The Ackerstraße is a street in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

which runs northwest from near the Liesenstraße – Scheringstraße traffic circle in Gesundbrunnen to Invalidenstraße, where it turns south, terminating at the Linienstraße in

Mitte Mitte () is the first and most central borough of Berlin. The borough consists of six sub-entities: Mitte proper, Gesundbrunnen, Hansaviertel, Moabit, Tiergarten and Wedding. It is one of the two boroughs (the other being Friedrichshain-Kreuzb ...

History

On 22 September 1751, Lieutenant General

Hans Christoph Friedrich Graf von Hacke Hans Christoph Friedrich Graf von Hacke (21 October 1699 in Staßfurt - 17 August 1754 in Berlin) was a Prussian General and Commandant of Berlin. The Hackescher Markt in Berlin is named after him. Early life In 1715, at the age of sixteen, Hacke ...

, commandant of the city of Berlin, received orders from King Frederick II of Prussia to build houses outside the city Customs Wall between the Hamburg Gate and the Rosenthal Gate.Geschichte von Ackerstraße
Straßennamenlexikon des Luisenstädtischen Bildungsvereins, at ''Kauperts Straßenführer durch Berlin'', online ed. , retrieved 23 July 2012. Initially 30 houses were to be built, to house 60 families selected from applicants. The objective was to have the craftsmen stay year-round in Berlin rather than leaving each winter. The new residents were mostly from

Vogtland Vogtland (; cz, Fojtsko) is a region spanning the German states of Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia and north-western Bohemia in the Czech Republic. It overlaps with and is largely contained within Euregio Egrensis. The name alludes to the former ...

; as a result the new area of settlement came to be called Neuvoigtland (New Vogtland). The streets were laid out in parallel straight lines and were designated numerically; what is now the Ackerstraße was the middle street and was originally called the ''Zweite Reihe'' (second row), and became the ''Dritte Reihe'' (third row) when the local population increased in the 19th century and new streets were added. The district was divided into identical land parcels with approximately frontagesAckerhöfe, Ackerstraße 14–15
, Stadterneuerung - Mitte - Rundgang Rosenthaler Vorstadt, Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt, Berlin , retrieved 23 July 2012 and to save money and time, the original houses were standardised; this set a new trend. Gardens were laid out between them, but the population increase led to extension of the buildings as the area became more urban. The area changed name to Rosenthaler Vorstadt, and the local residents petitioned the police for street names to be assigned. On 18 February 1801 the "third row" was renamed Ackerstraße (Field Street), probably because the development was in the farming area outside the city, the ''Feldmark''. On 6 April 1833, the continuation of the same street, from Invalidenstraße to Liesenstraße, was named Neue Ackerstraße (New Ackerstraße). The southern extension to Koppenplatz was added in 1877. The residents there preferred the name Virchowstraße, but their request was denied. The St. Elisabeth Cemetery near the midpoint of the street was dedicated in 1844 and is still in operation. In the 1870s and 1880s, the character of the street was greatly changed with the building of

tenement A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...

s. The Ackerhöfe at numbers 14–15, unusual in occupying two of the original land parcels, are a restored complex of tenements built in four phases between 1867 and 1911, the last phase representing an attempt at housing reform. The most notorious tenement in Berlin, Meyers Hof, was at number 132.Ingrid Nowel, ''Berlin: Die neue Hauptstadt: Architektur und Kunst, Geschichte und Literatur'', Dumont Kunstreiseführer, Cologne: DuMont, 2001,
p. 324
One of the original covered markets of Berlin, now known as the ''Ackerhalle'', was built on the corner with Invalidenstraße in 1886–88 and is still in use; it is the only one that retains its original façade.Petra Dubilski, ''Berlin'', Dumont Reise-Taschenbücher, Cologne: DuMont, 2001,
p. 217
19 historic buildings on the street are protected historic monuments of the city of Berlin: 1–5, 10–13, 16/17, 19–22, 144–147, 154/155, 165, and 171. From 1961 to 1989, the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...

divided the city. It ran along

Bernauer Straße Bernauer Straße is a street of Berlin situated between the localities of Gesundbrunnen and Mitte, today both belonging to the Mitte borough. It runs from the Mauerpark at the corner of Prenzlauer Berg to the Nordbahnhof. The street's name refe ...

, and required closing a section of Ackerstraße at the corner with that street, which fell within the "death strip"; a church in this part of Ackerstraße, the Versöhnungskirche (Church of Reconciliation), was dynamited by the East German authorities in 1985. In commemoration of the Wall and those who died attempting to cross it, a portion of the main and inner walls and the "death strip" are preserved on Bernauer Straße at the corner of Ackerstraße as part of the

Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer The Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall Memorial) commemorates the division of Berlin by the Berlin Wall and the deaths that occurred there. The monument was created in 1998 by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Federal State of Berl ...

(Berlin Wall Memorial); of the border strip along Bernauer Straße between Ackerstraße and Bergstraße were made a protected landmark on 2 October 1990 and this is now the last genuine remnant of the Wall.

In literature

*The novel ''Das Mädchen aus der Ackerstraße'' (the girl from the Ackerstraße) is set in the area in the 19th century, when it was an impoverished neighbourhood. It was filmed in 1919–20 in three parts directed by

Reinhold Schünzel Reinhold Schünzel (7 November 1888 – 11 November 1954) was a German actor and director, active in both Germany and the United States. The son of a German father and a Jewish mother, he was born in St. Pauli, the poorest part of Hamburg. Despite ...

and

Werner Funck Werner Funck (4 February 1881 – 6 October 1951) was a German stage and film actor, singer and film director.Grange p.159 Selected filmography Actor * ''The Heiress of the Count of Monte Cristo'' (1919) * ''The Girl from Acker Street'' (1920) * ...

with cinematography by Kurt Kurant (

Curt Courant Curt Courant (11 May 1899 – 20 April 1968) was a German cinematographer who worked on over a hundred films during the silent and early sound eras. Courant worked in several European countries, collaborating with figures such as Alfred Hitchcock ...

). *The protagonists of

Klaus Kordon Klaus is a German, Dutch and Scandinavian given name and surname. It originated as a short form of Nikolaus, a German form of the Greek given name Nicholas. Notable persons whose family name is Klaus * Billy Klaus (1928–2006), American baseb ...

's ''Trilogie der Wendepunkte'', a trilogy of novels for teenagers in which a family lives through the end of both World Wars, ''Die roten Matrosen'', ''Mit dem Rücken zur Wand'', and ''Der erste Frühling'', live in the Ackerstraße.Katrin Müller-Walde, ''Warum Jungen nicht mehr lesen und wie wir das ändern können'', Frankfurt: Campus, 2005,
p. 181
File:Berlin Markthalle VI Seitenfassade.jpg, Ackerhalle, late 19th-century market hall at Ackerstraße and Invalidenstraße File:Berlin, Mitte, Ackerstrasse 13, Mietshaus.jpg, Former tenement at number 13, one of the protected historic landmarks in Ackerstraße File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1990-0613-024, Berlin, Mauerabriss Ecke Bernauer- Ackerstraße.jpg, Demolition of the Berlin Wall at the corner of Bernauer Straße and Ackerstraße in 1990 File:Ackerstraße-2011.jpg, Section of the street as part of the

, photographed in 2011

References

External links

Sensing the Street
2007–08 exhibition by the

Berlin University of the Arts The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK; also known in English as the Berlin University of the Arts), situated in Berlin, Germany, is the largest art school in Europe. It is a public art and design school, and one of the four research universiti ...

on Ackerstraße, Adalbertstraße and Karl-Marx-Straße {{DEFAULTSORT:Ackerstrasse 1750s in Berlin Mitte Prussian cultural sites Streets in Berlin

History

In literature

References

Further reading

External links