Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Alexanderplatz
hough long an important business and tra
c centre, today's
Alexanderplatz
- a
sprawling, windswept, pedestrianized plaza surrounded by high-rises - is largely the
product of a 1960s GDR vision of how the centre of a modern, socialist metropolis
should look. In the eighteenth century routes to all parts of Germany radiated from
here, and a cattle and wool market stood on the site. It acquired its present name after
the Russian tsar Alexander I visited Berlin in 1805. Today, in addition to the S-Bahn
line running overhead, three underground lines cross beneath the platz, various bus
routes converge on the area, and several tram lines course through it, making it one
of central Berlin's busiest spots.
From the main doors at the southern end of the
train station
- which looks much
the same as it did before the war despite being a 1960s rebuild - the route onto “Alex”
leads through a gap between a couple of prewar survivors: the
Alexanderhaus
and the
Berolinahaus
, two buildings designed at the beginning of the 1930s by the architect
and designer Peter Behrens, whose ideas influenced the founders of the Bauhaus
movement. With their opaque glass towers beautifully lit at night, these are the only
Alexanderplatz buildings not to have been destroyed in the war. he most intriguing
communist-era landmark on the square is the
Weltzeituhr
(“World Clock”) in front of
the Alexanderhaus. Central Berlin's best-known rendezvous point, it tells the time in
different cities throughout the world, and is a product of the same architectural school
responsible for the Fernsehturm.
3
Loxx
Grunerstr. 20 • Daily 10am-8pm • €12 •
T
030 44 72 30 22,
W
loxx-Berlin.de • U- & S-Alexanderplatz
Tucked away on the top floor of the Alexa Centre shopping mall,
Loxx
may well be
run by a fringe group of modelling enthusiasts, but it's certainly no small operation.
Here a battery of forty computers and dozens of monitors equip a nerve centre that
runs four hundred model trains and even a model airport: “night flights” occur every
twenty minutes. he Berlin cityscape on display took 400,000 man hours to create;
scores of Berlin landmarks have been faithfully reproduced on an exacting 1:87 scale,
from a Fernsehturm that's well over twice human height down to mock-Byzantine
enclosures of Berlin zoo and the
Plattenbau
high-rises of the GDR. Even with its
creative geography it's a delight, especially for anyone who knows Berlin, and there's
an undeniable pleasure in watching modellers working around the clock to create a
mini version of a city famous for its tireless builders and architects.
ALEXANDERPLATZ: A TURBULENT HISTORY
Alexanderplatz
has figured prominently in city
upheavals
ever since revolutionaries
(including writer Theodor Fontane) set up barricades here in 1848. In 1872 it was the site of
a demonstration by an army of homeless women and children, and nearly half a century
later, during the revolution of 1918, sailors occupied the Alexanderplatz police headquarters
(a feared local landmark just southeast of the platz - a plaque marks the spot) and freed the
prisoners. Then in November 1989 it was the focal point of a million-strong demonstration and
subsequent rallies when hundreds of thousands of people crammed into the square to hear
opposition leaders speak.
Throughout its existence, the face of Alexanderplatz has undergone many
transformations
.
A major reshaping at the end of the 1920s cleaned up what had become a rather sleazy corner
of the city and turned it into one of its main shopping centres, with two expensive department
stores in the vicinity: Hermann Tietz and Wertheim. Both were Jewish-owned until “Aryanized”
by the Nazis. The Kaufhof department store facing the fountain was, as Centrum, one of the
best-stocked shops in East Germany, though these days it's just another standard big store, now
joined by several other chain stores and malls in and around the square.
