First settlements In the 13th century the waste area along the road to
Spandau known as
Grosse Stadtheide ("great city
heath") was a hunting ground of the
electors of
Brandenburg. Settlement began in 1685 with the erection of the
Staakensetzerhaus at the western border of what is now Moabit. 1716 saw the formation of the colony of
Old Moabit by the Huguenots, who were meant to cultivate
white mulberry trees for
silkworms, but failed because of the low
soil quality. in 1900 – an example of Moabit's industrial past .
Industrialization In 1818
New Moabit was founded and grew together with Old Moabit to an industrial suburb district, which was incorporated into the city of Berlin in 1861. The industrialization started in 1820 when, with the financial support of court counsellor Baillif, a simple bridge was built to connect the island to the Berlin mainland. The bridge was followed by factories, a power plant, the Berlin-Spandau Canal, the
Westhafen port and the
Hamburger Bahnhof train station which connected Berlin with
Hamburg. A network of streets was laid out in the
Hobrecht-Plan in an area that came to be known architecturally as the
Wilhelmine Ring. All of that activity resulted in an
exponential growth of the population and the subsequent construction of
tenements in Moabit and neighbouring
Wedding, facilitating the spread of a
smallpox epidemic. In consequence, Berlin's city council, exhorted to do so by
Rudolf Virchow, built a second hospital (after the
Charité), the
Krankenhaus Moabit in 1872. In the 1880s,
Robert Koch worked here on the
sterilization of surgical instruments and the isolation of the
tuberculosis bacterium. A
teaching hospital from 1920 on, the
Krankenhaus Moabit employed notable physicians like the
Nobel Laureate Werner Forssmann,
Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner and the
resistance fighter
Georg Groscurth. A first prison, the
Zellengefängnis (Cell Prison) on
Lehrter Strasse was built between 1842 and 1849 by order of King
Frederick William IV of Prussia, according to the "
separate system" of
Pentonville Prison. In 1878
Max Hödel, who had shot at Emperor
Wilhelm I of Germany, was beheaded here. Political activists like
Karl Radek,
Erich Mühsam,
Werner Scholem and
Musa Cälil were detained in Moabit.
Wilhelm Voigt, the "Hauptmann von Köpenick", and the writer
Wolfgang Borchert served their prison sentences in the prison. The vast building of the
Criminal Court on
Turmstraße was erected in 1906. In 1909, architect
Peter Behrens built the
AEG's
Turbine factory at the north-western
Huttenstraße, one of the first works of
Modern architecture.
Labour movement and war period Large parts of Moabit are traditional working-class residential areas. Some areas were known for their political activity during the
Nazi era, such as the
Red Beusselkiez or the neighbouring
Rostock Kiez. After the Nazi
Machtergreifung in 1933 they were considered Communist resistance cells. On 11 April 1928, during the
Weimar Republic, the 20-year-old Communist activist
Olga Benário and several of her comrades managed to break into Moabit's prison and free the incarcerated
Otto "Li De" Braun, a prominent party member and at the time Benario's lover. Despite being hotly hunted, the two lovers succeeded in escaping to Moscow and later rose (separately) to prominence in the International Communist movement (in Brazil and China respectively). Between 1941 and 1945, around 1900 Jews were deported predominantly to
Auschwitz,
Theresienstadt or
Minsk. Approximately as many survived by escaping abroad.
Post-war and modern days After the war, between 1945 and 1990, Moabit was part of the British sector of
West Berlin. Due to its new peripheral location adjacent to the
Berlin Wall, Moabit became a remote neighbourhood. Similar to Kreuzberg, it attracted mostly immigrants due to its low rents. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, Moabit's location has anew changed to its former centrality. Post-reunification, Moabit has faced problems such as drug trafficking and abuse (especially around
Kleiner Tiergarten), poverty (most notably in its Western parts), and crime. Similar to neighbouring Wedding, lower rents have recently attracted artists and young people, and there are first unmistakable signs of
gentrification. At Moabit's eastern edge, bordering Mitte, Berlin's new
Central Railway Station was opened in 2006 on the grounds of the old Lehrter Bahnhof. The adjacent
neoclassical Hamburger Bahnhof former train station now serves as Berlin's contemporary art museum, the Museum für Gegenwart. South of the Central Station, the German government district has expanded across the
Spree into Moabit. The Center for
Art and
Urbanism (ZK/U) is located on the grounds of the Stadtgarten Moabit, in the former Berlin-Moabit freight station. == Demographics ==