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Strandbad Wannsee
Grunewald
- Foto WikipediaStrandbad Wannsee is a beach located on the eastern shore of Lake Großer
Wannsee, a large bay of the Havel River in Berlin. It is known as Europe's
largest lake bath and has been a bathing beach for Berliners for more than 100
years.
Happy beachgoers
Some interesting facts about Strandbad Wannsee:
Jagdschloss Grunewald
The origin of the beach area, however, goes back to the beginning of the
1900s. The city of Berlin had, since the unification in 1871, experienced
enormous growth, both in population and in new buildings. Large housing
projects were planned and realized and these squeezed the working population
tightly together in small apartments with little light and less fresh air.
Therefore, people tried to escape into nature when they had the opportunity.
Favorite escapes for those who could not afford to go on holiday to the
Baltic Sea were the nearby lakes. Particularly suitable was the Wannsee with
its wide, shallow and sandy eastern coast.
Due to the moral standards of the time, public bathing, especially with
women and men together, was illegal. In 1907, the administration of the
Brandenburg Teltow district southwest of Berlin, then the known authority
over the area, gave in to public pressure and officially allowed bathing on
a 200-meter stretch of beach. Behavior was strictly regulated, down to
details of dress laid down by police regulation.
Strandad Wannsee
Construction began on May 8, 1907. In 1909, a lease was signed between the royal government and a local businessman, Frankenthal from Nikolassee. Freibad Wannsee, as it was called, then consisted of one beach each for men and for women, both 65 meters long, separated by the family section, which offered 350 meters of beach. The sections were separated by planking. Tents, erected at the foot of the steeper slope towards the forest, served as changing facilities.
After the First World War, the importance of the beach increased, not only
among the people of Berlin, but also for the surrounding communities. After
the end of the private lease, the municipality of Berlin took over, and the
company became part of the municipal forest service, due to its location in
Grunewald. In the same year, 1924, the tents were replaced by thatched
pavilions and the previously lacking sanitary facilities were improved. The
area was extended to 800 meters and was open year-round, making the
facilities available to winter bathers and skaters. Attendance increased,
especially after the S-Bahn from nearby Potsdam to Erkner was opened. One
year there were 900,000 visitors.
In 1926 the new nearby stations, Nikolassee and Wannsee, facilitated access
to the beach and the existing facilities were no longer sufficient. Plans to
erect a permanent building on the site had been mooted as early as 1910 by
Martin Wagner, later municipal director of construction, but had been
delayed by the First World War. Now the municipality of Berlin tasked the
same Martin Wagner and colleague Richard Ermisch, both employees of the city
administration and experienced in public construction, to plan a large-scale
improvement project. Construction began in 1929, and the opening of the new
buildings took place already a year later in 1930.
The Great Depression compromised the execution of the plans Wagner and Ermisch had made. Initially, the budget had been an amount of 5 million Reichsmark, which was to be spent on a further five of the two-storey halls, as well as a large, circular main restaurant, a pier with a café, a marina. and an open-air theatre. In addition, a medical bath, a kindergarten and a pension were thought of. Of all this, only the existing complex of four structures was realized, and only after the municipality visited the site to see that most of the scaled-down project was already built and would not require much additional work. However, an additional 2 million Reichsmarks were added.
In the following years, the number of visitors increased enormously, not
least because Berliners wanted to see their new public bath. However, the
rise of Nazism with associated violent fights between different political
groups on the beach meant that more and more people gradually refrained from
visiting the area.
In 1938, Jews were forbidden to enter and the non-Nazi staff were replaced
by party members. Furthermore, the entertainment was provided by orchestras
from the Wehrmacht and the SA.
During the Second World War, the beach park became a very welcome distraction in the dark times.
Berlin's coat of arms
approx. year 1700