Street Food Market
Art Collection at Grand Hyatt Berlin
Daimler Art Collection
International Children's Day
Festival of Lights at Potsdamer Platz
Casino Berlin
Panorama Point
Reconstruction Potsdamer Platz Arkaden
Sustainability and supply
Supply Centre
Mobility, Driving, Parking
Rudolf Krüger / Landesarchiv Berlin
From City Gate to City Centre
It all started with the "Platz vor dem Potsdamer Tor", a five-cornered crossroads in front of Potsdamer Tor, one of the 14 city gates of Berlin. In 1838, Berlin Potsdam Railway Station was opened here. Because the train stopped just outside the city wall, Potsdamer Platz became a major cargo transhipment point within just a few decades – and one of the busiest squares in Europe.
After the founding of the German Empire in 1871, Potsdamer Platz first experienced accelerated growth marked by the construction of large buildings and numerous restaurants – and then a real boom. Berlin was in a period of economic upturn, its wealthy citizens settling just outside the city gates and building the famous Tiergarten villas. The "Grand Hotel Bellevue" and the "Palast Hotel" opened before the turn of the century. The "Fuerstenhof" followed in 1907 and the "Esplanade" a year later. Within a mere 70 years, a bustling quarter had evolved.
Fast Days, Long Nights at Potsdamer Platz in the Roaring Twenties
If you wanted to feel the pulse of Berlin in the Roaring Twenties, then Potsdamer Platz was the place to be. It was the busiest traffic knot in Europe with rapid transit train, underground, 26 tram and five bus lines. Each day more than 20,000 cars crossed the square, and around 83,000 travellers were counted at Potsdam Railway Station. In 1924, the five-cornered traffic tower was erected – Europe's first traffic light. It became a landmark, the symbol of the pulsating metropolis Berlin.
The face of Potsdamer Platz was continually changing. Old was torn down to make way for new; Classicism was replaced by the New Objectivity. Midst the grand hotels and flourishing business life of the roaring twenties, Potsdamer Platz developed into a centre of middle class entertainment. Legendary establishments like the giant, German pleasure palace "Haus Vaterland" or the "Ufa-Filmpalast" and the "Europa-Tanz-Pavillon" come to mind instantly when imagining the Roaring Twenties in Berlin.
In the "Rheinterrassen", one of the many restaurants in "Haus Vaterland", thunderstorms with electric lightning flashes and rain from water pipes were staged several times each evening. The books of detective novelist Volker Kutscher still vividly convey how the city and its centre formed a melting pot of cultures.
Waldemar Titzenthaler / Landesarchiv Berlin
WAR AND DESTRUCTION
Landesarchiv Berlin
Potsdamer Platz in Ruins
Potsdamer Platz was almost completely destroyed during World War II. Only Weinhaus Huth and the ruins of the Hotel Esplanade were left standing in the once so lively square. When the war ended, Potsdamer Platz became the "border triangle" where the Soviet, British and American sectors met and the site of a flourishing black market. The introduction of the German Mark in the western sectors and the onset of the Berlin Blockade in June 1948, changed the picture dramatically. In August of that year, the border between the Soviet sector and the adjoining western sectors was marked with a line on the asphalt. In the expectation that Potsdamer Platz would soon be rebuilt, many buildings had been re-erected in a makeshift fashion. However, during the people's uprising of 17th June 1953, they were burned to the ground once again. The widespread vacancy that followed combined with unresolved political circumstances turned the quarter into an uninteresting fringe area for decades.
GERMAN DIVISION
The Iron Curtain is Drawn across Potsdamer Platz
The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, marked the start of 28 long years of division. Potsdamer Platz became part of the border zone and the widest point in Berlin's death strip. Nearly all buildings still standing in this "no man's land" were torn down. The ruins on the western side of the wall were purchased by the Berlin Senate and carried away bit by bit. The remains of the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais, the Vox-Haus, the Natural History Museum, the Haus Vaterland and even the railway station Anhalter Bahnhof farther to the south, were all gradually carted off in this way.
Plans were made for constructing an urban expressway across the now empty quarter, but this concept was not realised until after reunification – in the form of the Tiergarten Spreebogen tunnel
H. Sailer / Landesarchiv Berlin
Edmund Kasperski / Landesarchiv Berlin
Potsdamer Platz as the Stage for Reunification
From the building of the wall in 1961 until its fall 1989, Potsdamer Platz was the widest point in Berlin's death strip, a massive wasteland. When the Berlin Wall fell on 9th November 1989, interest in the area awoke virtually overnight. After decades of neglect, a completely new situation had arisen. Just a few days after the decision to open the wall, a large section of it was broken down at Potsdamer Platz and a makeshift border crossing created on 12th November. In 1990, shortly after the wall opened, the former no man's land between Potsdamer and Pariser Platz witnessed what was then the largest rock concert in history. Amid the ruins of the wall, head of Pink Floyd, Roger Waters and his band played the legendary concert "The Wall".
Potsdamer Platz as Europe's largest urban construction site of the 1990s
Before the fall of the wall, Potsdamer Platz was nothing more than wasteland, a piece of the border strip. Once the wall fell, however, the area quickly turned into Europe's largest urban construction site. To organise this massive undertaking, the square was divided into four subprojects. Each of these areas was assigned its own management, who worked hand-in-hand with the contracted company. Berliners and tourists alike could watch the progress from the "Infobox". This bright red building at Leipziger Platz with a view of the construction site was a major tourist attraction from 1995 to 2001. Completing the traffic infrastructure alone foreshadowed just how complex building an entirely new city centre for Berlin would be: the tunnel segments of Federal Highway 96 and Underground Line 3 as well as the Intercity Railway Station were built directly underneath Potsdamer Platz. All were important milestones in reintegrating Potsdamer Platz with urban life in Berlin.
Vincent Mosch
Europe's most Famous Construction Site at Potsdamer Platz
After reunification, the Berlin senate sold the plots of land at Potsdamer Platz to the former Daimler Benz AG, and Potsdamer Platz turned into Europe's largest urban construction site of the 1990s. The area was roughly divided into two separate complexes: the north-western Sony Center encompassing approximately 27,000 m2 and the Potsdamer Platz with approximately 70,000 m2. The Sony Center, designed by American Helmut Jahn, comprises a cinema, a film museum, offices, apartments and flats as well as the European headquarter of the multinational conglomerate corporation. The Deutsche Bahn high-rise marks the end of the Sony area direction Potsdamer Platz, with the buildings designed by architects Renzo Piano and Christoph Kohlbecker joining to the South.
The 21st century: Potsdamer Platz as an urban quarter
The 21st century: Potsdamer Platz as an urban model quarter
In 2007, Daimler AG decided to sell the newly developed urban quarter to the Swedish bank SEB. Under SEB's ownership, Potsdamer Platz was awarded with the silver certificate of the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) for its exemplary ecological design in 2011.
In 2015, the Canadian real estate company Brookfield acquired the areal together with joint venture partners. Since then, internationally well-known companies such as Bombardier and Bain & Company as well as Berlin start-ups such as Käuferportal have been acquired as new tenants. Every day, Potsdamer Platz attracts 110,000 visitors from Berlin, Germany and abroad: they enjoy the variedly offering with comfortable offices, extensive green spaces, first-class entertainment as well as diverse gastronomy and shopping offers.
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