Oranienburger Straße is a street in central Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, the capital of Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It is located in the borough of Mitte

Mitte

Mitte is the first and most central borough of Berlin. It was created in Berlin's 2001 administrative reform by the merger of the former districts of Mitte proper, Tiergarten and Wedding; the resulting borough retained the name Mitte. It is one of the two boroughs which comprises former West and...

, north of the River Spree

Spree

The Spree is a river that flows through the Saxony, Brandenburg and Berlin states of Germany, and in the Ústí nad Labem region of the Czech Republic...

, and runs south-east from Friedrichstraße

Friedrichstraße

The Friedrichstraße is a major culture and shopping street in central Berlin, forming the core of the Friedrichstadt neighborhood. It runs from the northern part of the old Mitte district to the Hallesches Tor in the district of Kreuzberg...

 to Hackescher Markt

Hackescher Markt

The Hackescher Markt is a square in the central Mitte locality of Berlin, Germany, situated at the eastern end of Oranienburger Strasse....

.

The street is popular with tourists and Berliners for its nightlife

Nightlife

Nightlife is the collective term for any entertainment that is available and more popular from the late evening into the early hours of the morning...

 with numerous restaurants and bars. Formerly a centre of Jewish life in Berlin, the street contains the restored New Synagogue. Another tourist landmark is the Kunsthaus Tacheles

Kunsthaus Tacheles

The Kunsthaus Tacheles , is an art center in Berlin, a large building on Oranienburger Straße in the district known as Mitte. Huge, colorful graffiti-style murals are painted on the exterior walls, and modern art sculptures are featured inside...

, an alternative art center and night club. Locals tend to congregate in Monbijou Park

Monbijou Park

Monbijou Park is a park in former East Berlin, at the Southern end of Oranienburger Strasse, between Oranienburg Strasse, and the River Spree.Close to the Friedrichstadt Palast, Neue Synagogue and the Sophienkirche.-Overview:...

 or other areas of the city. Oranienburger Straße is also known for relatively prominent street prostitution

Street prostitution

Street prostitution is a form of prostitution in which a sex worker solicits customers from a public place, most commonly a street, while waiting at street corners or walking alongside a street, but also other public places such as parks, beaches, etc. The street prostitute is often dressed in a...

, which is legal in Germany.

There are also two lesser known streets named "Oranienburger Straße" in Berlin, in Reinickendorf

Reinickendorf

Reinickendorf is the twelfth borough of Berlin. It encompasses the northwest of the city area, including the Berlin-Tegel Airport, Lake Tegel, spacious settlements of detached houses as well as housing estates like Märkisches Viertel.-Subdivision:...

 and in Lichtenrade

Lichtenrade

Lichtenrade is a German locality within the borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg, Berlin. Until 2001 it was part of the former borough of Tempelhof.-History:The locality was first mentioned in 1375, named Lichtenrode...

.

History

In the 19th and early 20th centuries this was the main Jewish area of Berlin. There are a number of memorials to the former Jewish residents of the area, including sites of former Jewish schools, orphanages, old people's homes and cemeteries. All these institutions were closed during the Nazi regime, and the great majority of the area's Jewish residents were deported to their deaths in extermination camps in occupied Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

.

Neue Synagogue

The most notable building on Oranienburger Straße is the New Synagogue (Neue Synagoge), which at the time of its opening in 1866 was the largest synagogue in Berlin. The synagogue was saved from destruction by the Nazis on Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...

 in 1938 by the actions of Wilhelm Krützfeld, a local police officer. It was largely destroyed by Allied

Allies of World War II

The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...

 bombing in 1943, and most of the ruins were demolished in 1958 by the German Democratic Republic

German Democratic Republic

The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

 authorities. The restored front section of the synagogue was reopened in 1995 as a museum and Jewish community centre.

Gespenstermauer

Oranienburgerstraße is home to one of Berlin's few ghost legends: The ghost wall ('Gespenstermauer'). According to the legend, one can sometimes see the spirits of two children dash into the street and disappear near Oranienburgerstraße 41 (just West of the bar 'X-terrain, and slightly East and across the street from Tacheles). The identity of the children is unknown, as is the time period in which they supposedly originate (the visions are small and vague and shadowy, apparently usually seen only quickly out of the corner of one's eye), but legend has it that the child spirits will do small favors in exchange for pennies. The procedure is to stick a penny in the crumbling mortar of the old wall near Oranienburgerstraße 41 and make a wish. If the wish is modest (e.g. one that two ghost children could do), and unselfish, then it will supposedly be granted. It is unclear when the legend started, but it was known at least prior to the 1990's, among former residents of East Berlin. An inspection of the wall shows that indeed there are many pennies (and other small denomination coins) pushed into the crumbling mortar. In some versions of the story popular in GDR times, the ghost children grant wishes in return for candy.

Further reading

• Laurenz Demps, Die Oranienburger Straße. Parthas Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-932529-20-0

See also

• Monbijoupark