Karl-Marx-Allee (Karl Marx Avenue) is a socialist boulevard built in stages by the GDR between 1952 and 1960 in Berlin. The project was a flagship initiative in the reconstruction of East Germany following the Second World War. Its initial completion marked the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s birth, which led to the promenade being named Stalinallee (Stalin Avenue). A decade later, during Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation campaign, it was renamed to the name known today: Karl-Marx-Allee.
Karl-Marx-Allee begins at Alexanderplatz and stretches for almost 3 km to Friedrichshain. The 90-metre-wide avenue gives the impression of being more imposing than the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Before being named Stalinallee, the boulevard was known as Große Frankfurter Straße. At the time, it was one of the district’s main streets, lined with imposing townhouses. During the Second World War, Berlin was severely damaged, including the eastern district of Friedrichshain. During the reconstruction, it was decided to transform the former Große Frankfurter Straße into a grand boulevard – the pride of a resurgent East Germany. To provide its creators with the best possible suggestions for this unique project, a government delegation travelled in 1950 to Moscow, Kyiv, Stalingrad and Leningrad to study the urban planning and architecture of the Soviet Union. The project was designed by Egon Hartmann in collaboration with architects Richard Paulick, Hanns Hopp, Karl Souradny and Kurt W. Leucht, as well as Moscow’s chief architect Alexander V. Vlasov and Sergei I. Chernyshev, vice-president of the Academy of Architecture. These prestigious buildings were constructed to house spacious and luxurious flats for the working class, as well as shops, restaurants, cafés, a tourist hotel and the Kino International cinema.
View of Karl-Marx-Allee. Source: Ruslan Taran, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The construction took 4 million hours and used over 38 million bricks. The foundation stone was laid by the first Prime Minister of the GDR, Otto Grotewohl. In buildings as vast as palaces, featuring lifts and façades, stairwells and colonnades in the gateways decorated in the spirit of Socialist Realism, 2,767 flats were completed, complete with parquet flooring, hot water and central heating. At both ends of the avenue – at Frankfurter Tor and Strausberger Platz – stand twin towers designed by Hermann Henselmann. The buildings are distinguished by their façade decorations, which incorporate traditional Berlin motifs by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Most of the buildings are clad in architectural ceramics, which lends them additional splendour. The avenue is lined with both monumental, eight-storey buildings designed in the style of Soviet Socialist Classicism and simple, eight- to ten-storey prefabricated blocks, with extensive green spaces facing the street and between them, which date from a later period. The main reasons for the change in architectural style were the high costs of constructing grand workers’ palaces and shifts in the prevailing design standards.
The area around Große Frankfurter Straße in 1928 and Karl-Marx-Allee in 2015. Source: 1928.tagesspiegel.de
On 3 August 1951, a statue of Stalin was ceremonially unveiled on the new avenue. It remained there until 1961, when it was removed as part of the de-Stalinisation process, which also saw the street renamed in honour of the founder of Marxism, Karl Marx. Later, the street was used for the annual May Day parade in East Germany, in which thousands of soldiers took part alongside tanks and other military vehicles to demonstrate the power and glory of the communist government. Once completed, the boulevard enjoyed great popularity among both Berliners and visitors. Shopping on Karl-Marx-Allee was a distinctive feature of everyday life in the capital. One could find items there that were unavailable elsewhere, and the retail establishments became a model for the whole of East Germany. The shops offered a wide variety of goods and were attractively decorated. Cafés such as Sybylle and the Kosmos cinema invited visitors to relax, whilst in the evening one could take guests to one of the prestigious restaurants with such distinctive names as Warschau, Bukarest or Budapest. The boulevard also served an ideological function, introducing visitors to the culture of the ‘socialist sister states’.
By 1989, the oldest buildings were in need of major renovation. Half the tiles had fallen from their façades, making it necessary to erect special structures over the pavements in some places to ensure pedestrian safety. The boulevard gained great acclaim among postmodernists; Philip Johnson described it as “true urban planning on a grand scale”, whilst Aldo Rossi called the avenue “Europe’s last great street”. Since German reunification, most of the buildings, including the two distinctive towers, have been restored. The development of the complex is occasionally being densified, whilst respecting the layout designed decades ago. From time to time, the idea of restoring the street’s name to its pre-war name, Große Frankfurter Straße, resurfaces.
Today, several decades later, the complex’s value is undeniable, and in professional circles it has long been recognised as an important trend in post-war European architecture. Since the fall of the Stalinist era, the avenue has often been underappreciated, and because of the decorative facades, Berliners have referred to it as ‘confectionery architecture’, ‘a confectioner’s dream’ or ‘a wedding cake’. It took half a century for people to appreciate the merits of this architecture.
Source: dw.com, visitberlin.de, pawelwronski.blog
See also: Architecture | Socialist Realism| Housing estate | Urban planning | City | Block of flats | Berlin | Germany
