GEWELDIG IN BERLIN
A time-traveller's walk down Friedrichsgracht
Friedrichsgracht - in what used to be part of Alt-Cölln, one of the two settlements that made up today’s Berlin - is one of few places in Berlin with clearly Dutch origin. Firstly, the name: gracht is a Dutch word for a canal or a ditch within a city. But how come it ended up being used in Prussian capital?
This is where our “secondly” comes in: the name was originally used for a canal built out of a side-arm of the river Spree by Dutch experts. So, initially, Friedrichsgracht was a canal between today’s Inselbrücke (here in the background still as a wooden bridge it had been since the seventeenth century until 1913!) and Sperlingsgasse.
After the Great Elector decided it was time to turn Berlin into a fortress (times got rough after the Thirty-Years-War had ploughed through Europe and Brandenburg), the name Friedrichsgracht was used to name the new street along the embankment.
By the by, the fact that the new Festung Berlin looked very much like the Dutch fortifications of the time was, of course, no coincidence either - the Great Elector, who had spent his youth in Holland (hashtag: HouseOfOrange), knew a great example to follow when he saw one.
After the ill-fated Festung Berlin had to be dismantled (it made the city safer but was also a very effective way of preventing its growth and expansion), the name Friedrichsgracht remained. Reminding the future generations of the Dutch influence in Berlin’s development and of the monarch who returned to Brandenburg from Holland with a Dutch wife and a taste for speculaas.
I love these posts. Beautifully researched and presented, with excellent related graphic content! Thank you, Beata.
This makes me wonder why Canal Street in NYC (named for the canal the Dutch built in New Amsterdam (see also Wall Street)) didn't retain the Gracht.
Most likely, the Dutch was more politically and linguistically fraught here than it was in Berlin.
Dutch names do survive here see, e.g., the Bronx - the former lands of the Bronck family), but are more common outside the bounds of what was then a small settlement at the southern tip of Manhattan.