The Sonnenallee (“Sun Avenue”) 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 ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, connecting the districts of
Neukölln
Neukölln () is one of the twelve boroughs of Berlin. It is located in the southeastern part from the city centre towards Berlin Schönefeld Airport. It was part of the former American sector under the Four-Power occupation of the city. It featu ...
and
Treptow-Köpenick
Treptow-Köpenick () is the ninth borough of Berlin, Germany, formed in Berlin's 2001 administrative reform by merging the former boroughs of Treptow and Köpenick.
Overview
Among Berlin's boroughs it is the largest by area with the lowest popul ...
. The street is 5 km long, crossing
Baumschulenstraße at its south-east end and terminating at
Hermannplatz in the north-west. Sonnenallee was constructed at the end of the 19th century. The area around the Sonnenallee was created to cater for the rural drift to the city of that period.
Description
Sonnenallee is nearly 5 kilometres long, with around 4.5 kilometres in the district of Neukölln, and 400 meters in Treptow-Köpenick. It begins in the north-west at
Hermannplatz as the continuation of
Urbanstraße, runs 2600 meters south-east before crossing the
Ringbahn
The Ringbahn (German for circle railway) is a long circle route around Berlin's inner city area, on the Berlin S-Bahn network. Its course is made up of a double-tracked S-Bahn ring and a parallel freight ring. The S-Bahn lines S41 and S42 prov ...
and shortly thereafter the
Neukölln Ship Canal
The Neukölln Ship Canal, or Neuköllner Schiffahrtskanal, is a long canal in Berlin, Germany. It connects with the Landwehr Canal at its northern end, and with the Teltow Canal and the Britz Canal
The Britz Canal, or Britzer Verbindungskanal ...
. After the intersection with Grenzallee and Dammweg, Sonnenallee passes several allotments (''Kleingartenanlagen)'' and two large housing estates, leading to its south-easterly endpoint at Baumschulenstraße.
Several city squares lie along Sonnenallee, such as Hermannplatz, Hertzbergplatz, and Venusplatz. The entire length of the street originally had trees running down both sides and a
verge down the middle, which until 1965 housed a tram line. In the 1980s, this central strip was removed in places to make way for further lanes or parking spaces. Today it has six lanes and is an important
arterial route
An arterial road or arterial thoroughfare is a high-capacity urban road that sits below freeways/motorways on the road hierarchy in terms of traffic flow and speed. The primary function of an arterial road is to deliver traffic from collector roa ...
in Berlin's south-east.
History
During its history, the Sonnenallee has been known under various other names. At the beginning the street was known simply as ''Straße 84'' (''Street No. 84''). In 1893, five years after the death of
Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm the street was renamed in his honour. In the 1920s the street was extended to the south east and named ''Sonnenallee''.
During the
communist period the street was intersected by 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 ...
including a
border crossing
Border control refers to measures taken by governments to monitor and regulate the movement of people, animals, and goods across land, air, and maritime borders. While border control is typically associated with international borders, it a ...
.
Nowadays, Sonnenallee is home to a large immigrant population of
Middle Eastern
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (European ...
origin, earning it the nickname of "Arab Street". The area has also gained a reputation for crime, an image which is possibly promoted by crime TV series such as
4 Blocks
''4 Blocks'' is a German drama series. It stars Kida Khodr Ramadan as Ali "Toni" Hamadi, the leader of a drug cartel in Berlin- Neukölln which has strong connections with the Arab crime families including his clan. He is forced to postpone his pl ...
.
Cultural references
The 1999
film of the same name portrayed a
nostalgic
Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The word ''nostalgia'' is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of (''nóstos''), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, ...
view of the
GDR
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
in the 1970s, through which it gained national notoriety in Germany.
References
External links
The former border crossing at Sonnenallee on www.berlin.de
{{Berlin Wall
Streets in Berlin
Berlin border crossings
Treptow-Köpenick
Neukölln
19th-century establishments in Germany