Tiergarten (, literally ''Animal Garden'', historically meaning ''deer park'' or hunting ''game park'') is a locality within the

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English language, English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History ...

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-Kreuz ...

, in central

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

(

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

). Notable for the great and homonymous urban park, before

German reunification German reunification () was the process of re-establishing Germany as a single sovereign state, which began on 9 November 1989 and culminated on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of the East Germany, German Democratic Republic and the int ...

, it was a part of

West Berlin West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...

. Until

Berlin's 2001 administrative reform Berlin is divided into boroughs or administrative districts (). In Berlin, the term is officially shortened to (districts). The boroughs are further divided into quarters (). These smaller localities are officially recognised, but have no admini ...

, Tiergarten was also the name of a borough (Bezirk), consisting of the current locality (''Ortsteil'') of Tiergarten (formerly called ''Tiergarten-Süd'') plus

Hansaviertel The Hansaviertel () is the smallest ''Ortsteil'' (district) of Berlin and is between Großer Tiergarten and the Spree River, within the central Mitte borough of Berlin. The district was almost completely destroyed during World War II but was re ...

and

Moabit Moabit () is an inner city locality in the boroughs of Berlin, borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2022, about 84,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial sector, industr ...

. A new system of road and rail tunnels runs under the park towards Berlin's main station in nearby Moabit.

History

Historical notes

Once a hunting ground of the Electors of

Brandenburg Brandenburg, officially the State of Brandenburg, is a States of Germany, state in northeastern Germany. Brandenburg borders Poland and the states of Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. It is the List of Ger ...

the ''Großer Tiergarten'' park of today was designed in the 1830s by landscape architect

Peter Joseph Lenné Peter Joseph Lenné (the Younger) (29 September 1789 – 23 January 1866) was a Prussian gardener and landscape architect. As director general of the Royal Prussian palaces and parks in Potsdam and Berlin, his work shaped the development of 1 ...

. In the course of industrialization in the 19th century, a network of streets was laid out in the Hobrecht-Plan in an area that came to be known architecturally as the Wilhelmine Ring. In 1894 the

Reichstag building The Reichstag (; ) is a historic legislative government building on Platz der Republik in Berlin that is the seat of the German Bundestag. It is also the meeting place of the Federal Convention, which elects the President of Germany. The Ne ...

by architect

Paul Wallot Johann Paul Wallot (26 June 1841 Oppenheim am Rhein – 10 August 1912 Bad Schwalbach) was a German architect of Huguenot descent, best known for designing the Reichstag building in Berlin, erected between 1884 and 1894. He also built the adjacen ...

opened as the seat of the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

parliament. The lawn between the contemporary ''

Haus der Kulturen der Welt The Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), in English House of World Cultures, in Berlin is Germany's national center for the presentation and discussion of international contemporary arts, with a special focus on non-European cultures and societi ...

'' (House of World Cultures) and the Reichstag building was the site of the

Krolloper The Kroll Opera House () in Berlin, Germany, was in the Tiergarten district on the western edge of the '' Königsplatz'' square (today ''Platz der Republik''), facing the Reichstag building. It was built in 1844 as an entertainment venue for th ...

opera house, built in 1844, which served as parliament house after the

Reichstag fire The Reichstag fire (, ) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday, 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Marinus van der Lubbe, ...

on 27 February 1933 and was demolished by air raids in 1943. On 15 January 1919 the socialist

Karl Liebknecht Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (; ; 13 August 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a German politician and revolutionary socialist. A leader of the far-left wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Liebknecht was a co-founder of both ...

was shot by

Freikorps (, "Free Corps" or "Volunteer Corps") were irregular German and other European paramilitary volunteer units that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. They effectively fought as mercenaries or private military companies, rega ...

soldiers within the park near the lake ''Neuer See''. The corpse of

Rosa Luxemburg Rosa Luxemburg ( ; ; ; born Rozalia Luksenburg; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary and Marxist theorist. She was a key figure of the socialist movements in Poland and Germany in the early 20t ...

, murdered on the same day, was found in the nearby

Landwehrkanal The Landwehr Canal (), is a canal parallel to the Spree river in Berlin, Germany, built between 1845 and 1850 to plans by Peter Joseph Lenné. It connects the upper part of the Spree at the eastern harbour () in Friedrichshain with its lowe ...

on 1 June 1919. The first '' Institut für Sexualwissenschaft'' (Institute for Sex Research) of

Magnus Hirschfeld Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a German physician, Sexology, sexologist and LGBTQ advocate, whose German citizenship was later revoked by the Nazi government.David A. Gerstner, ''Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer ...

was situated at the former ''In den Zelten'' street, near the contemporary ''Haus der Kulturen der Welt'', from 1919 until it was closed by the Nazis in 1933. A site next to the Tiergarten park is the former location of a villa at Tiergartenstrasse 4 where more than 60 Nazi bureaucrats and doctors worked in secret under the " T4" program to organize the mass murder of sanatorium and psychiatric hospital patients deemed unworthy to live. The German national memorial to the people with disabilities systematically murdered by the Nazis was dedicated in 2014 in Berlin at that site. Although the villa was destroyed, a set in the pavement on Tiergartenstraße marks its location and historic significance. After 1944, the park was largely deforested because it served as a source of firewood for the devastated city. In 1945, the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

built a

war memorial A war memorial is a building, monument, statue, or other edifice to celebrate a war or victory, or (predominating in modern times) to commemorate those who died or were injured in a war. Symbolism Historical usage It has ...

along the Straße des 17. Juni, the Tiergarten's main east–west artery, near the Brandenburg Gate. The Tiergarten itself became part of the British sector.

Tiergarten today

The locality houses many parliamentary and governmental institutions, among others the

Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet (assembly), Diet") is the lower house of the Germany, German Federalism in Germany, federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag wa ...

in the Reichstag building and the new

German Chancellery The Federal Chancellery (, ) is a Germany, German Federal agency (Germany), federal agency serving the executive office of the chancellor of Germany, the head of the Government of Germany, federal government, currently Friedrich Merz. The Chancel ...

. The residence of the German President, Schloss Bellevue and the

Carillon A carillon ( , ) is a pitched percussion instrument that is played with a musical keyboard, keyboard and consists of at least 23 bells. The bells are Bellfounding, cast in Bell metal, bronze, hung in fixed suspension, and Musical tuning, tu ...

are also located in the Tiergarten park. It contains several notable sculptures including the four-tiered

Victory Column A victory column, or monumental column or triumphal column, is a monument in the form of a column, erected in memory of a heroic commemoration, including victorious battle, war, or revolution. The column typically stands on a base and is crowned ...

(''Siegessäule''), the Bismarck Memorial and several other memorials to prominent Prussian generals, all of which were located in the ceremonial park facing the Reichstag before they were moved to their present location by the

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

s. In addition, the tree-lined pedestrian avenues emanating from the Victory Column contain several ceremonial sculptures of Prussian aristocrats enacting an 18th-century hunt. The

Brandenburg Gate The Brandenburg Gate ( ) is an 18th-century Neoclassical architecture, neoclassical monument in Berlin. One of the best-known landmarks of Germany, it was erected on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin t ...

and the

Potsdamer Platz Potsdamer Platz (, ''Potsdam Square'') is a public square and traffic intersection in the center of Berlin, Germany, lying about south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag building, Reichstag (Bundestag, German Parliament Building), and ...

are situated on the eastern rim of the locality, which itself was the former frontier between

East East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that ea ...

and West Berlin. Nearby is the ''Kulturforum'' stretching from the , a 1963 concert hall by architect

Hans Scharoun Bernhard Hans Henry Scharoun (; 20 September 1893 – 25 November 1972) was a German architect best known for designing the (home to the Berlin Philharmonic) and the Schminke House in Löbau, Saxony. He was an important exponent of Organic arc ...

and home of the

Berlin Philharmonic The Berlin Philharmonic () is a German orchestra based in Berlin. It is one of the most popular, acclaimed and well-respected orchestras in the world. Throughout the 20th century, the orchestra was led by conductors Wilhelm Furtwängler (1922� ...

orchestra to the

Neue Nationalgalerie The Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) at the Kulturforum is a museum for modern art in Berlin, with its main focus on the 20th century. It is part of the National Gallery of the Berlin State Museums. The museum building and its sculpt ...

built by

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect, academic, and interior designer. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. He is regarded as one of the pionee ...

in 1968. In between are the neoclassical Saint Matthew Church, built in 1845 by Friedrich August Stüler, the as well as the new branch of the

Berlin State Library The Berlin State Library (; officially abbreviated as ''SBB'', colloquially ''Stabi'') is a universal library in Berlin, Germany, and a property of the German public cultural organization the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (). Founded in ...

(''Staatsbibliothek''). The adjacent area between the park and the Landwehrkanal is home to

Emil Fahrenkamp Emil Fahrenkamp (November 8, 1885, Aachen – May 24, 1966, Ratingen-Breitscheid) was a German architect and professor. One of the most prominent architects of the period between the first and second World Wars, he is best known for his 1931 ...

's 1932

Shell-Haus The Shell-Haus (Shell House) is a modernist building that overlooks the Landwehrkanal in the Tiergarten, Berlin, Tiergarten district of Berlin, Germany. It was designed by Emil Fahrenkamp and was built in 1930–31. Building and design In ...

, numerous embassies and the

Bendlerblock The Bendlerblock () is a building complex in the Tiergarten (Berlin), Tiergarten district of Berlin, Germany, located on Stauffenbergstraße (formerly named ''Bendlerstraße''). Erected in 1914 as headquarters of several Imperial German Navy (''Ka ...

, where in 1944

Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (; 15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944) was a German German Army (1935–1945), army officer who is best known for his 20 July plot, failed attempt on 20 July 1944 to assassinate Adolf ...

and the conspirators of the

20 July plot The 20 July plot, sometimes referred to as Operation Valkyrie, was a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the chancellor and leader of Nazi Germany, and overthrow the Nazi regime on 20 July 1944. The plotters were part of the German r ...

were shot by a firing squad. Today the building serves as second office of Germany's Federal Ministry of Defense; the headquarters of the Christian Democratic Party, the

Konrad Adenauer Foundation The Konrad Adenauer Foundation ('' German: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V.; Abbreviation: KAS'') is a German political party foundation associated with but independent of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The foundation's head ...

and Friedrich Ebert Foundation academies as well as the

Bauhaus Archive The Bauhaus Archive () is a state archive and Museum of Design located in Berlin. It collects art pieces, items, documents and literature which relate to the Bauhaus School (1919–1933), and puts them on public display. Currently, the museum ...

and the high schools Französisches Gymnasium and Canisius-Kolleg are located nearby. The adjacent western area at the border to

Charlottenburg Charlottenburg () is a Boroughs and localities of Berlin, locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a German town law, town in 1705 and named after Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Kingdom ...

houses the

Berlin Zoo The Berlin Zoological Garden (, ) is the oldest surviving and best-known zoo in Germany. Opened in 1844, it covers and is located in Berlin's Tiergarten. With about 1,380 different species and over 20,200 animals, the zoo presents one of the ...

. The 1985 album '' Le Parc'' by

Tangerine Dream Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music band founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The group has seen many personnel changes over the years, with Froese the only constant member until his death in January 2015. The best-known lineup of the grou ...

contains a track titled ''Tiergarten''.

Rufus Wainwright Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright (born July 22, 1973) is a Canadian and American singer, songwriter, and composer. He has recorded eleven studio albums and numerous tracks on compilations and film soundtracks. He has also written two classical opera ...

also released a track titled Tiergarten as part of his 2007 album, Release the Stars. Since 1987, the annual Berlin Marathon starts at Tiergarten near the Brandenburg Gate. Between 1996 and 2003 and then in 2006, the Love Parade music festival took place at the Victory Column and Straße des 17. Juni. On 2 July 2005, the Live 8 concert, Berlin took place at the Victory Column. On 24 July 2008, then-US presidential candidate

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

spoke at the Victory Column in front of a crowd of over 200,000 people.

Großer Tiergarten

Covering , the " Großer Tiergarten" is the largest urban park of Berlin.

Notes

External links