The beginnings: cattle market outside the King's Gate
Where the TV Tower rises today, cattle stood in the Middle Ages. The later Alexanderplatz lay outside the walls of old Berlin, in front of the King's Gate, and served as a trade and cattle market. Oxen were sold here, which is why the place was long simply called "Ochsenmarkt" – the ox market. A pragmatic name, like so much about the Alex.
1805: The namesake
On 25 October 1805 Tsar Alexander I of Russia visited Berlin. Prussia and Russia were then negotiating an alliance against Napoleon. On this occasion the former "Königs Thor Platz" was renamed Alexanderplatz. The name stuck, the alliance did not.
The renaming was political symbolism in its purest form. Less than a year later Prussia was crushed by Napoleon at Jena and Auerstedt. But the Russian tsar's name on the Berlin square outlasted every war, regime and wave of renamings over the next 200 years.
From suburban square to transport hub
With industrialisation Berlin exploded. From 170,000 inhabitants around 1800 to almost two million by 1900. Suddenly the Alex sat in the middle of everything. In 1882 the Alexanderplatz station opened as part of the new Berlin Stadtbahn. Department stores followed – Hermann Tietz and Wertheim gave the square a bourgeois face.
The Golden Twenties and Alfred Döblin
In 1929 Alfred Döblin's novel "Berlin Alexanderplatz" appeared – the story of the small-time crook Franz Biberkopf who leaves prison and tries to become a decent man. The Alex is more than backdrop: loud, dirty, merciless, fascinating.
At the same time two buildings appeared on the square that survived the war and are now listed: the Berolinahaus and the Alexanderhaus, both completed in 1932 to designs by Peter Behrens.
Destruction in 1945
World War II erased the old Alexanderplatz. Bombing raids in 1943 and 1944, together with the final battles of 1945, destroyed or severely damaged most buildings. Berolinahaus and Alexanderhaus survived – just.
GDR redesign: World Clock, TV Tower, concrete modernism
In the 1960s the fundamental redesign began. The square was enlarged, made car-free and given the landmarks that still define it:
- TV Tower (1969, 368 m): Germany's tallest structure
- World Clock (1969): 24 time zones on a rotating cylinder
- Fountain of Friendship of the Peoples (1970)
- Haus des Lehrers with Walter Womacka's 125-metre frieze
- Hotel Stadt Berlin (today Park Inn)
4 November 1989: the GDR's largest demonstration
A few days before the fall of the Wall, Alexanderplatz became the stage of the peaceful revolution. On 4 November 1989 between 500,000 and one million people gathered here for the largest non-state-organised demonstration in GDR history. Five days later the Wall fell.
The Alex today
Around 360,000 people cross the square on an average weekday. It is transport hub, shopping strip, tourist magnet and everyday place, all at once. It is not beautiful in the classical sense. It is not quiet. It is not tidy. But it is the real Berlin – with everything that means.