ROADS TO KING'S HEART: FRIEDRICH-WILHELM-STADT
Today in Berlin: April 16, 1827
On this day in 1827 several streets in a new Berlin district - Friedrich-Wilhelm-Stadt - were given their proper names: Karlstraße, Albrechtstraße, Luisenstraße, Marienstraße and Schumannstraße. But for the first one they still bear those names. In 1947, two years after the war ended, Karlstraße became Reinhardtstraße to honour Max Reinhardt, widely known and respected theatre director who owned and/or ran several great Berlin theatres in the area.
What Karl, Albrecht, Luise and Marie have in common is their genes: the first three were royal princes and princess - three of out ten (!) younger children of Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III and his remarkably popular (for a Prussian monarch at least) wife Luise.
As for Marie, or Maria Luise Alexandrina Princess of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach, the well-read and even better educated young woman from one of the most liberal and cultivated German courts (that of Weimar - which Goethe approved), she joined the band by marrying Karl of Prussia. Unusually for the time and the sphere, the two actually married for love - but you might want to have a quick look at the story of their pre-marital tribulations. It leaves the likes of Barbara Cartland wondering whether their own plots do have enough oomph.
But back to Friedrich-Wilhelm-Stadt and the streets named on 16 April, 1827: now we know of the royal sprogs but who, bitte schön, was Herr Schumann immortalised in the fifth road’s name?…