Ausstellungskatalog - Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum ...

Standorte · Locations
Dahlem
‘The plot of land that I took into consideration constitutes a rectangle,
which is bounded to the north by the Steglitz-Dahlemer
Strasse, to the north east by the Steglitz Fichtenberg, to the south
east by the Potsdamer Chaussee and to the west by the estates of
the Dahlem domain.’ This was how Ignatz Urban had described
the location favoured by him for the new Botanic Garden back in
1888. The approximately 40 hectare, clayey site on the sheltered
slope of the Fichtenberg was part of the Dahlem crown estate, but
the existing lease agreements could be terminated at any time for
public construction projects.
At this point rural Steglitz lay some distance away from the city
gates, yet the Fichtenberg was already lined with imposing country
houses built for well-to-do town-dwellers, and 25 trains a day ran
to Berlin from the station at Albrechtstrasse.
In October 1895, after considering different locations in Tiergarten,
Grunewald and Treptow, the Finance Ministry and the
Education Ministry finally agreed on Dahlem. This decision suited
the purposes of Friedrich Althoff, who wanted to use the new
buildings of the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum as well
as the Pharmaceutical Institute as the nucleus of his ‘Dahlem
Project’. In the following years the far-sighted science policy-maker
oversaw the relocation of further Berlin University natural science
facilities to Dahlem, and in 1901 he succeeded in transforming
the entire domain into a building site, thus creating a centre for
science that came to be known as the ‘German Oxford’. Villa colo-
Postkarte, um 1970. Heimatverein Steglitz e.V.
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nies grew up rapidly around the Botanic Garden, as well as numerous
scientific agencies, university institutes and finally, from
1911, several institutes of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (Kaiser
Wilhelm Society). The city had crept up on the garden once again.
With the founding of Berlin’s Freie Universität in 1948 and the
transfer to Dahlem of significant holdings of Berlin’s State Museums
(situated in the Soviet sector) from evacuation depots in the
western occupation zones, Dahlem became the cultural and scientific
centre of (West) Berlin during the Cold War. Today, southwest
Berlin is among the most important centres for science in the
German capital. KG