Hackescher Markt – its history and how it got its name.
Hackescher Markt is one of the city's liveliest squares and a hot spot for visitors to Berlin thanks to the Hackesche Höfe and the wide range of restaurants and shops. But hardly any locals know where the strange name actually comes from.
For a long time, today's Hackescher Markt was a swampy area outside the city walls. However, important roads to Spandau and Hamburg led to the Spandauer Tor. But people also settled outside the city gate after the Thirty Years' War in what is known as the Spandauer Vorstadt.
The war, which ended in 1648, had severely affected Berlin and the number of inhabitants had halved to 6,000. But at the end of the 17th century, the population started to grow again. More soldiers were stationed in the garrison and many immigrants were brought to the city, mainly Protestant Frenchmen, known as Huguenots, who were persecuted in their homeland. But 50 Jewish families expelled from Vienna were also allowed to settle in Berlin. Around 100 years earlier, all Jews had been expelled from Berlin. The city outgrew its fortifications.
In 1672 a fire ordinance was issued : Barns for hay and straw were only permitted outside of the Spandauer Tor. This is how the ‘Scheunenviertel’ (barn quarter) came into being.The Spandauer Vorstadt was initially still characterized by gardens. But by the beginning of the 18th century, there were already enough inhabitants to found a community. In 1712, the Sophienkirche was consecrated for them.
The wall must go: Hackescher Markt is built.
After the Thirty Years' War, the city was surrounded by a strong fortification wall and a moat to protect it from enemy armies. However, after just a few decades, new developments in warfare meant that these fortifications were no longer fit for purpose. It also stood in the way of the expansion of the flourishing city. The decision was made: The wall must go. From 1730, the ramparts were demolished.
In the middle of the 18th century, a square was to be built where the Spandau city gate had previously stood. The Prussian King Frederick II commissioned the then city commander of Berlin with this project. His name: Count von Hacke. Hacke laid out a market square and several side streets. The square named after Count Hacke was still characterized by temporary buildings and wooden market stalls until the end of the 18th century. The stalls of today's weekly market on the square therefore have a long tradition here.
On the south side of the square, the old fortress moat remained until the end of the 19th century – until the viaduct of the city railway was built on it. The street name ‘An der Spandauer Brücke’ still commemorates the moat today.
Jewish life in the 19th century
Already from 1672 on, a plot of land on Oranienburger Straße, still outside the city limits, was used by the Jewish community as a cemetery. Many Jews settled in the area in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the beginning of the 19th century, the flats of wealthy and educated Jewish citizens around Hackescher Markt became a center of Jewish intellectual life. An association for Jewish culture and science was founded here in 1821. In the neighborhood of the Jewish cemetery, the Jewish community erected further buildings – a retirement home, a boys' school and finally, in the 1860s, the magnificent New Synagogue.
In the second half of the 19th century, the Spandau district became the center of Jewish immigration from the east of the German Reich. Various Jewish institutions and associations settled around Hackescher Markt and there were several venues for Jewish theater groups.
Boomtown Berlin
In 1830, the city had 250,000 inhabitants; 50 years later, their number had grown to over a million. With industrialization since the 1830s, immigration and a high birth rate, the population exploded. And Hackescher Markt was at the center of this development.
In the neighboring Oranienburger Vorstadt on Chausseestraße and to the north of today's Torstraße, the so-called ‘Feuerland’ (land of fire), known for its smoking chimneys, emerged as the city's first industrial area where machines and locomotives were built. Around 1890, the extreme population density in the Spandau neighborhood reached a peak: 70,000 people now lived here.
Hackescher Markt was now the city center - with a mixture of housing, commerce, workshops and factories, mainly for the textile industry. The streets around Hackescher Markt became an attractive shopping area. Land prices exploded, older houses were replaced by new, higher buildings. Several department stores were built, for example a Wertheim department store on the corner of Rosenthalerstraße and Sophienstraße. The building has been preserved to this day.
At the end of the 19th century, the old fortress moat was overbuilt with the Berlin city railway, and in 1882 the S-Bahn station at Hackescher Markt was opened – albeit under the name ‘Börse’, as the Berlin Stock Exchange was located very close by on the banks of the River Spree. The S-Bahn arches were (and still are) used for garages and workshops, for retail and catering.
Hackescher Markt also turned into a central hub for the tramway. In the 1890s, the test track of a suspension railway even ran through Rosenthaler Straße.
The Hackesche Höfe
In 1904 and 1905, the owner of Rosenthaler Straße 40 also bought the neighboring property at no. 41 and Sophienstraße 6 and had the existing buildings demolished: The stage was set for the Hackesche Höfe.
The architect Kurt Berndt, a fan of Art Nouveau, was commissioned to construct the new building. The owner opted for a mixed-use concept: The courtyards were to accommodate residential, commercial, wholesale and retail buildings. The first courtyard included several further banqueting halls and restaurants. The flats were all of a high standard for the time, with inside toilets, bathrooms, central heating, parquet flooring and balconies. There were also green and quiet inner courtyards.
In order to attract the attention of tenants and customers and lure visitors to the entertainment centers in the first courtyard, its façades were to be given a modern and eye-catching design. Berndt entrusted this task to the self-made architect, designer and art theorist August Endell.
Entertainment district
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the area around Hackescher Markt was a center of nightlife and entertainment. The small and larger pubs and restaurants, such as Aschinger's Bierquelle, were meeting places for the plain people, and shady bars and brothels were also part of the neighborhood. In the heyday of cinema in the 1920s, many venues opened, including one in the Hackesche Höfe in a converted ballroom. The Hackesche Höfe cinema has been continuing this tradition since 1996.
In 1895, the Busch circus built a permanent theater for 4,000 visitors on the nearby banks of the Spree. Horses and water shows were the house's speciality. After the death of her father, Paula Busch took over the management of the theater, directed and took on the leading roles in her productions. In 1934, the Nazis shut down the theater. The circus tradition lives on today in the Hackesche Höfe: in the Chamäleon Theater.
Times of decay: Dictatorship and war
The Nazi era marked the beginning of dark decades for the Spandauer Vorstadt and Hackescher Markt. Jewish residents were expelled and murdered, the Jewish retirement home in Hamburger Straße was even used as a collection center for the Jewish population before they were transported to the extermination camps. In 1938, Nazi hordes set fire to the New Synagogue. However, a courageous policeman stopped them and called the fire brigade. However, the synagogue was badly damaged in an air raid at the end of 1943.
At the end of the war, like large parts of the city, Hackescher Markt was largely in ruins. The gaps between the buildings on the square survived the entire GDR era. In the immediate vicinity of the prestigious center around Alexanderplatz, which was rebuilt in the 1960s, Hackescher Markt sank into insignificance. The S-Bahn station was renamed ‘Marx-Engels-Forum’ after the parade ground 500 meters away. The Hackesche Höfe and the old buildings in the Spandauer Vorstadt and Scheunenviertel neighborhood fell into disrepair.
Hackescher Markt today
After the reunification of the city in 1990, the existing old buildings were renovated and the gaps between the buildings were filled. The representative street front of the New Synagogue with the main dome in Oranienburger Straße has been reconstructed true to the original and reopened in 1995 as the Centrum Judaicum. In 1997, after extensive renovation work, the Hackesche Höfe also shine in new splendor and have become a magnet for visitors.
Hackescher Markt was redesigned and is now largely reserved for pedestrians. Catering establishments have moved in on the square, in the S-Bahn arches and along the surrounding streets. The square is used for a weekly market three days a week. The square is mainly frequented by tourists, while Rosenthaler Straße, Neue Schönhauser Straße and Münzstraße have developed into a popular shopping area for fashion- and trend-conscious Berliners.
Today, Hackescher Markt is as lively again as it had been for most of its existence.
