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The Europa-Center is a building complex on Breitscheidplatz in the
Charlottenburg Charlottenburg () is a Boroughs and localities of Berlin, locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a German town law, town in 1705 and named after Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Kingdom ...
district of
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, with a shopping mall and a high-rise tower tall. Built between 1963 and 1965, by 2003 it had been designated as a historically preserved building.


History of the site

From 1897 a residential building was erected at the site of the present-day Europa-Center, vis-à-vis the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and likewise designed in a Neo-Romanesque style according to plans by Franz Schwechten. Then part of Berlin's fashionable "New West" (today also known as "City West"), it was, from 1916, home to the '' Romanisches Café'', a popular meeting place for writers, artists and people in the theatre business, as well as those who aspired to join them. During a RAF air raid in World War II on the night of 22/23 November 1943, the building burnt down and lay in ruins. After the war, the cleared premises were used only intermittently for more than a decade, according to need. Makeshift constructions were used variously by wrestlers, circus performers and missionaries, followed by food outlets and briefly a cinema hosting so-called ''Sittenfilme'' ("films of manners"). A local newspaper described the central site as a "stain on Berlin's calling card".


Construction

Soon after the division of the city by the construction of the
Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (, ) was a guarded concrete Separation barrier, barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the East Germany, German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany). Construction of the B ...
, in 1961, the situation changed. Upon the reconstruction of the Memorial Church, the
West Berlin West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...
businessman and investor Karl Heinz Pepper was appointed to oversee the redevelopment of the Breitscheidplatz' eastern side. He commissioned the architects Helmut Hentrich and Hubert Petschnigg to design and build an office and shopping complex modelled on American malls. Construction work began in 1963, with artistic consulting by the church architect Egon Eiermann, and on 2 April 1965 the Europa-Center was inaugurated by Governing Mayor
Willy Brandt Willy Brandt (; born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; 18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and concurrently served as the Chancellor ...
. What had been built was a complex with a total floor space of 80,000 square metres, divided into distinct units: a two-storey foundation with a basement and two inner courtyards, a cinema, a hotel, an apartment block, and the box-shaped 86m high-rise, then the highest in Berlin, with 21 storeys and 13,000 square metres of office space. In 2005 the operators of the complex gave the number of shops and food outlets as around 100.


Notable features

On top of the high-rise, and visible across Berlin, is a large metal star-in-a-circle symbol, the logo of car manufacturer
Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz (), commonly referred to simply as Mercedes and occasionally as Benz, is a German automotive brand that was founded in 1926. Mercedes-Benz AG (a subsidiary of the Mercedes-Benz Group, established in 2019) is based in Stuttgart, ...
. It weighs 15,000 kg, has an outer diameter of 10 metres,Mercedes-Stern wird umgelegt
''
Berliner Zeitung The ''Berliner Zeitung'' (; ) is a daily newspaper based in Berlin, Germany. Founded in East Germany in 1945, it is the only East German paper to achieve national prominence since Reunification of Germany, reunification. It is published by Berl ...
'' (in German) completes approximately two revolutions a minute, and glows at night with the help of 681 fluorescent tubes. The shopping mall initially comprised an ice rink (closed in 1974) and the ''Royal Palast'' cinema, with the world's largest
projection screen A projection screen is an installation consisting of a surface and a support structure used for displaying a projected image for the view of an audience. Projection screens may be permanently installed on a wall, as in a movie theater, mounte ...
at the time of its opening in 1965 (closed in 2004). There was also an observation deck on the roof. Today's major attractions include " The Clock of Flowing Time", a high
water clock A water clock, or clepsydra (; ; ), is a timepiece by which time is measured by the regulated flow of liquid into (inflow type) or out from (outflow type) a vessel, and where the amount of liquid can then be measured. Water clocks are some of ...
of communicating vessels, and the '' Mengenlehreuhr'' originally located on nearby Kurfürstendamm. The basement is home to a ''
Kabarett Kabarett (; from French ''cabaret'' = tavern) is satirical revue, a form of cabaret which was developed in France by Rodolphe Salis in 1881 as the ''cabaret artistique''. It was named Le Chat Noir and was centered on political events and satire. ...
'' theatre and a large Irish pub. The building features prominently in the 1966 spy film '' The Quiller Memorandum'' and in the 1981 biographical drama '' Christiane F.''


See also

*
List of tallest buildings in Berlin This list of tallest buildings in Berlin ranks skyscrapers, high-rises, and free-standing structures in the Germany, German capital of Berlin by height. The tallest structure in Berlin is the Fernsehturm Berlin, which rises , while the tallest skys ...


References


External links


Website of the Europa-Center in Berlin
(English version) {{Coord, 52, 30, 16, N, 13, 20, 20, E, region:DE-BE_type:landmark_source:dewiki, display=title Buildings and structures in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf Buildings and structures in Berlin Skyscrapers in Berlin Tourist attractions in Berlin Buildings and structures completed in 1965 Shopping malls in Berlin Skyscraper office buildings in Germany