorporation of neighboring settlements had expanded the area of Berlin by some 70 percent. According to census figures, 547,571 people lived in the city in that year. This population almost tripled in the course of the ensuing 30 years, without significant area growth of the city. The planning for the necessary housing was undertaken in 1862 by James Hobrecht , whose “Plan for developing

93-553: A new regulation impose stricter constraints on property developers. For example, the eaves or lower edge of the roof could not be higher than 22 meters and the number of storeys was limited to five. Wherever it was not badly destroyed in World War II the Wilhelmine Ring is still very present in today's Berlin and a distinctive feature of the city. Although the ring is still characterized by high density construction and

124-416: A scarcity of open spaces, the flats are popular because of their historic character and nearness to the city center. In the course of urban redevelopment, renovation and modernization, inner courtyards were sometimes expanded by removing rear or side wings. In other cases the size of the rear apartments was considerably increased by combining them into larger units. (This article incorporates information from

155-439: A specified street frontage and a minimal size for the inside courtyards of 5.34 × 5.34 meters, at that time the turning circle of city wagons with fire-fighting equipment. Therefore, in the following decades private developers building in the area to be known as the Wilhelmine Ring used each land parcel to the maximum possible extent, filling it with five- to six-story buildings containing many, often very small, rental units . Since

186-553: A time frame of about 50 years. The plan not only covered the area around the cities of Berlin and Charlottenburg but also described the spatial regional planning of a large perimeter. Thus, it also prepared the city and its neighbouring municipalities for the Greater Berlin Act of 1920, which greatly extended Berlin's size and population. The plan resulted in large areas of dense urban city blocks known as 'blockrand structures', with mixed-use buildings reaching to

217-405: Is the name for a belt of distinctive multi-occupancy rental housing blocks constructed in the second half of the 19th century around the historic city center of Berlin . It is characterized by a dense settlement pattern with four- to five-story residential buildings with side and rear wings around an inner courtyard. The designation reflects the period of origin of this town planning solution under

248-617: Is today the largest department store in Continental Europe . The northern side of the square is home to street markets four times a week. The south side of the square features the fountain Lebensalter . 52°30′07″N 13°20′34″E  /  52.50194°N 13.34278°E  / 52.50194; 13.34278 This article about a Berlin building or structure is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Wilhelmine Ring (Berlin) The Wilhelmine Ring

279-587: The German Misplaced Pages) Hobrecht-Plan The Hobrecht-Plan is the binding land-use plan for Berlin in the 19th century. It is named after its main editor, James Hobrecht (1825–1902), who served for the royal Prussian urban planning police ("Baupolizei"). The finalized plan "Bebauungsplan der Umgebungen Berlins" (Binding Land-Use Plan for the Environs of Berlin) was resolved in 1862, intended for

310-628: The German monarchs Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II . The Wilhelmine Ring comprises large parts of the Berlin subdistricts Wedding , Gesundbrunnen , Prenzlauer Berg , Friedrichshain , Kreuzberg , Neukölln , Schöneberg , Tiergarten , Moabit and Charlottenburg . It arose primarily in the still undeveloped area between the Berlin Customs Wall , which was removed in the 1860s, and a railway line constructed between 1867 and 1877 to encircle

341-465: The Mietskaserne housing estates they are next-door neighbours – the children from the basement flat goes along the same hallways to the free school just as the children from the upper class go to the grammar school. Shoemaker Wilhelm in the attic and the bedridden old Mistress Schulz in the backyard tenement with her daughter running a meager seamstress business they will be the best-known persons on

SECTION 10

#1732765336040

372-462: The backyard buildings were mostly plagued by lack of sunlight and poor ventilation. The situation worsened in Gründerzeit times with housing construction running too slowly so that the population density rose beyond 1000 inhabitants per square kilometer – many backyard houses had two to three inhabitants per room and the citywide sewer system was not to be finished before 1893. The Hobrecht-plan

403-453: The city before Hobrecht. This includes proposals from Karl Friedrich Schinkel and planning maps from Johann Carl Ludwig Schmid dating to 1825 and 1830. Peter Joseph Lenné proposed a wider regional planning in 1840 named "Projektierte Schmuck- und Grenzzüge von Berlin mit nächster Umgebung" (projected decorative and boundary lines of Berlin and its immediate vicinity). All the persons were well-renowned architects and city planners. Hobrecht

434-417: The city. The commencement of large-scale German industrialization in the latter part of the 19th century led to a pressing need for labor, which was met by a strong rural exodus favoring Berlin, where abundant jobs could be found. Living accommodations for this rapid influx of workers were needed in the immediate vicinity of the new factories, for which there was no space within the old city limits. In 1861

465-432: The contemporary development status in urban planning especially their sewer systems. In the 1860s the Berlin Customs Wall was removed and there were plans to amalgamate the many suburbs of Berlin on 1 January 1861. Based on the just finished land surveys and existing land-use proposals James Hobrecht constructed a map showing a possible land-use for a city at a projected size of 1.5 to 2 million inhabitants. It incorporated

496-423: The cultural life of the civil servants, artists, professors and teachers. This will come out as beneficial to the society even when it would only be that the latter would have a daily silent example in their sight of those which were mixed among them. This also indicates that he had no real intention to prevent the housing conditions of the lower class which he might have seen as normal in his times. The reception in

527-664: The developers had to co-finance the street-access infrastructure, with costs calculated on the basis of the width of the street frontage, this part of the building was relatively narrow, the rest being taken up by the side and rear wings. The front apartments were frequently large and spacious and intended for the middle class, containing, particularly in the desirable first upper floor (the bel étage or piano nobile ), decorative stucco ceilings and parquetry flooring and commanding high rents. The rear wing apartments, by contrast, were much smaller and plainer, harder to ventilate, without views, and usually only offering shared toilet facilities in

558-503: The eastern terminus of Tauentzienstraße, today a major shopping street, connecting it with Breitscheidplatz in the west. In 1902 Wittenbergplatz station opened on the first Berlin U-Bahn line ( Stammstrecke ); ten years later, it was rebuilt including an impressive entrance hall in the centre of the square, designed by Alfred Grenander . The KaDeWe department store opened in 1907 on the corner of Wittenbergplatz and Tauentzienstraße, it

589-499: The existing roads, villages and railways including them into the planning process. The map was resolved on 18 July 1862 and it would influence the urban structure of Berlin for the centuries to come. The Hobrecht-Plan was detailed for the street area, giving only the boundary lines for housing construction. The housing construction business was rather unregulated in comparison with modern construction rules – there were some basic constraints to allow fire brigades to do their work by having

620-428: The first floor. It allows to pass on a dish of the day, to help in times of sickness, to give away a warm jacket, and bring in incentives for additional schooling. From all that which will come out as comfortable relations between so differently socialized people it allows the giver to ennoble himself on the situation. In between the extremes of the social classes the poor from the second to fourth story will be nurtured by

651-466: The hallways or courtyard. These back apartments were primarily rented by working-class families, who in turn sublet rooms to supplement their modest income. In the Wilhelmine Ring the population density was over 1000 per hectare. Over 20 percent of the workers were so-called “sleepers-in” without the resources to rent even a single room, renting a bed on an hourly basis in an apartment that was, even without them, frequently very overcrowded. Only in 1887 did

SECTION 20

#1732765336040

682-611: The infrastructure. The Industrial Revolution led to a swift rural exodus at the beginning of the 19th century. Berlin as the Prussian capital was the target of many emigrants resulting in a rapid growth. After the Napoleonic Wars the city grew by 10,000 new inhabitants every year accelerating in the middle of the century so that the metro area would reach the millions at the end of the century (see Berlin population statistics ). There had been already some urban planning on

713-548: The land between the Customs Wall and a railway line being constructed to encircle the city; the area came to be known architecturally as the Wilhelmine Ring . That Hobrecht-Plan did show two large ring roads encircling both of Berlin and Charlottenburg with dozens of arterial roads entering the city. The area between these were divided into rectangular spaces. Unlike the urban planning of Paris, Hobrecht did respect

744-543: The late 20th century is much more favorable to the Hobrecht-Plan as it did also establish the basis to resolve the problems that were to come. There are no records whether he did fight behind closed doors – but he was called off on 15 December 1861 already. He went to Stettin to build a water supply system and to plan the sewer system which would be built in 1870. With the help of his brother Arthur Hobrecht – who would eventually become lord mayor of Berlin in 1872 – he

775-528: The maximum height limited to 20 meters and each house had to be reachable from the streets via a backyard of at least 5.34 × 5.34 meters in size to allow the fire engine to turn. In effect, speculative builders took over with densely packed architectural designs to allow a maximum number of rooms – the foundation of the Mietskaserne tenement housing estates rings. While Hobrecht called for the front buildings to be designed for upper- and middle-class people,

806-538: The street and offering a common-used courtyard, later often overbuilt with additional court structures to house more people. The Hobrecht-Plan inspired new urban plans after 1990 by construction senator Hans Stimmann and his colleagues, so that the formerly-divided Berlin would grow together and become denser and livelier. Hobrecht's plan is often compared to Baron Haussmann's restructuring of Paris , as it also resulted in wide metropolitan avenues , large urban parks and squares, sewers and other modernisation projects of

837-478: The surroundings of Berlin”, as its name indicates, included an area far exceeding the limits of the just-enlarged city. It specified a network of ring and radial streets with relatively large block sizes, which facilitated the rapid construction of large adjoining buildings in which multi-family rental accommodations were planned. A decisive factor was a regulation passed in 1853 by city planning authorities obligating property developers to little more than adhering to

868-1034: Was criticized for decades as given the foundation for social problems, possibly even nurturing the street fights in the 1920s between red (communists) and brown (fascists) thugs in the crowded lower class quarters. Hobrecht himself was surely in the position and he had the education to outguess the results. He promoted his plan saying In der Mietskaserne gehen die Kinder aus den Kellerwohnungen in die Freischule über denselben Hausflur wie diejenigen des Rats oder Kaufmanns, auf dem Wege nach dem Gymnasium. Schusters Wilhelm aus der Mansarde und die alte bettlägerige Frau Schulz im Hinterhaus, deren Tochter durch Nähen oder Putzarbeiten den notdürftigen Lebensunterhalt besorgt, werden in dem ersten Stock bekannte Persönlichkeiten. Hier ist ein Teller Suppe zur Stärkung bei Krankheit, da ein Kleidungsstück, dort die wirksame Hilfe zur Erlangung freien Unterrichts oder dergleichen und alles das,

899-447: Was instead a geodesist (professional land surveyor ) who had just extended his formation with a civil engineer examination on transportation planning ("Wasser-, Wege- und Eisenbahnbaumeisterprüfung") in 1858. Soon after entering the royal Prussian urban planning police he was commanded in 1859 to head the commission on creation of a land-use plan for Berlin and its environs. He traveled to Hamburg, Paris and London in 1860 to learn about

930-464: Was named Tauentzienstraße after General Bogislav von Tauentzien , who had received the honorific title von Wittenberg after the storming of the French-occupied town of Wittenberg on 14 February 1814 (although General Lieutenant Leopold Wilhelm von Dobschütz had actually led the Prussian troops). Therefore, the adjacent square got the name Wittenbergplatz Since then, the square forms

961-663: Was sich als das Resultat der gemütlichen Beziehungen zwischen den gleichgearteten und wenn auch noch so verschiedenen situierten Bewohner herausstellt, eine Hilfe, welche ihren veredelnden Einfluss auf den Geber ausübt. Und zwischen diesen extremen Gesellschaftsklassen bewegen sich die Ärmeren aus dem II. oder IV. Stock, Gesellschaftsklassen von höchster Bedeutung für unser Kulturleben, der Beamte, der Künstler, der Gelehrte, der Lehrer usw., und wirken fördernd, anregend und somit für die Gesellschaft nützlich. Und wäre es fast nur durch ihr Dasein und stummes Beispiel auf diejenigen, die neben ihnen und mit ihnen untermischt wohnen. (roughly) In

Wittenbergplatz - Misplaced Pages Continue

#39960