YOU ARE HERE: BETWEEN WEDDING AND REINICKENDORF

Strolling Through Vanished Berlin

Photo taken by Albin Schmidt in 1913, here via Fortepan.

This part of the vanished Berlin is further north than our time-travelling hunting grounds so far.

You are standing at the northern end of the then brand-new public park - Schillerpark - on the border between two future Berlin boroughs, Wedding and Reinickendorf. This is the older section of the park.

An approximate location in the photo on the 1851 map of Berlin and surrounding villages and municipalities.

The street running along the woody area - Golgatha-Gnaden and Sankt Johannes Cemetery - is one of the very few elements which help identify the place and the street: Barfusstraße. When photographed by the Albin Schmidt on that summer day in 1913, the street still reached further north-east towards the Schäfersee, a picturesque small lake separated from Barfusstraße by another short road.

Where the photographer might have been standing while taking the photo. 1910 Straube-Plan of Berlin.

The buildings in the background stood on the corner of Aroser Allee and Holländerstraße, and Holländerstraße and Baseler Straße. The latter is a 1912 school building, today’s Grundschule am Schäfersee. The former corner is until now occupied by the old buildings of Luxuspapierfabrik Albrecht & Meister (now “Erlenhöfe”).

Schillerhof residential estate as seen from the north-eastern edge of the older section of Schillerpark in 1928; aerial map of Berlin via Tagesspiegel.de.

And what happened to those allotments on the edge of Schillerpark? In the second half the 1920s they would be replaced by a new residential estate, Schillerhof - built almost parallelly to the world-famous neighbouring estate, Siedlung Schillerpark, today’s UNESCO Heritage site of German modernism. Built just outside the picture’s left edge.

---

Thank you for taking up those virtual time-travel strolls through vanished Berlin with me. Feel free to comment, share and to follow.