Köllnischer Park

About

Köllnischer Park is a public park located near the River Spree in Mitte, Berlin. It is named after Cölln, one of the two cities which came together to form Berlin; the park location was originally just outside it. Approximately 1 hectare (2.5 acres) in area, the park came into existence in the 18th and 19th centuries on the site of fortifications. It was redesigned as a public park in 1869–1873 and was further modified in the 20th century with the addition of first a bear enclosure, the Bärenzwinger, and later a permanent exhibition of sculpture, the Lapidary. The park is a registered Berlin landmark.

The park lies between Wallstraße on the north side, the Straße am Köllnischen Park on the east side, Rungestraße on the south side and Inselstraße on the west side. Its boundaries are not clearly delimited; on the west side there are some buildings between the park and the street, including the former building of the Köllnisches Gymnasium, built in 1865–68 and now used as a music school, and on the north side, facing the river, is the Märkisches Museum. The western edge is dominated by a large office building built in 1903/04 as the headquarters of the Landsversicherungsanstalt, which has been used for the past few years by the Department of Urban Development of the Senate of Berlin, and the southern by the 1931/32 building of the German health insurance group Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse, which under the German Democratic Republic was the Parteihochschule Karl Marx.

The park is accessible via the Märkisches Museum U-Bahn station on line U2 and bus number 147. It is also close to the promenade which has been created along the bank of the Spree south of the Jannowitzbrücke.

The site of Köllnischer Park was just outside Cölln in the Middle Ages. Until the mid-17th century, it was undeveloped low-lying, swampy land prone to flooding by the Spree. Following the decision by Frederick William, the 'Great Elector' to encircle Berlin with fortifications, this became the location of Bastion VII, which was known at the time as "the bulwerk in the morass'. The work required the creation of large embankments and lasted until 1683; the swampland around the bastion was not fully drained until 1687. After such lengthy construction, the works were already out of date militarily, and after 1700 served only to control the comings and goings of visitors and residents, prevent desertion, and enable the collection of tolls on those entering the city. By 1700, mulberry trees had been planted on the walls, but only 'persons of rank' were permitted to promenade along them. After Berlin had grown considerably and the Customs Wall had been built around it, King Frederick William I (1688–1740) ordered the defensive walls to be demolished. Civilian buildings had already grown up on the bastions; a windmill and a house for the miller were built on Bastion VII, and these caused the eastern portion to be left standing longer than other parts of the fortifications. Some of the rubble from the demolished fortifications was used to build up Wilhelmstraße ; the rest was thrown into the defensive ditch outside the walls.

In 1736, Frederick William I gave the site of the park and the Märkisches Museum to one of his generals, Friedrich Sebastian Winnibald Truchseß, Count of Waldburg, who built a house there and laid out an extensive garden. After his death in the Battle of Hohenfriedberg, David Splitgerber, a merchant and banker, bought the land and was given the remaining eastern bastion section; from 1750 onwards, he operated Berlin's first sugar processing plant on the site, and also enlarged and improved the garden. In 1779, the baroque garden was mentioned by the bookseller and author Friedrich Nicolai : "It has very charming areas, in particular it includes an open pavilion on a rise, which is small, but has tall trees growing upon it". The sugar plant was forced to close in 1788. The buildings on the site were then used succeeding as tobacco storage, a hospital, a workhouse, and a men's lunatic asylum. The Märkisches Museum was later built there. Splitgerber's heirs sold the garden and in 1799 it was acquired by a Freemason lodge, the Große National-Mutterloge zu den drei Weltkugeln ( Grand National Mother Lodge of the Three Globes). The Freemasons built a lodge building which opened in December 1800, and developed the remainder into a landscape garden, one of the most attractive gardens in Berlin.

In 1858/59 Inselstraße was extended through the garden to connect Köpenicker Straße to the city centre, and the Lodge was forced to sell the larger, eastern portion of the site to the city. The Köllnisches Gymnasium was then built there. How to use the remainder of the site was discussed for years; a desire to preserve the trees led to the rejection of several commercial proposals. On 15 April 1869, the Assembly of City Deputies ( Stadtverordnetenversammlung ) decided to establish a public playground (probably one of the first in the city) and 'promenade location' there on plans drawn up by the first city director of gardens, Gustav Meyer, dedicated the necessary funds, and urged rapid execution of the plan. The plan involved some new plantings, fencing, and benches. This renovation was completed in 1873. The park reached its current dimensions in 1883 after the ditch was filled in. Ludwig Hoffmann, the architect of the Märkisches Museum (completed in 1907), then made some changes, including creating views across the park to the new museum. The last major modification of the park took place in 1969–71 to designs by Eberhard Jaenisch, Stefan Rauner and Roswitha Schulz: a mound which remained on the site of the bastion was levelled, a children's playground was added, a terrace was built behind the museum, and the Lapidary was created.

The Lapidary is an open-air museum of primarily stone artworks, both originals and copies, which formerly decorated buildings that no longer exist. Some are set into the walls around a 1969 terrace, while others are freestanding at various locations in the park. For example, in the walls of the terrace there are fragments of five carved heads from the keystones over windows, supposed to be from the Old City Hall of Berlin in Spandauer Straße and attributed to Georg Gottfried Weiyhenmeyer ; two allegorical reliefs; 17th- and 18th-century building signs; a late Gothic vault keystone; and a 16th-century sandstone relief from the Stadtschloß.

The freestanding sculptures include, among others:

- a larger-than-life sandstone sculpture of Hercules fighting the Nemean Lion, at the eastern entrance to the park, was modelled in 1787 by Gottfried Schadow and executed in 1791 by Conrad Nicolas Boy. The work originally decorated a bridge over the Königsgraben, was moved in 1891 to the Herkulesbrücke (Hercules Bridge) over the Landwehr Canal. It was placed in storage in 1934 before being installed in the park in 1971.

- two groups of putti, also in sandstone, from the balustrade of the New Palace in Potsdam.

- a mid-19th-century terracotta fountain in Italian Renaissance style from the garden of a villa in the Hirschgarten section of Friedrichshagen

- an oversize sandstone vase with bulls' head handles created after a classical model by an artist in the school of Friedrich Christian Glume (1714–1752) for the attic course of the colonnades at Sanssouci.

Zille Memorial and Neo-Renaissance Fountain

Modern and thus atypical of the sculptures in the park is the bronze statue of the artist Heinrich Zille, which was created in 1964–65 by Heinrich Drake for an exhibition in the Treptower Park and afterwards moved to Köllnischer Park. It is listed as a landmark by the City of Berlin.

At the Rungestraße corner of the park there is a historic fountain from a private garden in Hirschgarten. Moved to the park in 1971, it was made in about 1860 and is known as the Neo-Renaissance Fountain. It is currently enclosed for repairs.

The Wusterhausener Bär (or Wusterhausischer Bär) is a small round tower, with tiled walls and a helmet-shaped sandstone cupola topped with a carved trophy display of weaponry, which was formerly part of a weir regulating the water level in the ditch that formed part of the wall defences. Bär in this case derives from the Latin berum, meaning "weir", and it was apparently named for Wusterhausen because the road to that town passed by its original location at Bastion VII. It was moved to the park in 1893 and is now incorporated into the Lapidary. It is listed as a Berlin landmark.

The Lapidary is an open-air museum of primarily stone artworks, both originals and copies, which formerly decorated buildings that no longer exist. Some are set into the walls around a 1969 terrace, while others are freestanding at various locations in the park. For example, in the walls of the terrace there are fragments of five carved heads from the keystones over windows, supposed to be from the Old City Hall of Berlin in Spandauer Straße and attributed to Georg Gottfried Weiyhenmeyer ; two allegorical reliefs; 17th- and 18th-century building signs; a late Gothic vault keystone; and a 16th-century sandstone relief from the Stadtschloß.

The freestanding sculptures include, among others:

- a larger-than-life sandstone sculpture of Hercules fighting the Nemean Lion, at the eastern entrance to the park, was modelled in 1787 by Gottfried Schadow and executed in 1791 by Conrad Nicolas Boy. The work originally decorated a bridge over the Königsgraben, was moved in 1891 to the Herkulesbrücke (Hercules Bridge) over the Landwehr Canal. It was placed in storage in 1934 before being installed in the park in 1971.

- two groups of putti, also in sandstone, from the balustrade of the New Palace in Potsdam.