Northwest:
Lichterfelde-West
The Lichterfelde villa colony is particularly evident in the western part: one listed house next to the other. In addition, the walk is worthwhile to get interesting insights into various aspects of German history: from homeopathic hospital to Adolf Hitler’s Leibstandarte to the concentration camp outside.
One monument villa next to the other
Until today noble garden city
Carstenn’s plans still visible
Contractor Johann Anton Wilhelm von Carstenn (1822–1896) promised the Prussian king the construction of a cadet institution to attract – often aristocratic – officers and wealthy estates as buyers for his garden city. The idea worked: During World War I, the area was called “Witwenfelde” (Widow field), and to this day, income and education are said to be higher than in other neighborhoods in the capital. And the character as a villa colony is still particularly alive here.
Architecturally, the oldest villa colony in Berlin is interesting: Lichterfelde-West (5 km). The Hamburg developer Johann Anton Wilhelm von Carstenn also bought land there in 1865 to provide prestigious living in a green setting. Above all, the architect Gustav Lilienthal, brother of the aviation pioneer, built many “castles of Lichterfelde” here in the neo-Gothic-English Tudor style (above all Paulinenstrasse, but also Potsdamer Str. 57a and 63; 3.9 km); he himself lived at Tietzenweg 51 (4.2 km). Carstenn himself designed the station building (5.1 km) in the style of a northern Italian Renaissance villa, a few meters further on the elaborately decorated Emisch House. In Curtiusstrasse stands the Villa Holzhüter, also called the “Florentine Villa,” from 1875, while at Potsdamer Strasse 22 (4.1 km) Alfred Grenander and Otto Spaltung designed a villa in the Art Nouveau style. House No. 6 is again modeled on the English country house style. The building at No. 9 is known as the “Potsdamer Schlößchen.” If you want to explore more, you can get expert guided tours from stadtverfuerhung.de (+49 30 4 44 09 36).
Lichterfelde concentration sub camp
After crossing the Teltow Canal on Wismarer Straße, we pass the site of the former Lichterfelde subcamp (2.8 km). This is a subcamp (June 1942-April 1945) of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It provided labor for 1,000-1,500 prisoners to the SS and, to a lesser extent, the economy, who were housed in four barracks. At least 41 people lost their lives there. When the camp was dissolved in April 1945, the survivors were to be led in death marches to the Baltic Sea to be dumped on ships in the sea. U.S. forces and the Red Army were able to prevent this from happening in northern Mecklenburg. The American military used the camp as an internment camp for a good year after the occupation. Today, the “Pillar of Prisoners” is a reminder of the camp’s location. Wohnbau GmbH had donated it to the city in the course of building apartments on the site.
If you would like to learn more about the subject, you can read Klaus Leutner’s book “Das KZ-Außenlager in Lichterfelde. Explorations at a Forgotten Place.” delve deeper.
“Starting in May 1942, prisoners of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp were forced to set up a subcamp in Berlin-Lichterfelde, in what is now the district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, which existed until 1945. At the time of maximum occupancy in March 1945, more than 1400 prisoners were registered. In total, members of 17 nationalities performed forced labor here under the most difficult conditions. The SS used them as laborers primarily for its own construction projects. Klaus Leutner traces the history of the camp, asks about the perpetrators, and devotes biographical sketches to the fate of individual prisoners as well as everyday life in the camp, the prisoners’ forced community, and the functional prisoners.” – Metropol Publishers
Park Cemetery Lichterfelde
On the way to Lichterfelde-West we pass the Parkfriedhof Lichterfelde (3.4 km; open daily 08:00-20:00), which owes its construction (1908-1911) to the cemetery shortage. Garden architect Friedrich Bauer designed the grounds on the 8.56-acre treed site with groves of rhododendrons, meandering paths, and a valley meadow free of gravesites. A fountain temple serves as an eye-catcher at the end.
On the other hand, Ernst Pertersen is responsible for the cemetery chapel: a massive stone building with a tower front and three-day open vestibule and an artistically designed wooden ceiling in the celebration hall. The cemetery was extended first in 1927 and then again in 1938. A grove of honor is dedicated to 64 fallen soldiers of the First World War. The victims of the Second World War are commemorated by a memorial stone in the middle of the field. A total of 2,089 war victims rest here.
With the incorporation of Groß-Lichterfelde into Groß-Berlin in 1920, the site developed into a celebrity cemetery. These include, for example, the entrepreneur Friedrich Christian Correns (1863-1923) mentioned below, the publisher Walter de Gruyter (1862-1923), the musician Drafi Deutscher (1946-2006), the historian Sebastian Haffner, Bishop Otto Sibelius (1880-1967), the architect Gustav Lilienthal (1849-1933) see below, the Reich Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher (1882-1934).
The approximately 400 m long and 70 m wide asphalted area was used by the Americans as a parade ground and renamed “4th of July Square” in 1976. Today, driving students practice here for their exams, especially with motorcycles and cars.
Fourth Ring
For the “Reichshauptstadt” or “Germania” – the term “Welthauptstadt Germania” was not coined until after the end of the Third Reich – architect and “General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital” Albert Speer planned four ring roads in Berlin. The first ring would have run along existing streets in a wide arc around the Tiergarten. The other three rings, on the other hand, were to be located only partly on existing traffic routes. When the Telefunkenwerk (see 4) was built in 1937, the National Socialists built the section for the fourth ring road at the same time. It is the only piece of road that was realized and illustrates the gigantomania of the regime.
Telefunken Factory
Immediately to the west of the park cemetery, at the Platz des 4. Juli, lies the former (1939-1945) Telefunken factory (3.9 km). Originally, supported by the National Socialists, it was to be located on the fourth of the four ring roads that Albert Speer had planned here for the Reich capital “Germania”. According to the plans of architect Hans Fertilen, development and production facilities, mainly for electron tubes and radio equipment, as well as the company headquarters were built in steel skeleton construction starting in 1938. The four-story main building is grouped around open courtyards, with one- to two-story buildings next to it. A nine-story clock tower overlooks the site, connected to the administrative wing. A figural relief is carved on it, with an allegory of mankind’s use of electrical engineering.
The actual plant was damaged, but functionally completely dismantled at the end of the war. Immediately after World War II, it was the headquarters of the U.S. Armed Forces before being used as barracks (McNair Barracks, after General Lesley J. McNair, 1883-1944), the third largest barracks in the Berlin Brigade, from 1949-1994. At times as many as 2,300 soldiers used the training facilities, officers’ mess halls, crew quarters, gymnasiums, bakery, library, and movie theater.
Today it is private accommodation, primarily lofts, penthouses and duplexes and meanwhile stocked up.
Berlin Homeopathic Hospital
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Institute for Contemporary History
A short detour to Finckensteinallee 85 takes us to the Institute of Contemporary History (3.9 km). The research institution and publishing house, based in Munich and Berlin, works on recent German history. For example, in 2016 it published an annotated new edition of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In addition, it prepares expert opinions for courts, authorities and ministries, especially with reference to the years 1933-1945. The Allies established it in 1949 as the “German Institute for the History of the National Socialist Era.” It was renamed in 1952.
Prussian Cadet College
On the way to Lichterfelde-West is also the former Royal Prussian Cadet Institute (4.1 km; Finkensteinallee 63). From 1882 to 1920, it was the central cadet establishment of the Prussian Army, including horse stables, military hospital, gymnasium, dining hall, the representative Field Marshal’s Hall, and the soon to be world-famous “Cadet Dome”.
The Cadet College became the most important training center of the German armed forces and shaped several generations of top officers, including those of the Württemberg Army, the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht. The entrepreneur von Castenn (see above) donated 21 hectares of land in Lichterfelde-West to the Prussian state in order to attract noble officers and their families to the new colony through the gain in prestige.
In return, the shrewd entrepreneur undertook to establish a transport connection, which in turn led to the world’s first electric streetcar. Carstenn’s calculation worked out to the extent that to this day the villa district is said to be characterized by the Prussian conservative upper class. After all, the vernacular then called the area “Witwenfelde” after World War I because of the many fallen officers.
With the Treaty of Versailles, Germany committed itself to the dissolution of the institution. The State Educational Institution (Stabila) was established there before the National Socialists remilitarized the building: it became the sole home of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) after the latter had executed a large part of the previous co-inhabitants of the western barracks buildings, the SA staff guard ‘Hermann Göring’, during the “Röhm Putsch” in June 1934. A swimming hall and further service buildings were added and the main entrance was moved to Finckensteinallee.
Parts of the buildings were destroyed during air raids and battles for Berlin or partly demolished by the US Army, which used the site as Andrew Baracks from July 1945. For the construction of a church in 1953, still existing parts of the Kadettendom were demolished. Further new buildings followed, so that of the original complex the southeastern barracks wing, individual residential buildings and the commandant’s house in the west still remain.
Instead of young boys, the buildings have housed old documents since 1994: Since then, it has been one of the sites of the Federal Archives (Finkensteinallee 63). Non-military documents up to 1945, GDR documents are archived here and films can be used. You can book appointments for this online (bundesarchiv.de).
Clemens Brentano Elementary School
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St. John’s Church
St. John’s Church (4.6 km; Johanneskirchplatz 4, 12205 Berlin) is a classicist domed building with hints of modernism, inaugurated in 1914. The pointed building site resulted in a rotunda above a wide attic band, which also saved the cost of elaborate extra towers. After St. Peter’s Church (1898) and St. Paul’s Church (1900), the municipality of Groß-Lichterfelde was reluctant to finance a third large church in the new villa district of Carstenn.
Above the main portal, a medallion of John adorns the church consecrated after him. On both sides are carved the words of 1 John, chap. 4, verse 16: “God is love”. The altar and pulpit are on top of each other on the central axis according to the Wiesbaden program (1891), which instead of a certain formal language, the living congregation and the sermon had to be the center of attention. The new false ceiling of the 1965 remodeling unfortunately obscures the painting of the Last Judgment by Michael Ell. The Schule organ has two manuals and 23 stops. The building by Otto Kuhlmann is a listed building. Services are on Sundays at 11:00 and once a month at 18:00. More at: kirchenkreis-steglitz.de
Rother Convent
At the corner of Friedrichstraße/Kommandantenstaße, the Rother-Stift (4.2 km) in the style of the Moorish brick Gothic, as a convent for unmarried officers’ and civil servants’ daughters, testifies at least to the former dominance of this class of population in this area.
Karlsplatz
If the cyclist turns from Drakestraße into Ringstraße, he comes across Karlsplatz (4.5 km). Von Carstenn designed it as the center of the Lichterfelde villa colony and named it after Prince Carl of Prussia. Today it is used as a children’s playground. With her series of novels Die Frauen vom Karlsplatz (The Women of Karlsplatz), author Anne Stern has revived the Gründerzeit of the area in a comprehensible way.
The author Anne Stern, born in 1982, is a historian and holds a doctorate in German studies. She lives in Berlin with her husband and three children. She worked as a teacher and in teacher training and initially wrote successfully as a self-publisher. Her novels about the midwife “Fräulein Gold” became Spiegel bestsellers.
Paulinenplatz & Commander stone
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Art house Achim Freyer Foundation
Only a short distance away is the Kunsthaus of the Achim Freyer Foundation (4.1 km) in a half-timbered villa designed by Georg Böhm in 1893. It is the private collection of the German artist, director and art collector Achim Freyer (*1934). It includes works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, etc. The Kunsthaus offers guided tours, vernissages and auctions. It also serves as a research center. achimfreyer.com/kunsthaus-and-collection
English Cottage
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Potsdam Castler
Florentine Villa
Lichterfelde-West Station
Baseler Str. 2/4
West Bazar
Emisch House
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Steglitz Museum
Nearby, at Drakestr. 64A, a listed Gründerzeit villa houses the Steglitz Museum (3.6 km). When Steglitz was incorporated into Greater Berlin in 1920, the Heimatverein was formed out of concern that historical features of the formerly independent town might be lost. These include, for example, the Wandervogel movement, but also residential culture and military history. It is closed until further notice. steglitz-museum.de
Realgymnasium
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