Wilhelmstrasse

Coordinates: 52°30′35″N 13°23′03″E / 52.50972°N 13.38417°E / 52.50972; 13.38417
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the street in the Berlin district of Spandau, see Wilhelmstraße (Spandau).
Wilhelmstraße today: anti-car bomb bollards at the British embassy

Wilhelmstrasse (

Foreign Office. The street's name was thus also frequently used as a metonym for overall German governmental administration: much as the term "Whitehall" is often used to signify the British governmental administration as a whole. In English, "the Wilhelmstrasse" usually referred to the German Foreign Office.[2]

Course

The Wilhelmstraße runs south from the Spree riverside through the historic Dorotheenstadt quarter to the Unter den Linden boulevard near Pariser Platz and Brandenburg Gate, where it takes on a line slightly east of south through adjacent Friedrichstadt, until its juncture with Stresemannstraße near Hallesches Tor in Kreuzberg, an overall distance of about 2.4 km (1.5 mi).

Further south of Unter den Linden it passes the nowadays built-over former Wilhelmplatz vis-à-vis Voss-Straße, it crosses Leipziger Straße near Leipziger and Potsdamer Platz, and Niederkirchnerstraße, known until after World War II as Prinz-Albrecht-Straße. At its southern end, Wilhelmstraße originally met with Friedrichstraße, which runs roughly parallel to the east, on the Belle-Alliance circus, before the street course was westerly redirected to the Stresemannstraße junction about 1970.

Between Unter den Linden and parallel Behrenstraße, the road is closed for motor vehicles as a protection of the Embassy of the United Kingdom.

History

Huguenots, who had fled from France, as well as expelled members of the Moravian Church settled. Several personal confidants of the king had large city palaces erected, most notably General Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin and the French Baron François Mathieu Vernezobre de Laurieux, who took his residence in the later Prinz-Albrecht-Palais
. The street was renamed Wilhelmstraße in honour of the king, who had died in 1740.

Government district

Wilhelmstraße in 1934, Reich Chancellery and Foreign Office on the left

Originally a wealthy residential street, with a number of palaces belonging to members of the Hohenzollern royal family, the Wilhelmstrasse developed as a Prussian government precinct from the mid 19th century. In 1858 King Frederick William IV acquired the former Palais Schwerin on No. 73. This building now called Palace of the Reich President housed an administrative seat of the Prussian minister for the Royal Household, from 1861 led by Alexander von Schleinitz. In 1869 the nearby Palais Schulenburg residence of late Prince Antoni Radziwiłł, built in 1738/39 on No. 77, was purchased by the Prussian state government at the behest of Schleinitz' opponent Minister-President Otto von Bismarck. Rebuilt from 1875 until 1878, it served as his official seat as German chancellor. The next door building on No. 76 was used for the chancellery's Foreign Office department.

Several further governmental departments took their seat on Wilhelmstrasse, such as the

Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture (No. 72), and the Reich Ministry of Transport (No. 79, from 1919). The lavish Palais Strousberg of bankrupt "railway king" Bethel Henry Strousberg on No. 70 was bought by Prince Hugo of Hohenlohe in an 1876 auction and rented out to the British ambassador Lord Ampthill, until it was finally purchased by the United Kingdom in 1884. In 1877 the Borsig Palace
was erected on the corner with Voss-Strasse.

Weimar Republic and Nazi years

The site of the Propaganda Ministry building at Wilhelmstraße 8. Joseph Goebbels can be seen on the historical marker.

After World War I the Palais Schwerin was sold by exiled Emperor

Voss Strasse
, and its official address was Voßstraße 4.

The Foreign Office moved into the former Reich President's palace, the old building being refurbished in grandiose style at the behest of Nazi Minister

Allied bombing during 1944 and early 1945 and during the following Battle of Berlin
.

Cold War

Demolished Wilhelmstraße, 1946

After the war, Wilhelmstrasse as far south as Niederkirchnerstrasse was in the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin, and apart from clearing the rubble from the street little was done to reconstruct the area until the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1949, with East Berlin as its capital. One of the earliest reconstructions was the 1948-built provisional wooden church hall of the Moravian Brethren congregation on Wilhelmstrasse 138.

The

workers' uprising of 17 June 1953
.

The building of the

Plattenbau (concrete slab) apartment blocks were built on the cleared premises along East Berlin Otto-Grotewohl-Straße. The flats were quite popular among the nomenklatura, as they provided an undisturbed view across the Wall's towards West Berlin. The former "death strip" is today the site of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
.

Today

New British Embassy, historical marker displays Ambassadors Lord D'Abernon and Sir Eric Phipps

Today, the Wilhelmstraße is an important traffic artery, but has not regained its former status. Since

Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection
on Wilhelmstraße 72 – the only German government ministry now located on its prewar site although in a partly reconstructed building.

The British Embassy, whose original building had been destroyed by bombing, was rebuilt on the site.

Queen Elizabeth II officiated at the grand opening in July 2000. Other public institutions on Wilhelmstraße include the ARD-Hauptstadtstudio (television studio) of the ARD broadcasting organization at the northern Spree riverside, the E-Werk techno club, the Topography of Terror museum at the former Reichssicherheitshauptamt site, and the Willy-Brandt-Haus headquarters of the Social Democratic Party of Germany
on the southern corner with Stresemannstrasse.

Many of the occupants of the GDR apartment blocks are recent immigrants, and there are a number of shops and restaurants catering to

Johann Georg Elser
was inaugurated at the site of the former Reich Chancellery.

Notes

  1. George Frost Kennan
    . The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary gives only this spelling; so do the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, and all five of its quotations.
  2. ^ See Daisy, Princess of Pless by Herself, p. 63. OED, "Wilhelmstrasse"

External links

52°30′35″N 13°23′03″E / 52.50972°N 13.38417°E / 52.50972; 13.38417

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