Oranienburger Straße

Coordinates: 52°31′31″N 13°23′28″E / 52.52528°N 13.39111°E / 52.52528; 13.39111
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Oranienburger Straße, viewed from the Fernsehturm.

Oranienburger Straße (English: Oranienburger Street) is a street in central Berlin. It is located in the borough of Mitte, north of the River Spree, and runs south-east from Friedrichstraße to Hackescher Markt.

The street is popular with tourists and Berliners for its nightlife with numerous restaurants and bars. Formerly a centre of Jewish life in Berlin, the street contains the restored New Synagogue. Another tourist landmark was the Kunsthaus Tacheles, an alternative art center and night club. After it was depopulated of its people, its largely middle class Jewish population having been murdered, a then abandoned Oranienburger Straße became popular with anarchists, young artists and was also known for its street prostitution,[1] which is legal in Germany.

There are also two lesser known streets named "Oranienburger Straße" in Berlin, in Reinickendorf and in Lichtenrade. The name is derived from the nearby town of Oranienburg.

History

The restored New Synagogue on Oranienburger Straße

In the 19th and early 20th centuries this was the main

extermination camps in occupied Poland
.

Monbijou Palace

Neue Synagoge

The most notable building on Oranienburger Straße is the

German Democratic Republic
authorities. The restored front section of the synagogue was reopened in 1995 as a Jewish community centre also housing a synagogue and a museum.

English Church of St. George

The Englische Kirche zu St. Georg was erected in 1885 under the patronage of the Princess Royal Victoria, Crown Princess of Prussia and to the German Empire.[2] There had been Anglican worship in Berlin since at least 1830, and from 1855 the Anglican congregation used a gatehouse of Monbijou Palace as the English Chapel.[2] This chapel grew soon too small for the services of the congregation, regularly attended by Crown Princess Victoria.[3] In 1883 Crown Prince Frederick William and Victoria thus conveyanced a site of the park of Monbijou Palace close to Monbijoustraße and the Domkandidatenstift.[3] Julius Carl Raschdorff, the architect of Berlin's later built Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church, was commissioned to develop the plans for a church in close collaboration with Crown Princess Victoria, and he was sent out for a study tour to England.[3]

The cornerstone was laid on 24 May 1884,

William II was then its patron.[2]

After the war the congregation could develop again and ministered – among others – a large British-born artisan population as well as American, German, Indian, Chinese, Finnish and Russian Christians.

Bishop George Bell, who had gained his sister-in-law Laura Livingstone to run the Berlin office of the International Church Relief Commission for German Refugees.[6] A plaque at the new building on Oranienburger Straße 20/21 commemorates these joint Anglican and Confessing Church
efforts.

St. George's was closed at the outbreak of the Second World War, and was hit by allied bombing in 1943 and 1944.[2] The ruin of the church, since 1945 in the Soviet Sector of Berlin, was pulled down by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) after 1949.[2] In 1950 the congregation built the new St. George's Church in the Neu-Westend neighbourhood in the British Sector.[2] In 1987 the original church silver, donated by Crown Princess Victoria, was discovered in a city cellar and since this time has been used in the weekly worship.[2]

Gespenstermauer

The Gespenstermauer

Oranienburger Straße is home to one of Berlin's few ghost legends: The ghost wall ('Gespenstermauer').[7] According to the legend, one can sometimes see the spirits of two children dash into the street and disappear near Oranienburger Straße 41 (just west of the bar 'X-terrain, and slightly East and across the street from Tacheles). The identity of the children is unknown, as is the time period in which they supposedly originate (the visions are small and vague and shadowy, apparently usually seen only quickly out of the corner of one's eye), but legend has it that the child spirits will do small favors in exchange for pennies. The procedure is to stick a penny in the crumbling mortar of the old wall near Oranienburger Straße 41 and make a wish. If the wish is modest (e.g. one that two ghost children could do), and unselfish, then it will supposedly be granted. It is unclear when the legend started, but it was known at least prior to the 1990s, among former residents of East Berlin. An inspection of the wall shows that indeed there are many pennies (and other small denomination coins) pushed into the crumbling mortar. In some versions of the story popular in GDR times, the ghost children grant wishes in return for candy.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Der Knick". Berliner Zeitung (in German). 2009-02-13.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "About us" Archived 2012-08-08 at the Wayback Machine, on: St George's Anglican Episcopal Church, Berlin, retrieved on 14 May 2012.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h "St. George's Anglican Church" Archived 2011-01-03 at the Wayback Machine, on: Preussen.de Archived 2017-06-27 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved on 14 May 2012
  4. David Baron and Schönberger (*1841–1924*, died in Berlin) had founded the Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel
    in London. In 1973 the Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel merged with other missionary societies to form the Messianic Testimony.
  5. ^ Hartmut Ludwig, "Das ›Büro Pfarrer Grüber‹ 1938–1940", in: ›Büro Pfarrer Grüber‹ Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte. Geschichte und Wirken heute, Walter Sylten, Joachim-Dieter Schwäbl and Michael Kreutzer on behalf of the Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte (ed.; Evangelical Relief Centre for the formerly Racially Persecuted), Berlin: Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte, 1988, pp. 1–23, here pp. 2seq. No ISBN.
  6. ^ Hartmut Ludwig, "Das ›Büro Pfarrer Grüber‹ 1938–1940", in: ›Büro Pfarrer Grüber‹ Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte. Geschichte und Wirken heute, Walter Sylten, Joachim-Dieter Schwäbl and Michael Kreutzer on behalf of the Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte (ed.; Evangelical Relief Centre for the formerly Racially Persecuted), Berlin: Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte, 1988, pp. 1–23, here p. 10. No ISBN.
  7. ^ "The Spirit of Oranienburger Straße". Goethe Institut 'Meet the Germans'. 2012-01-19.

Further reading

  • Laurenz Demps, Die Oranienburger Straße, Berlin: Parthas Verlag, 1998,

52°31′31″N 13°23′28″E / 52.52528°N 13.39111°E / 52.52528; 13.39111