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A slender white minaret towers above the stately street trees on the corner of Berlinerstrasse and Briennerstrasse and draws the eye to the dome, battlements and turrets of the oldest surviving mosque building in Germany. It was built between 1924 and 1928 by the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement, then still based in British India, to create a dignified place of worship for the Muslims staying in Berlin. The Berlin architect Karl Alfred Herrmann modelled the building on the Indian Mughal style of the Taj Mahal. From day one, the exotic building was an open house, inviting Muslims of all countries and faiths to pray. Followers of other religions and freethinkers were also always welcome as guests and discussion partners. The only exception to this was when a newspaper portrait of the place of worship in 1929 stated that ‘the Muslim community asks you to refrain from political conversations of any kind’. Its director at the time, the writer and Koran translator Hugo (‘Hamid’) Marcus, had converted from Judaism to Islam, but remained a member of the Jewish community and continued to campaign for the rights of homosexuals. In 1938, fellow Muslims helped him to flee the Nazi persecution of Jews to Switzerland.
The mosque, which was badly damaged during the Second World War and then rebuilt in a makeshift manner, has been restored in recent years in line with its listed status and is now a shining symbol of religious coexistence and tolerance. A few houses further on, a wooden bell tower at the side of the road stands as a reminder of Christianskirken, the simple church of the Danish expatriate community at Brienner Straße 12, which was consecrated in 1967. A touch of Russia in Berlin wafts around the bulbous spires of the Russian Orthodox church at Hohenzollerndamm 66. It was built at state expense during the Nazi era to replace a demolished church building and was consecrated in 1938. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine led to tensions in the community and put religious coexistence to the test: Not only the Ukrainian parishioners, but also many people of Russian origin rejected the pro-Russian and anti-Western course of the Moscow church leader Cyril I.

The Wilmersdorf art department demonstrated a sense of humour in 1981 when it had the Seven Swabians from the Grimm fairy tale set up as if they were on their way to the town hall at the time. In high spirits, they braved the roaring traffic on the central reservation on Fehrbelliner Platz: Mr Schulz in front, Jackli, Marli, Jergli, Michal, Hans and Veitli. The ferocious guys made of sheet steel, created by the sculptor Hans-Georg Damm, drag a five-metre-long halberd as if they wanted to get the bureaucrats in the town hall moving. In West Berlin, the Swabians were one of the largest immigrant groups, not least because they were exempt from compulsory military service in West Germany. Even in Grimm’s fairy tale, the Seven Swabians are not characterised by any particular bravery. However, the 25-tonne work of art gave the traffic administration a real fright. The danger was too grave, according to the traffic officers, that one day someone might veer off the road and be impaled – a motorcyclist in the overtaking lane, for example. It was only retrospectively that the heavy lads were lifted onto their metre-high concrete plinth.

The South African freedom fighter and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson Mandela can be seen smiling above the school gates. The school named after him was founded by the Berlin Senate in 2000. The coveted school places at Pfalzburger Straße 30 are mainly given to children with German or English as their mother tongue who live permanently in the capital and to children from families travelling a lot. These include employees of diplomatic missions, for example. Bilingual lessons are offered from the first to the thirteenth grade, and in the upper school you can decide whether you want to complete your school career with a bilingual Abitur or an English-language International Baccalaureate Diploma (IB). As a state school, the Nelson Mandela School does not charge school fees. As a ‘UNESCO Project School’ and member of the ‘European Council of International Schools’, it is networked worldwide.
The California-based composer Hans Zimmer, multiple Oscar and Grammy award winner, financed a memorial plaque on the facade of the Nelson Mandela School in 2020. From 1968 to 1984, its basement rooms were home to the Electronic Beat Studio, the nucleus of the so-called ‘Berliner Schule’ (Berlin School) for electronic music. Pioneers of new electronically generated soundscapes such as Klaus Schulze and Edgar Froese, who became world-famous with his band Tangerine Dream, experimented in Pfalzburger Strasse. The new things created there were more memorable in the international music world than in Berlin. After the Electronic Beat Studio moved out, New German Wave bands such as Ideal and the Neonbabies rocked out in the basement. The then still unknown band Rammstein recorded demos for their debut album ‘Herzeleid’ there.

‘Look out for your neighbours’, urges a glass stele on Nikolsburger Platz. Between 1941 and 1944, at least 110 Jewish people from the neighbourhood were deported and murdered. The Cecilienschule on Nikolsburger Platz was a girls’ school at the time and around half of the children had to leave by 1939 because they came from Jewish families. Today, the Cecilienschule has been converted into a co-ed primary school. Nikolsburger Platz is also home to many Spanish-speaking children, as the organisation ‘Aventura Nikolsburg’ runs three German-Spanish daycare centres around the square.
A children’s book has made the square famous far beyond Wilmersdorf: In Erich Kästner’s novel ‘Emil und die Detektive’ (Emil and the detectives), the children from the neighbourhood plan a chase there that ultimately leads to the arrest of a thief. The Gänseliesel fountain on the square is not mentioned in the novel. The motif goes back to a fairy tale by the Grimm brothers. Installed in 1910, the fountain figures were melted down during the Second World War and replaced with replicas in 1988. Another children’s book is closely linked to Nikolsburger Platz, as it was created here in the Cecilien primary school as part of a school project. The graphic novel ‘Das Mädchen Susi’ (Susi – the girl) by Birgitta Behr tells the story of Susi Collm, the granddaughter of Gertrud Cohn, who lived in house no. 4 and was murdered in Treblinka. The book gives a child-friendly account of the persecution, hiding and separation of the family during the Holocaust. The story is now also adapted into a play and a film.
The area around the fairytale fountain bursts into bloom from spring to autumn thanks to a residents’ initiative that has taken over the planting of Nikolsburger Platz since 2013. Red beets, pumpkins and tomatoes have already been harvested in the first year. Unfortunately, the ‘Nikolsburger Platz zum Essen’ (Eating at Nikolsburger Platz) initiative didn’t take off in the long term – mainly owing to the dogs that peed there. Today, it is mainly the ornamental plants that bloom here; the herbs are meant for insects rather than human consumption.

On the way from Pangea Haus to Prager Platz, just before Bundesallee, there is an inconspicuous advertising pillar. It is new, but had a predecessor that inspired the illustrator Walter Trier to create the cover for Erich Kästner’s novel ‘Emil und die Detektive’. Bundesallee used to be called Kaiserallee, and the novel’s character Emil Tischbein and the thief Grundeis get off tram 177 at the corner of Trautenaustraße. Emil makes friends with the children from the neighbourhood, who help him catch the thief. When the novel was written, the author Erich Kästner lived around the corner on Prager Platz, which is commemorated by a mural and a memorial plaque on the house at Prager Straße 6-10, which houses a day care centre. The circular Prager Platz is the urban counterpart to Nikolsburger Platz and, thanks to the plans for the 1987 International Building Exhibition, it is once again a lively neighbourhood meeting place with several street cafés. In the 1920s, the corner of Trautenaustraße was home to the ‘Prager Diele’, a meeting place for writers and intellectuals from Prague and Russian exiles. Since 2007, a granite stele designed by the Czech sculptor Miroslav Vochta, a gift from the city of Prague and the Czech people, has stood on the opposite street. A similar granite block was unveiled in Prague in 2015. Both of those blocks bear an inscription in red lettering, in German and Czech; the inscription consists of verses by the Prague-born poet Rainer Maria Rilke: Siehe, ich lebe. (Behold, I live.) Woraus? (Where does the will to live come from?) Weder Kindheit noch Zukunft werden weniger……Überzähliges Dasein entspringt mir im Herzen. (Neither childhood memories nor hopes for the future is my answer……My heart runs over with life’s own abundant will to live.)