THE BERLIN WALL OF 1842: VANISHED CITY GATES

Rosenthaler Tor, a northern city gate, in 1860 - the gate stood on today’s Rosenthaler Platz at Torstraße (whose names comes from several city gates that stood along or in immediate vicinity of the road). The gate was demolished several years later. Image in public domain, here from a book by Hela Zetter and Horst Mauter “Berlin - in frühen Photographien 1844-1900”.

“Back then the city was still surrounded by a wall and right outside almost all of the city gates lay meadows and fields. That was, naturally, also the case with the ‘Anhaltstor’.

Berlin’s city gates were generally kept very basic; most of them were fitted with just a simple iron grid. One of the prettiest as far as its architecture went - not counting Brandenburger Tor - was, however, Rosenthaler Tor. It had three portals, with the larger central one for wagons and horse-riders; flanked by two smaller ones for people travelling on foot.

Next to one of them there stood a small building, housing the excise and customs office (just as was the case with all Berlin city gates). Next to the other portal soldiers guarding the gate had their station. (…)

It was customary back then for the Rosenthaler Tor guards to step outside and present their arms whenever, to the beat of a drum, a body was being transported to Sophien Cemetery in Bergstraße. That’s how they honoured to the deceased.”

From the memoirs of Agathe Nalli-Rutenberg (here the year 1842).

Anhaltische / Anhalter Tor, the gate built to make it easier to reach the new railway station opened on July 1, 1841 (later replaced by the much better-known, grand building designed by Franz Schwechten). 1846 map of Berlin, the Selter-Plan.

Between 1736 and the late 1860s Berlin was surrounded by a Stadtmauer - a city wall. This initially 14-kilometre long - later expanded to 17 kilometres - wall was also known as Akzisemauer (Customs and Excise Duty Wall), which reveals its two main functions: taxing incoming goods and controlling traffic in and out of the city.

But the eighteenth-century Berlin city wall had an additional role to play: to prevent Prussian soldiers, many of whom had been forcefully conscripted and stationed in Berlin with local families (neither side could refuse to accept the arrangement), from absconding and returning home. Once their absence was noticed or plans revealed while the deserter was already trying to leave the city through one of the gates, cannons were fired to alert the posts around the city to keep a lookout.

But Anhaltstor (Anhalter Tor) in whose vicinity (just outside the city) Agathe Nalli-Rutenberg lived as a child was never used for that purpose…

Why? Because it was only built in 1840 - to shorten the way from Berlin’s centre to the new railway station erected on the old bleaching fields and gardens beyond the wall: the original Anhalter Bahnhof. The railway company paid for it.

1855 painting be a German artist, Wilhelm Streckfuss, showing the Anhalter Tor seen from today’s Anhalter Straße. the buildings behind the gate belonged to Schöneberger Straße and Bernburger Straße respectively. Berlin’s 4.20-metre Akzisemauer can be seen behind the trees to the left of the Customs House.