Alexanderplatz and left politics

The Teachers' House with the Police Dept to the right

Alexanderplatz was the central point of East Berlin. I’m not speaking now of East Berlin, capital of the GDR, the East Berlin of the cold war. No, I mean the eastern part of the very large city that was and is Berlin. West and East had different characters : people who could afford to live in the West were the more affluent Berliners. By the West I mean Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf, Grünewald, everything west of the Tiergarten. No mietskasernen in the West, no squalor or overcrowding.

I don’t have any statistics but I guess that the average income in the East was dramatically lower than in the West. East Berlin was, to put it shortly, workers’ Berlin (that applies to the North as well, with Wedding and Reinickendorf and even for Neukölln in the South).

Hardly a surprise then that the political left was stronger in the East, as this was an era when workers identified themselves with that political tendency. The German left in the 20s was mainly the SPD (socialdemocrats) and the KPD (communists). And it seems quite normal that left parties would choose Alexanderplatz, the heart of the East, to establish themselves. What might be something of a surprise is that some institutions of the left were located on the same street as the Police, on Alexanderstrasse. Revolutionaries in the same block as the defenders of law and order. 

Map from HistoMapBerlin

 
Take for instance the Lehrervereinshaus, that is, the house of the Teachers’ Union, at 41 Alexanderstrasse, facing the Rote Burg, the red complex of the Police Department. In this building, with an elegant art nouveau facade, had Buntes Brettl once been located : it was Berlin’s first cabaret and in the building there was also a café, the Grand Café Alexandre.

It was in the Lehrervereinhaus that the wake of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, murdered by extreme right officials in 1919, took place. And in 1920 it was here that the left socialdemocrats (USPD) decided to merge with the communist KPD. The teachers’ building included a hotel for the members of the union and a conference room. In the ground floor there were a café, a bakery and an elegant restaurant. After the war, when this building was destroyed, a new, modern House of the Teachers was built in a different place of the Alexanderplatz by the East German government. 

Headquarters of the KPD

Even more remarkable: the Communist party itself chose the same part of Alexanderstrasse for its headquarters. Here, from 1926 to 1933, sat the central committee and here was also the editorial office of "Die Rote Fahne" (The Red Flag), the daily newspaper that was the party organ. The Red Flag stood thus facing the Red Castle (the Police Department was called so, because of the colour of its facade)

The communists saw Alexanderplatz as the focal point for their activities. Many demonstrations took place here and many clashes with the neighbouring police. The enormous and awe inspiring Rote Burg, the Red Castle or Red Fortress, had been planned as early as 1885 to be "a German Scotland Yard". "The grim, red, Police Presidium", as Alfred Döblin called it. It was second only to the royal palace in size, with a tower dominating all other constructions.  In the building there were not only municipal police structures, but also special departments such as the Prussian censorship authority.  In 1919, the left-wing "spartakist" revolutionaries had succeed in taking over the building and liberating political prisoners, only to be dislodged some time later. 

On the pic above we see the massive Rote Burg in the middle, the Teachers' House to the left and a bit of the light coloured Alexanderhaus to the right.

 

Part of the information above comes from "Das Alexanderhaus, Der Alexanderplatz", by Hans-Joachim Pysall.