Paul Sullivan discovers French immigrant history, an abandoned U-Bahn station and plenty of extant counter-culture on this storied Kreuzberg street…
Despite its well-known hipster credentials, there’s far more to bustling Oranienstraße than a superficial sprinkling of contemporary cool. Amid the trendy boutiques and buzz-filled bars, those with time to linger—and a taste for exploration—can uncover traces of the street’s deeper past, parts of which stretch back to the 1700s.
Back then, the section of the street that now runs alongside Waldeckpark was known as Orangenstraße. The exact origins of the name are unclear, but they are closely linked to the French Huguenots who settled in Berlin after fleeing persecution under Louis XIV. These refugees established extensive gardens and cultivated fruit and vegetables in greenhouses—including oranges, which may explain the name. Another possibility is that some settlers came from the former French principality of Orange.
At the heart of this emerging garden district stood Berlin’s oldest French church, known locally as the Melonenkirche (“Melon Church”), likely named after the produce grown nearby. A church existed here from 1700, and in 1728 it was replaced by a permanent building later known as the French Luisenstadt Church. The surrounding district, Luisenstadt—roughly corresponding to today’s eastern Kreuzberg—was officially named in 1802 after Queen Luise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a noted opponent of Napoleon.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the area had become increasingly densely populated. Tenement blocks, workshops and cafés filled the neighbourhood, serving a growing population of workers and artisans. In 1849, Orangenstraße was renamed Oranienstraße as it was extended to Heinrichplatz (now Rio-Reiser-Platz), and in 1852 the Luisenstadt Canal—linking the Landwehr Canal with the Spree—was completed.
By the early twentieth century, the street had developed into a major urban hub. A massive Wertheim department store was opened at No. 53-54, which was replaced by a larger one on Moritzplatz in 1913, and subsequently became the Café am Moritzplatz, a concert venue with seating for over a 1,000 people. By the 1930s, Oranienstraße was known as the “Boulevard of the East,” one of Berlin’s premier shopping and entertainment streets. It was also home to notable residents including composer Paul Lincke (No. 64), computer pioneer Konrad Zuse (No. 6), and theatre director Erwin Piscator (No. 83).
Much of this prosperity was destroyed during the Second World War, particularly west of Moritzplatz. Lincke’s house was among those lost. So too were buildings like No. 33, where Hertha Kerp hid resistance fighter Ludwig von Hammerstein—who had been involved in the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler—and No. 36, home to a pharmacy where she also sheltered a Jewish woman. By contrast, many buildings east of Moritzplatz, towards Görlitzer Bahnhof, survived, preserving something of the street’s earlier character and its layered histories.
After the war, Kreuzberg became part of the American sector of West Berlin, cut off on three sides by the Wall. Much of the former Luisenstadt was designated SO36 (for Südost) from 1962, and the border ran so close that the route of the Luisenstadt Canal (long ago filled in) became part of it. This isolation helped shape the area’s transformation into a multicultural and countercultural enclave.
From the 1950s onwards, so-called “guest workers” and their…