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Nature in the city — what for?

The promenade

Following the destructions in Berlin in the Second World War, a lot of building projects aimed to achieve a new balance between open spaces and developed areas. At last, areas for recreation were also planned amid densely built-up urban areas in the metropolis. Greening the district Berlin-Wedding has primarily been architect Walter Nicklitz’s achievement. As City Councillor for Construction, he backed rewilding from 1951 and built a promenade along the river Panke. Nicklitz commissioned planting 10,000 new trees along streets and in parks of the traditional working-class district.  

Walter Nicklitz saw his task in realizing the visions of the pioneers of modern urban development in Wedding. Visual documentation was always of great importance for him. His intention was to get his measures noticed beyond Berlin at a national level, and he achieved that.

Area map from the loose-leaf collection Wedding im Grünen. Planunterlagen (Wedding as a green space. Planning documents), 1955/1956, surveyed and drawn by Gerhard Croon, Head of the Department of Urban Horticulture at the district authority Wedding.

Scale 1:1000, coloured pencil on blueprint

Taken over from the Department of Urban Horticulture in Wedding after 1975

How does a public entertainment “mile” evolve?

Badstraße

Nowhere else in Wedding, the change of the city is as palpable as it is along Badstraße. Once built as an access road to the spa for the royal court, the street started to attract more people from the middle of the 19th century. Banquet halls, beer gardens and summer theatres started to move in. In the 1920s, the cinema Lichtburg with its more than 2,000 seats was one of the largest cinemas in Berlin. The constantly growing city created new functional spaces in its suburbs. And on Badstraße, the emphasis was on public entertainment. 

View of Badstraße from the bridge of the outbound urban railway: As advertising slogans from breweries demonstrate, quite a few different public entertainment venues set up along the street.

Published by S. and G. Saulsohn, Berlin, in circulation in 1900 (Reproduction)

Ballschmieders Etablissement, Badstraße 15a

Picture postcards of cafés, bars and other venues on Badstraße, distributed by the Berlin publishing houses Alfred Cohn, Hartwig & Vogel’s Automaten A.G., Gustav Roggenbau, O. Wandl and the publisher Stengel & Co. in Dresden, in circulation from 1900 to 1931

Donations: Anton Schnellbacher 1991, Klaus Lange 1993 and Hans Graefer 1995

Konzertgarten Kastanienwäldchen (outdoor concert venue), Badstraße 16

Rose-Theater, Badstraße 22 (theatre)

Marienbad, Badstraße 35/36 (banquet hall)

Niekes Sommer-Theater, Badstraße 35 (theatre)

Zum Schultheiss, Badstraße 66 (pub)

Voigt-Theater, Badstraße 58 (theatre)

The cinema Lichtburg that opened its doors in 1929 epitomizes Berlin as the Elektropolis of that time. Rudolf Fränkel designed it as a body of light that illuminated the urban space at night. It immediately caught everybody’s eye when leaving the railway station Gesundbrunnen.

Lichtburg, new underground railway station, Apollo-Verlag 1933

Acquired 1990 (Reproduction)