Pictures from German cities - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1996 - 100 Pfennig

The three-square Gendarmenmarkt in the Berlin district of Mitte is one of the most beautiful squares in Europe. Since 1991 he bears his traditional name again. On July 12, 1950, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the foundation of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, he had been renamed »Platz der Akademie«. A year earlier, the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, which understood itself as its successor, had received the building of the former Royal Seehandlungs-Sozietät, the later Prussian State Bank, on the east side of the Gendarmenmarkt as a new domicile. Until 1688, the later "Neuer Markt" or "Friedrichstädtische Markt" square was a meadow and farmland in front of the city walls of Berlin. In 1700, the Lutheran and French Reformed community were ever assigned a plot of land on the site, where on the northern square until 1705, the French Friedrichstadtkirche and on the southern square to 1708, the New Church were built. In the years 1780 to 1785 the two magnificent, related towers were built, for which soon the designations "French Cathedral" and "German Cathedral" became natural. Until 1821, according to designs by Karl Friedrich Schinkel today's Schauspielhaus. Today's Platzumbauung is done in historically harmonized forms. The vacant lots in the immediate vicinity of the Gendarmenmarkt will be closed again in the course of rebuilding the historic center of Berlin. (Text: Senate Chancellery Berlin)