Making Sense of Street Names in Berlin

There is Kantstraße, Savignyplatz, Warschauer Straße, Lützowplatz, Hohenzollerndamm Platz and the list goes on and on… More than 4000 street names are to be encountered, upon wandering around Berlin. Their wild variety would leave one contemplating, if there is actually a system, according to which names were given to the streets. As stereotypical as it might sound, we are in Germany and, thus, it goes without saying that all these names were not randomly selected and allotted to the streets.

Map enthusiast and publisher Gerd Gauglitz has devoted considerable time and energy researching this topic. His unwavering love for city maps has culminated into the development of several fascinating and innovative projects, that shed light on areas and questions we might not even have been able to come up with on our own. On his Berliner streetname map the reader has the opportunity to look at the different neighborhoods of Berlin and recognize the name patterns that arise based on the thematic pools they were chosen from (e.g. poets, politicians, flowers, wars). Every area inside the S-Bahn ring as well as the closest surroundings are depicted. Apart from the street map, there is a booklet, that delves into the explanation of how different street names were adopted, discarded and changed through the years. You can purchase the map along with the booklet either on Tagesspiegel Shop, Edition Gauglitz or at various book and museum shops in Berlin.

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<a href="https://www.iheartberlin.de/author/nikos/" target="_self">Nikos</a>

Nikos

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