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Building in Neue Schönhauser Straße 13 around 1892 (from “Blätter für Architektur und Kunstwerk”, December 1892; image via Zentrale Landesbibliothek Berlin).

On January 1st, 1895 in the house No. 13 in Neue Schönhauser Straße in Berlin-Mitte a group of invited guests and accidental passers-by celebrated the opening of the first public reading rooms in Berlin. The city had several public libraries, the first four of which opened in 1850, but these were largely located in high school buildings and rarely used by the working-class people.

T’was but a tiny venue – two rooms leased inside the Volks-Kaffee und Speise-Halle (People’s Coffee-house and Canteen) offered only eighty 80 seats but considering that Berlin had never offered such services before (at least not to the general public), eighty were plenty, indeed. The remaining rooms were places were the poor were offered food and non-alcoholic beverages at reasonably low prices.

The library in Neue Schönhauser Straße was a brain-child of two devoted readers and librarians: of Ernst Jeep, a man of many books working at the Royal Library, and Bona Peiser, the first professional female librarian in Germany. After spending several years in Great Britain, in Manchester, Peiser not only learnt from the best how properly organised reading rooms should operate but she also developed a deep wish to establish one in her home-town of Berlin.

And she went about it with both heart and skills. So much so, in fact, that she soon began to educate a new generation of female Prussian librarians and continued to do so for the rest of her life.

And, if the new municipal Lesehalle was anything to go by, they would be badly needed. Within just the first year of its opening the reading rooms attracted as many as 50,000 visitors. With the opening hours of 6PM – 10PM Monday to Friday (from 1897 on additional three hours were added between noon and 3PM) and 9.30AM – 1PM plus 5PM – 10PM on Sundays, it meant that 122 readers entered the rooms each week-day. On Sundays that number went up by over one hundred.

Ladies reading room at the Volks-Lesehalle in Neue Schönhauser Straße with (most probably) Bona Peiser – as the lay wearing specs – among the guests. Image via Ireck Lidzbarski at Flickr).

By the end of 1895 the place offered access to 3,500 books as well as 53 magazines and 43 newspapers. An incredible improvement, especially for those who due to their precarious economic position would have been prevented from reading literature and/or following the news. Something that in developed countries today sounds quite unimaginable (think of all those hashtags, memes and headlines we drown in these days) but which is bitter reality for those countries which had less luck. And something that Bona Peiser considered to be a serious problem: a social rise could not occur unless proper education were offered. With reading being its indispensable part.

Such was public interest in reading, in fact, that soon afterwards the reading rooms had to move: first to Alte Jakobstraße in Kreuzbeg and then to Köpenicker Straße 79 in Mitte (the building is still standing) and, eventually, to Rungestraße – where you will find a memorial plaque for Bona Peiser. At the same time, by 1900 four new municipal reading rooms opened in Berlin. Fourteen years later, when the First World War broke out, there were 13 of them altogether.

Bona Peiser, who in 1895 also became the head of the VWB library (VWB stood for Verband für Weibliche Angestellte or the Female Salaried-Employee Society) continued her work running public libraries and educating new librarians for the rest of her life. True to herself and the nature of her profession, she never sought limelight or attention. On the contrary, only one photo of Peiser is believed to exist. When she died in March 1929 few people were aware of the loss and with time her name came to fade away even more.

Most probably the only existing image of Bona Peiser: the lady standing inside the reading room.
Most probably the only existing image of Bona Peiser: the lady standing inside the reading room.

That’s why naming a small public library in Oranienstraße 72 was a very positive gesture. The library was not far from Brandenburgstraße 11 (now Lobeckstraße), the place where she lived for 54 years until her death (Peiser was born in Ausgustraße 73 on the edge of Berlin’s old Jewish district, Scheunenviertel).

So was the naming of a small street off Köpenicker Straße close to Schillingbrücke after Berlin’s benefactress. Still, her grave at the Jewish Cemetery in Weißensee (the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe) is long overgrown with ivy and almost impossible to find. Unless you, like yours truly, are lucky and find it per chance while exploring this incredible, historic burial site (the cemetery management will also provide you with the “exact position” of the grave but do bring an extra hour or two for even with a map, the Jewish Cemetery in Weißensee remains a riddle).

Bona Peiser´s house in Brandenburgstrasse 11 (today Lobeckstrasse). The house was damaged during the last war and its remains removed to make space for a small "Siedlung" (group of smallish blocks of flats).
Bona Peiser´s house in Brandenburgstraße 11 (today Lobeckstraße). The house was damaged during the last war and its remains removed to make space for a small Siedlung (group of smallish blocks of flats).

Die öffentliche Bibliothek muss jederzeit für jedermann unentgeltlich offenstehen (“Public libraries must be always free and open to everyone”), said Bona Peiser. Unfortunately – and somewhat ironically – the public library named in her honour had to close down. As a saving measure for the city of Berlin. As a small comfort, its follower – a public charity organisation with focus on neighbourhood projects in Kreuzberg – retained the name of Bona Peiser on their sign.

Bona Peiser was born on this day, April 26, in 1864. Exactly 155 years ago today.

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Rixdorf on the 1895 Straube-Plan von Berlin (technically, Rixdorf was not part of the city yet) with the old Bohemian village sites marked in yellow. (map in PD via Harvard Map Collection 990107769010203941)

On April 1, 1899 Rixdorf – once the largest village or rural community in Prussia – was at last granted its city right. Twenty one years later, together with six other cities, 59 rural communities and 27 estates, it became incorporated in the new metropolis, Greater Berlin.

But if you look for the name “Rixdorf” in Berlin today you will only find it referred to only indirectly, as in Rixdorfer Schmiede (Rixdorf Smithery on Richardplatz), Rixdorfer Höhe and Rixdorfer Teich (a rubble hill and a pond in Volkspark Hasenheide) or in locally-produced beverages (Rixdorfer Galgen and Rixdorfer Brause, a herbal liqueur and a – highly recommended – fizzy lemonade brand respectively). But what happened to Rixdorf itself?

In 1912 Kaiser Wilhelm II gave his royal consent to the re-branding of a place which suffered ill reputation but wished to improve its ratings along potential sponsors and investors. Rixdorf, (in-)famous for its funfairs, its distilleries and rich entertainment offer as such (especially in and along today’s Hasenheide), wished to shed its colourful old skin and become a serious player on the property market. In short, the city elders wanted to attract “a better sort of people”. In 1912 the Kaiser kindly helped by letting them re-name the place “Neukölln”.

Rixdorf’s coat of arms 1903 (via berlin.de)

Still back in May 1903 Rixdorf, after several years of consideration and debating 25 different designs, the city finally decided on its coat of arms: a shield divided into three fields (each in a different old imperial Reich colour: black, white and red) with a brickwork crown above them. Today’s coat of arms of the borough of Neukölln is the 1956 version of the original design.

Coat of arms of the borough of Neukölln

And as with all city coats of arms, it tells a story of the place itself.

The brickwork crown with three towers stands for the city rights granted to Rixdorf in 1899. Today the middle tower features a small picture of a bear: a clear sign that Neukölln became part of the Greater Berlin – the 1903 coat of arms showed a city gate instead.

The top left shield beneath the brickwork crown – the black field – refers to the part of Neukölln once known as Böhmisch-Rixdorf, whilst the white field stands for its sister-community, for Deutsch-Rixdorf.

Böhmisch-Rixdorf, or Bohemian-Rixdorf, was established by protestant refugees from Bohemia, the Hussites. They arrived in today’s Berlin in the first half of the eighteenth century invited by King Friedrich Wilhelm I (aka the Soldier King). The Hussites were fleeing religious persecution they suffered at home in then re-catholicized Bohemia and the Prussian monarch was happy to welcome new, industrious and thankful residents in his still partly depopulated (hashtag: Thirty Years Wars) realm. The king needed hands to work and the Bohemians a place to stay – it a was a perfect match. What started with eighteen families soon turned into a strong colony of Czech-speaking Prussians.

The silver chalice on the black field symbolises the “common-” or “communion chalice” used to offer wine to members of the Hussite community during the church service. One of the four principal dogmas of the Hussites, described in the “Four Articles of Prague”, was “communion under both kinds”: during the communion, church members received both the host (a thin white wafer representing the body of Christ) and a sip of red wine which stands for Christ’s blood.

This common chalice became the symbol of the Hussites – while the popular name of the movement refers to Jan Hus, the ill-fated forerunner of Protestant Reformation, in Czech (their mother-tongue) his followers were known as Kališníci -“Chalice People”.

Their new settlement outside Berlin was dubbed Böhmisch-Rixdorf to differentiate between them and the other, older Rixdorf, which henceforth was known as Deutsch-Rixdorf. The top right field – the white one – on Neukölln’s coat of arms commemorates this settlement.  The red Brandenburgian eagle was the sign of Brandenburg’s Askanian rulers. The eagle and the golden clover on its wings were already featured on Berlin’s oldest seal. The symbolic of the eagle is quite obvious – the trefoil (three-leaved) clover stands for the holy trinity and is a Christian symbol.

To sum up: so far we have a silver Bohemian chalice for Böhmisch-Rixdorf and the red eagle for its Deutsch counterpart. But what is the meaning of the eight-pointed silver cross in the bottom – red – field?

If you know the history of the Crusades or modern history of charity organisations, you will quickly recognise it as the Maltese Cross, symbol of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, also know as the Hospitallers. And what do the Crusaders have to do with Rixdorf? Reader, they created it. Or, rather, developed further. After their Holy Land brothers-in-arms from the Knights Templar (in German Tempelherren) had established it as a farm and settlement on the land they were offered to live on by Brandenburgian rulers upon Tempelherren’s return to Europe (they got it together with, among others, today’s Tempelhof and Marienfelde which owe their names to them). The Hospitallers took it over and turned into a village in 1360 after the Templars met their sad end at the hands of French king, Phillip the Fair. The village was christened Richardsdorp. The said “Richard” was most likely a high-rank knight from the Order of the Cross and and the estate’s, called Richardshof, former administrator.

So there we have it, Rixdorf/Neukölln: the city wall, the bear and the eagle, the silver chalice and the Maltese Cross. Coats of arms are not only aesthetically pleasing and a symbol of status – they also tell often complicated stories, honouring the Past in one elegant snapshot.

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Everybody knows and dreads the moment: the loudspeaker voice on your U-Bahn or S-Bahn platform makes the announcement, “Due to technical problems/medical intervention/wild ponies rambling freely on the tracks, train traffic on this line will be irregular/must be interrupted completely.”

Fear not, however, for now – thanks to Kristin Baumann – you have this incredible map at your disposal: a walking map of Berlin public transport network with clearly indicated walking times for the distance between individual stations.

Before the pandemic releases its firm grip it has had upon us for the past twelve months, take this opportunity to explore the city on foot and use Ms Baumann’s map as an inspiration to discover Berlin in its less congested incarnation. Convert your morning public-transport rage or your bursting energy-levels into something pleasurable: become a flaneur or a flaneuse! Just walk.

Map created by Kristin Baumann indicating walking distance and time between U- and S-Bahn stations (source: Medium)

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View from Kreuzberg by Johann Heinrich Hintze, 1829 (currently at the Alte Nationalgalerie). The winding road leading to Berlin is today’s Mehringdamm.

Few places in Berlin, especially those not in its very centre, are as popular among both locals and visitors as Viktoriapark in Kreuzberg. A climb up the hill, among towering trees, along meandering paths, with or without a short break to dip one’s feet into the cool water in the astoundingly life-like artificial waterfall, is a must. Once on top, a short stop to gaze down the flowing cascades and along Großbeerenstraße right into the heart of the city will give your lungs and leg muscles short but well-deserved rest – which you will need to go even higher: to the viewing platform of Nationaldenkmal am Kreuzberg, the National Memorial to the Wars of Liberation.

In fact, you might want to do some climbing today – the day the Memorial turns 200!

On March 30, 1821 – the seventh anniversary of the Prussian charge on the Montmartre and of the conquest of Paris, which unavoidably triggered Napoleon’s demise – King Friedrich Wilhelm III arrived on top of the Tempelhofer Berg (also known as the Weinberg or the Runder Berg). The highest natural elevation in what is now central Berlin but back in the days was still part of a district outside the city limits, known as Tempelhofer Vorstadt.

Accompanied by an illustrious guest, Russian Tsar Alexander I – Friedrich Wilhelm’s brother-in-arms in the conflict with Napoleon Bonaparte – Prussian monarch came to witness the unveiling of a monument commemorating their victories in what came to be known as the Wars of Liberation. By the way, being brothers-in-arms was not the only link between the two: Alexander’s younger brother and successor to Russian throne, Nicolai, had married Friedrich Wilhelm’s eldest daughter, Charlotte (or future Russian Tsarina, Alexandra Feodorovna – welcome to Europe’s royal name-carousel!)

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 these good choices.

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 sandy hill on the northern edge of the Teltow Plateau.

Schinkel, supported by several renown contemporary artists with Christian Daniel Rauch as the most prominent among them, created an artwork which truly had everything a memorial of this kind should possess: it was impressive, it was elegant, it was positively oozing with symbols which everybody understood and was happy to see included and, last but not least, it had twelve extremely good-looking statues with faces the crowds back then were often able to recognise.

National Memorial for Wars of Liberation in 1878 shortly before being raised (image by F.A. Schwartz)

The memorial’s leitmotiv was a cross: it was a direct reference to a new military decoration introduced by King Friedrich Wilhelm III in 1813 after the Battle of Leipzig: the legendary Eiserne Kreuz, the Iron Cross. The foot of the memorial itself is shaped liked one, too, and you will see the shape repeated from the memorial’s bottom to its very top. Literally, to the very top: the Nationaldenkmal am Kreuzberg is even crowned with one.

The (also cross-shaped) main section with four protruding arms created space for twelve niches, each of which is home to a Genius of an important battle. Twelve statues for twelve battles. Twelve faces that back in 1821 might still have been familiar. Like Queen Louise, the King’s prematurely deceased wife and probably the most popular monarch in Prussian history – even the villain of the story, Napoleon, seemed to have developed a kind of love-hate attitude towards her.

She, the woman who negotiated with Napoleon in person to ask him to show mercy to Prussia, became the symbol of self-proclaimed emperor’s demise – Luise is the Genius of the Battle of Paris (her daughter, Charlotte – later Alexandra Fedorovna – is the genius of Belle-Alliance, in Anglo-Saxon countries better known as the Battle of Waterloo). Christian Daniel Rauch, who created the genius of Paris not only gave it Luise’s face – he also presented her in a pose strangely alike that of Napoleon himself in his famous 1806 imperial portrait by Ingres. Coincidence? Highly unlikely. Here is why.

Whilst Ingres’s Napoleon has his hands busy holding a royal sceptre – known as the Sceptre of Charlemagne – and what is known as the Hand of Justice, Luise stands empty-handed. With one arm raised high above her head and with the other bent and slightly outstretched as if presenting something to the beholder. Something that seems to be missing.

“Napoleon on The Throne” by  Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1806 (image in PD)

So where is the similarity, I hear you ask. Where is the secret message smuggled in by Rauch? To see it, you must first know that Luise’s raised arm did not simply hang in the air the way it does today – it used to rest on a sceptre, too. A sceptre crowned, of course, with an Iron Cross and a Prussian Eagle.

The empty-handed Luise as the Genius of Paris (image by Beata Gontarczyk-Krampe)

Neither was her right hand empty. Balanced on the palm of her hand and the forearm was… a miniature Quadriga. Famously, in 1806 Napoleon had Berlin’s precious Schadow fourspan removed from the Brandenburg Gate and shipped in wooden crates to Paris. It was to be displayed later as symbol of Napoleon’s triumph over Prussia (and “German tribes” in general) on one of new triumphal arches which French emperor planned to have built in his capital. The plans for this particular Arc d’Triomphe glorifying Napoleon Bonaparte and his second wife, Marie-Luise of Austria, were eventually re-worked, re-shaped and re-designed and turned into Arc de Triomphe d’Etoile.

In the meantime, Berlin Quadriga was stored at Musée Napoléon, today’s Louvre. However, the idea symbolically to humiliate Prussia had to be abandoned once General Blücher entered the stage – Paris – in 1814 and had the precious chariot, henceforth known as Retourkutsche (return coach), promptly dispatched back to Berlin.

The disappearance of both the mini-Quadriga and Luise’s sceptre is a classic Berlin Nasser Fisch – “wet fish” stands in German criminalist jargon for an unsolved case. The two objects vanished during or soon after the renovation of the war-damaged memorial in the 1950s. They have been missing ever since. But once you know they used to be there, the deliberate and, let’s admit it, delicious Napoleon snub becomes quite obvious.

Nationaldenkmal am Kreuzberg with the Genius von Paris still carrying her regalia some time betwen 1900 and 1918 (author NN, image via Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, Bildarchiv Aufnahme-Nr. 1.110.854 )

Other victories commemorated on Schinkel’s memorial in today’s Viktoriapark had equally famous patrons and Geniuses: General York who led the Prussian army against Napoleon’s forces at Wartenburg (the boat he rests his foot on stands for his success at organising the crossing of the river Elbe). The memorial could not have done without other great Prussian heroes of Napoleonic Wars: General Yorck, General Bülow and, last but not least, General-Marshall von Blücher (in his pre-moustache days as the genius of the Battle of Katzbach).

Tsar Alexander of Russia, the king’s guest that day and the man who became a namesake for a famous Berlin plaza, is also featured: as the genius of the Battle of La Rothière – the battle after which he forced the Austrian and Prussian monarchs to “pull their socks up” and go for Paris at full throttle. Friedrich Wilhelm III himself was, of course, immortalised, too: he became the Genius of the Battle of Kulm. His son and successor, future Friedrich Wilhelm IV, had his features turned into those of the genius of the Battle of Großbeeren.

 

The Geniuses on the Kreuzberg Memorial in Viktoriapark (image by Beata Gontarczyk-Krampe).

The memorial, praised by the King and his guests, was unveiled to loud cheers from the gathered crowds. After the military parade Bishop Rulemann Friedrich Eylert blessed the Nationaldenkmal and a series of gun salutes followed.

On the same day the hill carrying the memorial shed all its previous names and – following the royal wish – was duly re-named Kreuzberg, the Cross Hill.

In 1878 the Kreuzberg Memorial, whose view by then threatened to be obscured by residential buildings growing around it at steadily increasing pace, was lifted and placed on an eight-metre-high stone base designed by Johann Heinrich Strack (the one of the Siegessäule, Belle-Alliance-Brücke, now Hallesche Brücke, and the long-gone Magistratsklaviere flanking the entrance to the equally extinct Belle-Alliance-Platz, or Mehringplatz today).

Aerial photo of the National Memorial and Viktoriapark taken between 1916 when the western part of the park designed by A. Brodersen opened and 1924 when the Katzbachstadion (now Willy-Kressmann-Stadion) was expanded. (Author NN; Photo in PD).

But how was it done? Clearly, lifting 200 tonnes of stone and iron was not a job to be left to amateurs – what was needed was an expert, the best of the best. For many the obvious choice was Carl Hoppe, German engineer, owner of an iron foundry and a machine designer who set up his first factory in Köpenicker Straße. He produced a custom-made hydraulic lift with water pressure of 30 atmospheres, capable of hoisting objects weighing up to 16 tonnes. With twelve such machines Hoppe allowed the Nationaldenkmal am Kreuzberg temporarily to defy gravitation. After the new base had been safely installed underneath it, the memorial took a 21-degree turn while being lowered onto the stone platform, placing it in a perfect line with the street at the foot of the hill: with Monumentenstraße, whose name soon after that was changed to Großbeerestraße (today’s Monumentenstraße used to be called Ziegeleiweg).

When in 1920 the Greater Berlin Act was passed by Prussian government – officially incorporating towns, villages and estates surrounding the capital city and turning Berlin into a metropolis with twenty new boroughs – one of them, Bezirk VI, was named “Hallesches Tor”. However, only a year later, to celebrate the Memorial’s hundredth birthday (albeit not to the day), the city elders decided to change it: on September 27, 1921 it was re-named Kreuzberg.

The Nationaldenkmal am Kreuzberg – truly worth the climb. (Photo by Beata Gontarczyk-Krampe, your Berlin Companion).

The 200-year-old memorial in Viktoriapark inspired the name of the hill, of the streets in the surrounding district (Yorckstraße, Blücherstraße, Wartenburgstraße to name just a few) AND was the namesake for the whole borough. Not to mention the fact that for the past 200 years it kept both Berliners and visitors happy and fit like a fiddle: the climb is, as Berliners are fond of saying, “nicht ohne“.

For we all know that Berlin has many beautiful viewing points but that you cannot beat sitting at the foot of the National Memorial on a May or July afternoon watching the Goldelse (Siegessäule) blink her golden eye at you right from the heart of the Tiergarten. And look at the Genius of Paris right in front of you – she might be empty-handed but still carries enough history for last at least two centuries or more.

Happy many returns, Nationaldenkmal am Kreuzberg! And never change.

The Nationaldenkmal am Kreuzberg is part of my Kreuzberg audio-tour available through Voice Maps – you can also listen to it through your computer or smartphone as a preparation for a great Berlin walk you might be taking soon. Enjoy it!