Content #032

Fehrbelliner Platz. Berlijn, Duitsland 2017
‘The eponymous square is named after Fehrbellin, where in 1675 the Battle of Fehrbellin between Brandenburg-Prussia and the Swedish Empire took place. Its horseshoe shape was laid out in 1934 and is surrounded by several administrative buildings of the Nazi era, including the former seat of the German Labour Front finished in 1943, today the Wilmersdorf town hall.
The village near Berlin was first mentioned in 1293 as Wilmerstorff, probably founded in the course of the German Ostsiedlung under the Ascanian margraves of Brandenburg. From the 1850s on Deutsch-Wilmersdorf was developed as a densely settled, affluent residential area, which in 1920 became a part of Greater Berlin. The former borough of Wilmersdorf included the localities of Halensee, Schmargendorf and Grunewald.During the era of the Weimar Republic Wilmersdorf was a popular residential area for artists and intellectuals. In 1923 the foundation stone for the first mosque in Germany was laid on the initiative of some islamic students in Wilmersdorf. It was completed in 1925. The so called Wilmersdorfer Moschee (Mosque of Wilmersdorf) is still owned and maintained by the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement. In 1933, the year in which Hitler came to power, 13.5% of the population was Jewish; many of them were deported by the Nazis from Berlin-Grunewald Station. Deutsche Bahn established a memorial on 27 January 1998 at the historic track 17 (“Gleis 17”), where most of the deportation trains departed. The synagogue of Wilmersdorf in the Prinzregentenstraße was destroyed by the Nazis in the Reichspogromnacht on 9–10 November 1938. A memorial plaque commemorates the former synagogue. A new synagogue and community centre was established 2007 in the Münstersche Straße for the growing Jewish community in Wilmersdorf. After 1945 Wilmersdorf became the British Zone of occupation.’ Bron: Wikipedia.