Berlin - Prenzlauer Berg

Prenzlauer Berg is one of the most densely populated districts in Berlin. Five-story rented apartment blocks dating from the end of the 19th C. dominate the view of this traditionally working-class district, which suffered little in the Second World War apart from its eastern sector. However, what the bombs failed to do the East German council has done: apart from a few prestige places, such as those in Husemannstrasse, nothing at all was done to maintain the buildings and the houses are all in a wretched state -- falling down with crumbling plaster and many still bearing holes shot in them during the war. Of the total of 96,500 flats and houses in Prenzlauer Berg, 40,000 are in urgent need of repair and 8,000 are standing empty. It is, therefore, not surprising that many of them are occupied by young people trying to get their names on the housing list. This way of life and indeed any form of alternative culture was severely frowned upon and suppressed under the Honecker regime, especially in Prenzlauer Berg, which became a center of resistance to the old East German regime and in whose churches numerous memorial services and peace vigils were held in 1989. The main road through Prenzlauer Berg is Schönhauser Allee, which originally linked it with Schönhausen Palace. On Senefelder Platz stands a memorial to Alois Senefelder (1771-1834), the inventor of lithography. A little farther north on the right lies the Jewish Cemetery which was laid waste by the Nazis in 1943. Opposite Wörther Strasse, which goes off to the right, stands the Church of Beneficence (Segenskirche: 1905-06), completely integrated into the street front.

Wörther Strasse opens out into Kollwitzplatz. A memorial erected in 1959 reminds us that, between 1891-1943, the artist Käthe Kollwitz lived and worked at No. 25 Kollwitzstrasse, formerly called Weissenburger Strasse.