The name Nasser Garten name means "wet garden" in
German, referring to the watered area it was located in south of the river
Pregel. The Königsberg district
Ponarth had a similar etymology. Nasser Garten originally belonged to the village of
Haberberg and was documented by
Caspar Hennenberger in 1595. In 1626 it was divided by the construction of Königsberg's
Baroque city walls. The eastern section within the walls (
Alter Nasser Garten) became known as
Alter Garten (old garden), while the western unwalled section (
Neuer Nasser Garten) was referred to as simply
Nasser Garten. In 1648
Caspar Stein referred to the village as
In den Sandgraben. The main roads in the village were Berliner Straße, which contained the cemetery of
Haberberg Church, and the eponymous road Nasser Garten. The village came under the administration of
Kneiphof in 1743. A skirmish between French and Prussian troops was fought near the Freudenkrug inn and the Nassengärter Gate on 14 June 1807; the inn was subsequently honored. By the end of the 19th century, the Nassengärter Gate was decorated with two brick columns; its
hip roofed guardhouse was one of the oldest in Königsberg. The majority of the Fuß-Artillerie-Regiment Nr 1 (von Linger) was barracked along Karlstraße, with the remainder based near the
Friedland Gate. Nasser Garten was separated from the Pregel meadows by a levee known alternately as the Poetensteig, It is disputed whether the levee was named after the poet
Simon Dach. The levee had to be rebuilt after a flood on 12 February 1894. By the 20th century Nasser Garten was bordered by
Contienen to the west, the industrial harbors on the Pregel to the north, Haberberg to the east, the central train station to the southeast, and the Vorstädtische Wiesen meadowland to the south. Beyond the meadows was Ponarth. Nasser Garten lost much of its farmland during the construction of Königsberg's modern harbors in the 1920s. ==Notes==