The characteristic feature of Friedenau is the Carstenn figure, named after urban developer Johann Anton Wilhelm von Carsten. This symmetrical figure consists of an avenue dividing a circular road, which is delimited by four town squares. Some streets in Friedenau were renamed after rivers in Alsace-Lorraine to commemorate the annexation of this region into the German Empire. The majority of buildings in Friedenau date to the early 20th century. Therefore, the architectural styles are almost uniform. 185 buildings are protected as cultural heritage sites. Younger buildings do not necessarily match the surrounding cityscape, since the reconstruction efforts after World War II gave little consideration to the preservation of architectural uniformity.
History
In 1871 it was founded as an affluent commuter town on the estates of the former Deutsch-Wilmersdorf manor. The German nameFriedenau, referring to Frieden and the suffix -au meaning floodplains, was proposed by Hedwig Hähnel, wife of the architect Hermann Hähnel, in memory of the 1871 Peace of Frankfurt, which ended the Franco-Prussian War. It was adopted by Mr. Hähnel, then the director of the Landerwerb- und Bauverein auf Actien, which developed the real estate in the area. When in 1874 the area constituted as an independent municipality within the Province of Brandenburg, the denotation had already been established and became the official municipal name. Friedenau opened its own non-denominational municipal cemetery, today's Städtischer Friedhof III, which soon grew too small. So in 1909 Friedenau bought a tract of land in Güterfelde as additional graveyard, with the first burial taking place in 1913. Friedenau's municipal construction councillor Hans Altmann designed for the cemetery a mourning chapel, an office, a gardener's house, a flower shop, benches and a fountain as well as a net of paths replicating the streets net in Friedenau. Since June 1913 the cemetery was accessible via the so-called cemetery train line ending at Stahnsdorf station. Friedenau joined with the town of Schöneberg in 1920 – under the latter's name – as the former 11th administrative borough of Greater Berlin. In the short time from 29 April to 30 June 1945, when the Red Army occupied all Berlin, it was a borough in its own right, until it was reunified with Schöneberg as one borough within the American Sector of West Berlin. The Güterfelde cemetery, since 1920 called Forest Cemetery of Schöneberg was operated since 1935 by Berlin's Borough of Wilmersdorf, called Wilmersdorf Forest Cemetery Güterfelde. After 1945 the cemetery happened to be in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and later in the German Democratic Republic, thus with the increasing Eastern interdiction of West Berlin the cemetery grew inaccessible for the Friedenauers. On 5 April 1986 a bomb exploded at the La Belle discothèque in a former cinema on Hauptstraße 78, killing a Turkish woman and two U.S. servicemen and injuring numerous people. A plaque marks the site.
Notable people
Friedenau has always been home to creative artists, especially of authors. Prominent residents include:
