PAINTING OF THE DAY: BELLE-ALLIANCE-PLATZ, BERLIN-KREUZBERG
Round and Round the Rondell
Berlin is like a snake - always shedding it old skin and growing new coating, “never being, forever becoming”. Few places illustrate that never-ending metamorphosis better than today’s Mehringplatz, a round plaza at the southernmost end (and at the same time beginning) of Friedrichstraße, in Kreuzberg.
Built in 1734 as Das Rondell or Das Rondell vor dem Halleschen Thore, Belle-Alliance-Platz was one of three representative plazas ordered by King Friedrich Wilhelm, I and dutifully designed for him by Johann Philip Gerlach who used three great Parisian plazas as a blueprint.
The square inspired by today’s Place des Vosges and named Quarrée or Viereck in German later came to be known as Pariser Platz, right at Brandenburger Tor. The octagonal plaza built right next to today’s Potsdamer Platz (which wasn’t even planned yet) was aptly christened Das Oktogon. You know it under its newer name: since 1814 it has been known as Leipziger Platz.
“Leipziger Platz”, “Pariser Platz” and “Belle-Alliance-Platz” - what inspired these names? Fans of Napoleonic Wars and the Little Corsican would notice the common denominator at once - provided they learnt history in Germany.
All three names commemorate Prussian victories in Napoleonic Wars of Liberation 1813-1815: Leipzig, Paris and Belle Alliance. “Belle Alliance” was the name of the inn where Napoleon had his headquarters before his last battle and where the British commander Duke Wellington and the Prussian Field-Marshall Blücher met after he had been defeated. For a long time the Battle of Waterloo was known in Prussia as “die Schlacht bei Belle Alliance”.
To make sure that the message was clear and the picture consistent (nearly all major streets and plazas at Hallesches Tor and south of it were named directly or in-directly after people and places directly related to the Wars against Napoleon), in 1866 the southern embankment of the Landwehrkanal between Blücherplatz and Zossener Brücke was called Waterlooufer.
As for Belle-Alliance-Platz - the plaza that Lutterrroth got to know in 1870 - he spent the following seven years in Berlin - changed again by the time he left the city. When he arrived, the old city gate that gave its name to today’s U-Bahn station - Hallesches Tor (the Halle Gate) was most likely still standing. It was demolished by the time he decided to paint the place.
By 1887, when F.A. Schwartz took this stunning photo (view north into Friedrichstraße), he would not have recognised it.
