Görlitzer Park: The Station That Became a Meadow
Why is it significant?
Stand on one of the paths in Görlitzer Park and look around: a broad, uneven meadow, slopes and hollows, people on blankets, smoke rising from a barbecue, a dog chasing a ball. The odd shape of the ground has a reason. This whole park was once a railway station.
Key Facts
| Place | Görlitzer Park: The Station That Became a Meadow |
|---|---|
| Address | Görlitzer Park, Görlitzer Straße, 10997 Berlin, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.49780, 13.43650 |
| Part of Walk | Berlin Kreuzberg: Street Art, Punk Clubs & the Landwehrkanal |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand on one of the paths in Görlitzer Park and look around: a broad, uneven meadow, slopes and hollows, people on blankets, smoke rising from a barbecue, a dog chasing a ball. The odd shape of the ground has a reason. This whole park was once a railway station.
The Görlitzer Bahnhof opened in the 1860s as the terminus of the line to Görlitz in Silesia, with a grand station hall, sidings and goods yards spreading over all this ground. After the war the city was divided, and in 1951 the East German railway, which still ran the line, stopped the passenger trains here. In the 1960s the station building was demolished, and for years the site was a wasteland of rusting rails and sheds.
Kreuzbergers wanted green space, not more concrete, and from the late 1980s and through the 1990s they got their park. On its far side there is even a children's farm with goats and ponies, a piece of countryside a few minutes from the U-Bahn. On a summer weekend, half of Kreuzberg seems to be here, Turkish families grilling next to students, next to tourists who have no idea they are lying on a former railway yard.
Görli, as everyone calls it, also has a harder reputation. For years it has been a symbol in German politics for open drug dealing, and the city has argued endlessly about policing, fences and closing it at night. Locals have a complicated relationship with it: it is their back garden, their playground and their barbecue spot... and their headache.
And just at the park's north-western edge, on the first of May 1987, after a street festival on nearby Lausitzer Platz, Kreuzberg erupted in riots, and a supermarket burned to the ground. May Day protests have been a Kreuzberg ritual ever since, calmer now than they were. Leave the park at its western end, by Spreewaldplatz, and walk north past Lausitzer Platz to a red-brick market hall in Eisenbahnstraße.