Oberbaumbrücke: The Castle Gate Over the Spree
Why is it significant?
Stand in the middle of the Oberbaumbrücke, under its brick arcade, and look around: Gothic arches, two pointed towers like a medieval city gate, and above your head yellow U-Bahn trains rattling across on their own deck. Below you the Spree runs wide and slow.
Key Facts
| Place | Oberbaumbrücke: The Castle Gate Over the Spree |
|---|---|
| Address | Oberbaumbrücke, 10997 Berlin, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.50170, 13.44570 |
| Part of Walk | Berlin Kreuzberg: Street Art, Punk Clubs & the Landwehrkanal |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand in the middle of the Oberbaumbrücke, under its brick arcade, and look around: Gothic arches, two pointed towers like a medieval city gate, and above your head yellow U-Bahn trains rattling across on their own deck. Below you the Spree runs wide and slow.
The name goes back to the old city customs line. Here, at the upper end of the river, a boom, the Oberbaum, was swung across the water at night so that no boat could slip into Berlin without paying its dues. The bridge you are standing on opened in 1896, deliberately dressed up in medieval-looking brick to play the part of a city gate. Since 1902 the elevated railway has crossed on the top deck.
In 1961 the bridge became a border. The river here belonged entirely to the East, right up to the Kreuzberg bank. Between 1972 and 1975, five children from Kreuzberg fell into the water at the Gröbenufer, just downstream, and drowned, while help from the West could not legally enter East German waters. Only after the last death, of a five-year-old boy named Çetin Mert, did the two sides sign an agreement on rescues in the border waters.
The central span had been blown up in the last days of the war, and for decades the bridge was patched and half used. When it was restored in the 1990s, the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava designed the new steel middle section for the trains. And look upstream, to the south-east: three giant aluminium figures stand in the river, leaning into each other. That is the Molecule Man by Jonathan Borofsky, placed in 1999 where Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg and Treptow meet.
Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are now one borough, and for years their rivals settled the score with a mock battle on this very bridge, armed with water, flour and rotten vegetables. Walk off the bridge on the Kreuzberg side and follow the elevated railway past the red-brick station of Schlesisches Tor into the Wrangelkiez.