Berlin district Friedrichshain: Wall area
Berlin has many corners scattered throughout the city that are worth exploring. I chose an area for my film shoots that appears historical in the form shown, but did not look like that in the mid-1990s. The street Stralauer Allee/ Mühlenstraße, which runs past the river Spree, was a street in the immediate border area during GDR times. The Spree itself was the actual border with West Germany, and in front of it ran a wall on the east side in the Friedrichshain district, much of which is still preserved. The bright red and historic-looking bridge "Oberbaumbrücke" was an inaccessible and impassable ruin after the fall of the GDR. Only a temporary pedestrian bridge existed when I moved to Berlin (1994). It was only in 1995 that the bridge, which had been completely reconstructed, was put back into operation. The implementation was carried out according to revised plans by the Spanish-Swiss architect Santiago Calatrava Valls, including original historical building materials in the construction.
The area between the remains of the Berlin Wall and the river bank has had changing conditions of use over the years. While there was initially a trailer park for the alternative Berlin scene until the mid 1990th, the site, which afterwards was largely unused, was partially built on and pieces of the historic GDR wall were removed, despite protests from the population. From 2009, the East Side Park with a waterfront promenade and lawns was built along the Spree according to the plans of the landscape architects Häfner and Jimenez.
The Berlin area presented here is also full of urban green spaces, which also grow between the train tracks and along the tram tracks. The green islands spread throughout the city enable Berlin's relatively large urban biodiversity.
© Text, film, photo and sound Stefan F. Wirth, Berlin, June/July 2024
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