The largely working-class district was created in 1920 when
Greater Berlin was established by
referendum, incorporating several surrounding settlements. Friedrichshain united the Frankfurter Vorstadt, already part of Berlin, and the villages of Boxhagen and Stralau. It took its name (meaning 'Frederick's Grove') from the
Volkspark ('People's Park'), which was planned in 1840 to commemorate the centenary of
Frederick the Great's coronation. Much of the district was settled in the rapid
industrialization of the 19th and early 20th centuries, led by growth in manufacturing and crafts. It owed much to the opening of the railway line between Berlin and
Frankfurt (Oder) in 1846 (which terminated near the site of today's
Berlin Ostbahnhof), and the opening of the first waterworks in 1865 at Stralauer Tor. In 1874 the
Krankenhaus im Friedrichshain was opened, Berlin's first hospital beside the university clinic
Charité. In the early 1900s, the district's largest employer was the
Knorr-Bremse brake factory; the Knorrpromenade, one of Friedrichshain's most attractive streets, was built to house the management. The street network of Friedrichhain was originally specified in the
Hobrecht-Plan and the area was part of what came to be known architecturally as the
Wilhelmine Ring. When the
Nazis came to power in 1933, the district was renamed
Horst-Wessel-Stadt after the Nazi activist and writer of the
Nazi hymn whose slow death, after being shot by communists, in Friedrichshain hospital in 1930 was turned into a
propaganda event by
Joseph Goebbels. During World War II Friedrichshain was one of the most badly damaged parts of Berlin, as Allied
strategic bombers specifically targeted its industries. As late as the nineties, some buildings still displayed bullet holes from the intense
house to house fighting during the
Battle of Berlin. After the war ended, the boundary between the US and
Soviet occupation sectors ran between Friedrichshain and
Kreuzberg, with Friedrichshain in the east and Kreuzberg in the west. This became a sealed border between
East and
West Berlin when the
Berlin Wall was built in 1961.
Stalinallee (previously Große Frankfurter Straße) was built in Friedrichshain in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a prestige project; the architecture of its 'workers' palaces' is strongly reminiscent of the ostentatious
Soviet-era Moscow boulevards and is sometimes mockingly described as
Zuckerbäckerstil ('wedding cake style'). The
1953 uprising had its origins in these construction projects, as increased work quotas led to protests that soon spread throughout
East Germany, and were only put down by armed Soviet intervention. In the period of
De-Stalinization following the Soviet leader's death, the boulevard was renamed
Karl-Marx-Allee at one end and
Frankfurter Allee at the other. From this time onwards, Friedrichshain often featured on East Berlin's cultural map: in 1962 the
Kosmos, East Germany's largest cinema, was opened, followed in 1981 by the country's most ambitious swimming and sports complex, the
Sport- und Erholungszentrum. Neither of these buildings serve their original function today. == Lifestyle ==