TODAY IN BERLIN: THE TSAR AND THE KREUZBERG

Nationaldenkmal für die Befreiungskriege on top of the Kreuzberg Hill in today’s Viktoriapark. View west towards Katzbachstraße and Monumentenbrücke and the railway grounds, 1924. Image in public domain.

On September 19, 1818 (exactly 206 years ago) Russian Tsar Alexander I - friend, military ally and “son-in-law-by-proxy” (Alexander's younger brother, Nikolai, married Prussian monarch’s daughter) of King Friedrich Wilhelm III - laid a corner stone for the new national memorial celebrating the victory of the coalition against Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars.

As Prussia’s military ally in the wars against Napoleon, it was Alexander who prevented the king (as well as the Austrian emperor, for he was wavering, too) from making what could have been the biggest mistake in the history of the Sixth Coalition: he convinced them to take Paris instead of withdrawing the troops. Now it was time to celebrate the decisions taken.

Austrian Emperor, Russian Tsar and Prussian King meeting in Prague in March 1813. By Johann Friedrich Jügel. Image in public domain.

The rather magnificent Nationaldenkmal für Befreiungskriege – National Memorial for Wars of Liberation – a 200-tonne cast-iron tapering structure installed on an octagonal stone base – was the work of Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Johann Heinrich Strack (who was responsible for the stone base). Originally planned as a neo-gothic cathedral to be erected on Leipziger Platz, it was eventually reduced to what looked like a cathedral tower and measured “only” 19 metres instead. The location was also moved three kilometres south – to a mostly barren, sandy hill on the northern edge of the Teltow Plateau.

Once unveiled in 1821 this new memorial became one of Berlin's most-visited sites. Such was its significance and popularity that once the city began to grow around it, with buildings rising and trees growing so high that they obscured its view, the Kaiser Wilhelm I ordered that the 200-tonne heavy memorial be raised to improve visibility.

View N-NE from the top of the Kreuzberg, with the two churches - French and German - on Gendarmenmarkt clearly visible to the left of the centre. The road winding on the right and behind the memorial is today’s Mehringdamm.

Today the Nationaldenkmal für die Befreiungskriege placed on top the Kreuzberg is still one of the biggest tourist and local magnets in Berlin. Not only that: both the locality (former borough) and the hill owe their name Kreuzberg (the Cross Hill), to the multiple images of the Iron Cross implemented by Schinkel in the design of the memorial. Once Germany’s highest military decoration, the Eiserne Kreuz was introduced by Friedrich Wilhelm III to show his appreciation for courage and skills of his soldiers in the wars against Napoleon. And like the National Memorial on the Kreuzberg (the hill), the Iron Cross , too, was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

The Iron Cross: the actual medal and Schinkel’s design for it (from the collection of Berlin’s Kupferstichkabinett, via bpk)