Meander through Moabit

Surrounded by waterways, Moabit is a diverse neighbourhood to the north of the Tiergarten and the Reichstag. Barely off the main tourist track, it has managed to keep below the radar and is a great place to be among Berliners without having to go too far afield. There are already two blogs about Moabit on the Berlin Unwrapped website. ‘The History Garden’ (History and Politics, September 4th, 2015) features a fascinating park on the site of Moabit’s infamous former prison and ‘Putting Moabit on the Map’ (Small Worlds, September 25th, 2015) has a wealth of information about Moabit’s history and some of its attractions. You can find them both by scrolling down the blogs in the relevant categories. Now, a sunny day strolling down Turmstraβe, stopping for lunch in the covered market and then meandering along the north bank of the River Spree has inspired me to write more about Moabit.

Outside the market in Moabit

We started our walk at the Hauptbahnhof, crossed the road into the Geschichtspark hidden behind its high prison walls and walked through to Seydlitzstraβe at the eastern end of Moabit’s busy Turmstraβe. Passing the imposing building of the Amtsgericht Tiergarten (District Court) on our left, we soon reached the Kleiner Tiergarten. These pretty public gardens provide shaded paths through the tall trees; quintessential Berlin. Before the fall of the Wall, Moabit was part of the West Berlin district of Tiergarten but now it belongs to the central borough of Mitte.

Kleiner Tiergarten

The Arminius Markthalle is on the other side of Turmstraβe, opposite the U-Bahn station. It may not be as big and hip as the Markthalle Neun in Kreuzberg, but it’s still a great place for street food. The historic building dating back to 1891, with its elaborate cast-iron archways. pillars and Gothic proportions has a cool and colourful interior.

Inside the market

As well as the market stalls, there are plenty of places to eat. We headed for the ‘Hofladen’ at the back of the hall and opted for the fish set lunch menu, a Friday favourite and great value. The Markthalle is open in the evenings until 10pm, so it’s a fun place to go for supper too. For more foodie tips follow this link.

Seating inside the Markthalle

The ‘mother of all tables’!

The mandatory coffee post-prandial coffee stop was at ‘Antjes Café natürlicher Lebensraum’ on Jonasstraβe just outside the market. Its long name suggests a homely parlour and with its home-made cakes, tea and coffee served on pretty china this is an apt description. There are a couple of intimate rooms at the back, as well as seating on the pavement outside and I have it on good authority that breakfast here is delicious too.

Sitting in the window at Antje’s

One of the back rooms

Now heading towards the River Spree, we crossed the square in front of the tall, red-brick Lutheran church of ‘Heilandskirche’ competing with the height of the trees in the parkland between Turmstraβe and Alt-Moabit.

Photo montage by Gruss aus Berlin)

Then we meandered our way through the network of streets south of Turmstraβe, named after cities in Westphalia, North-West Germany. In this part of Moabit, there are several interesting-looking shops and restaurants dotted amongst the patrician apartment blocks. On Krefelder Straβe there was ‘Berlin Edition’ wine in the window of the ‘Weinschmiede’ and in the ‘Buchkantine’ a contemporary bookshop and café on the corner of Bochumer and Dortmunder Straβe, we noticed bottles of ‘Moabit London Dry Gin’ with 14 botanicals.

Weinschmiede and Buchkantine

By now we had reached the Bundesratufer (Upper Parliament House Bank) which runs along the north bank of the River Spree. There were plenty of families about, enjoying the afternoon sunshine and the playpark on the green area between the path and the river. After Lessingbrücke (Lessing Bridge) we were confronted with the massive glass and steel towers of the Spree-Bogen business and residential complex.

Spree-Bogen towers

The word ‘Spreebogen’ simply means any large bend in the River Spree. In Berlin it can denote the whole meander between Museum Island in the east and the junction with the Landwehrkanal in the west, or different sections of this meander. The Spree-Bogen in Moabit refers to the redevelopment of the huge site once owned by the famous Berlin dairy, opened in 1879 by Carl Bolle. From 1933 until 2011 there was a large chain of Bolle supermarkets in Berlin and today Bolle still runs a spectacular event venue in the former factory chapel and ballroom of the Bolle dairy.

The original Bolle Meierei 

Bolle milk deliveries

The Bolle ballroom today

Today, between the massive glass and steel buildings of the Spree-Bogen complex and the River Spree, the Ernst Freiberger Foundation has created a memorial called the ‘Straβe der Erinnerung’ (Street of Remembrance). It consists of a wide path lined with ‘Helden ohne Degen’ (Heroes without daggers) – bronze busts of German heroes who “achieved extraordinary things and behaved in an exemplary way in the most difficult of times”. Among the most famous names are resistance fighter Georg Elser, Nobel prize-winning author Thomas Mann, architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, industrialist and politician Walther Rathenau, politician Ludwig Erhard, philosopher and nun Edith Stein, physicist Albert Einstein and artist Käthe Kollwitz.

Käthe Kollwitz on the Straβe der Erinnerung

At the end of the Straβe der Erinnerung is a sculpture depicting a figure breaking through the Berlin Wall. It’s called ‘Wir sind das Volk’ (We are the people) and commemorates the citizens of East Germany whose peaceful revolution led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. They, too, are moral heroes and have a place in Berlin’s deep memory.  In the photograph below you can see a section of the Berlin Wall – also part of the Straβe der Erinnerung. 

‘Wir sind das Volk’

The river bank in Moabit now winds its way back to the Hauptbahnhof, with wonderful views of the Tiergarten across the Spree. But on this particular Friday afternoon, we stopped at the Moabiter Brücke, admired the restaurant ship ‘Patio’, and turned left up Kirchstrasse towards Alt-Moabit.

‘Patio’ restaurant ship

On the pavement outside 22 Kirchstraβe, we looked down at two Stolpersteine (Stumbling Stones) to mark the homes of Betty and Frieda Brasch who were deported by the Nazis in 1943. There are over 357 of these small brass commemorative plaques embedded in the streets of Moabit alone and we had already seen several on our walk. On 8th May this year they were cleaned and polished as part of an initiative started by the SPD in Berlin (Social Democrat Party of Germany) to mark the day the German capital was liberated from the grip of the Nazis in 1945.

Stolpersteine on Kirchstraβe

On our circular tour we had enjoyed Moabit in the spring sunshine, but we had been reminded of darker days. Despite its liberal and laid-back atmosphere, Berlin never lets us forget the fragility of our freedom.