Much of what happened in these hundred days happened in Berlin and Potsdam. These are the places,
in the order the days reached them, with what you will find there now.
59 places on a map of Berlin and Potsdam
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On the evening of 30 January SA, SS and Stahlhelm columns marched with torches through the gate and on along the Wilhelmstraße to celebrate Hitler’s appointment.
Today
The gate, badly damaged in the Second World War and restored afterwards, stands at the western end of Unter den Linden; once in the border zone of the divided city, it is now Berlin’s best-known symbol of German unity.
Late on 30 January shots were fired at a marching SA troop and its police escort here; police officer Josef Zauritz and SA man Hans Maikowski were killed.
Today
The street was renamed Maikowskistraße in 1933 to honour the SA man, and has borne the name of the artist Heinrich Zille since 31 July 1947. No memorial marks the events of that night.
The Bendlerblock from across the Landwehrkanal in 2009: the wing on the Reichpietschufer was built in 1911–14 for the Reich Navy Office.
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In January 1933 the seat of the Reichswehr Ministry and the army command, where General von Hammerstein-Equord lived; on 3 February Hitler set out his aims, including “living space in the East”, to the assembled commanders here.
Today
The German Resistance Memorial Center occupies part of the complex, best known as the centre of the 20 July 1944 attempt to overthrow the regime; since 1993 most of the Bendlerblock has been the second seat of the Federal Ministry of Defence.
The former Prussian Landtag in the Niederkirchnerstraße, today the seat of Berlin’s Abgeordnetenhaus, in 2009.
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Former Prussian Landtag
Niederkirchnerstraße 5 (then Prinz-Albrecht-Straße), 10117 Berlin
On 4 February the Prussian Landtag voted down a Nazi motion for its own dissolution by 214 votes to 196.
Today
The building has been the seat of the Abgeordnetenhaus, Berlin’s state parliament, since 1993. In 1934 the Nazi People’s Court was founded in its plenary hall, and after the war it housed the first East German government.
On 5 February the coffins of SA leader Hans Maikowski and police officer Josef Zauritz lay in the Cathedral for a state funeral attended by Hitler and Göring; the procession formed up in the Lustgarten outside.
Today
The Cathedral was re-consecrated in 1993 after its post-war reconstruction and is again a Protestant church. Its own history acknowledges that the Nazi regime was able to use it as a stage for its self-display.
The Prussian Landtag building in the Prinz-Albrecht-Straße (today the Niederkirchnerstraße) in 1932.
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Former Prussian Landtag
Niederkirchnerstraße 5 (then Prinz-Albrecht-Straße), 10117 Berlin
The Prussian parliament that met here was dissolved on 6 February by Papen and Kerrl, two days after it had refused to dissolve itself; it was elected anew on 5 March.
Today
The building is the seat of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin, which moved here in 1993 after a rapid conversion.
The Pallasseum housing block of 1973–77, built on the site of the Sportpalast, in 2017.
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Site of the Sportpalast
Potsdamer Straße 170 / Pallasstraße, 10783 Berlin-Schöneberg
On 10 February Hitler opened the NSDAP’s election campaign here; his speech was broadcast to the whole country.
Today
The Sportpalast was demolished from 1973; the Pallasseum, a housing block of over 500 flats built in 1975–77, stands on the site. A bronze plaque unveiled in 1993 recalls the hall’s sporting history and Goebbels’s “total war” speech of 1943.
The Pallasseum, the housing block of 1973–77 that stands where the Sportpalast was, in 2019.
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Site of the Sportpalast
Potsdamer Straße 170 / Pallasstraße, 10783 Berlin-Schöneberg
On 11 February the German Nationalists and the Stahlhelm held the rally of their new “Combat Front Black-White-Red” here, and Hugenberg’s speech was broadcast nationwide.
Today
The Pallasseum housing complex of 1975–77 stands on the site of the hall, which was demolished from 1973; a bronze plaque of 1993 recalls its history.
The Akademie der Künste on the Pariser Platz in 2008: Günter Behnisch’s glass-fronted building of 2005 on the site of the old Academy.
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Seat of the Prussian Academy of Arts, where on the evening of 15 February 1933 Käthe Kollwitz and Heinrich Mann left the Academy under the threat of its dissolution.
Today
The Akademie der Künste’s building by Günter Behnisch, opened in 2005 within the proportions of the 1907 building, keeps the old top-lit exhibition rooms and houses the Academy’s library, reading room and architecture archive.
The former State Art School at Grunewaldstraße 2–5 in Schöneberg, built in 1914–20 and today the Medienhaus of the Universität der Künste, in 2013.
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State Art School (Staatliche Kunstschule zu Berlin)
The information panel on the site of the Kroll Opera at the end of the Große Querallee, with the Carillon behind, in 2023.
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Kroll Opera (site)
Platz der Republik / Große Querallee, 10557 Berlin-Tiergarten
The Kroll Opera’s festival hall, where the congress “Das Freie Wort” met on 19 February 1933 until the police dissolved it.
Today
Nothing of the building remains: the war-damaged ruin was blown up from 1951 and the last remains cleared in 1957. A blue information panel unveiled in 2007 at the end of the Große Querallee, facing the Carillon, marks the site and tells its history.
The former Reichstag President’s palace on the Friedrich-Ebert-Platz in 2015, today home of the German Parliamentary Society.
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The former Karl-Marx-Schule at Sonnenallee 79 in Neukölln, today the Ernst-Abbe-Gymnasium, in 2012.
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Fritz Karsen’s reform school, one of the most important of the Weimar Republic, which Rust ordered to be reorganised on 21 February 1933 while Karsen was sent on leave.
Today
The school is today the Ernst-Abbe-Gymnasium. A bronze plaque unveiled in 1989 beside the entrance recalls that the reform educator Fritz Karsen taught here from 1921 to 1933 and commemorates the teachers persecuted under National Socialism.
The Karl-Liebknecht-Haus on the corner of the Kleine Alexanderstraße and the Weydingerstraße in 2010, headquarters of the party Die Linke.
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Headquarters of the KPD, which the political police occupied and searched on the afternoon of 23 February 1933.
Today
The building is the national headquarters of the party Die Linke. A plaque beside the entrance on the Kleine Alexanderstraße records that the Central Committee of the KPD worked here from 1926 to 1933.
The bronze plaque at Potsdamer Straße 172 marking the site of the Sportpalast, which stood here from 1910 to 1973; photographed in 2009.
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The arena where the KPD’s rally with Wilhelm Pieck was dissolved by the police on the evening of 23 February 1933.
Today
The Sportpalast was demolished from 1973. A bronze plaque unveiled in 1993 marks the site and recalls its sporting events and Goebbels’s “total war” speech of 18 February 1943.
Set on fire on the evening of 27 February 1933; the plenary chamber burned out. The Reichstag never again met in the building, gathering instead in the Kroll Opera House a few hundred metres away.
Today
The rebuilt building houses the German Bundestag. In front of it, towards the Scheidemannstraße, a memorial of 96 cast-iron plates set up in 1992 names Reichstag deputies of the Weimar Republic who were murdered under Nazi rule.
The surviving prison wall in the Geschichtspark Ehemaliges Zellengefängnis Moabit in June 2017, with lines by Albrecht Haushofer set along its foot, beginning ‘Von allem Leid, das diesen Bau erfüllt’.
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Former Moabit cell prison (Zellengefängnis Lehrter Straße)
With the police prison overflowing, some of the Communists arrested in Berlin after the fire were taken to the Moabit cell prison and held there in ‘protective custody’ without any court order.
Today
Most of the prison was demolished in 1957–58. Since 2006 the site has been the Geschichtspark Ehemaliges Zellengefängnis Moabit, a park and memorial with the surviving prison wall, a walk-in cell sculpture and fragments of Albrecht Haushofer’s poem ‘In Fesseln’.
The State Opera Unter den Linden in August 2024, with the inscription ‘Fridericus Rex Apollini et Musis’ on its portico.
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At noon the Volksbund’s Remembrance Day ceremony, held here instead of in the Reichstag, was attended by Hindenburg, Hitler and the cabinet, with crowds of tens of thousands outside.
Today
Twice destroyed by bombing in the Second World War, the opera house reopened in 1955 and again in autumn 2017 after seven years of reconstruction; it is still home to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden.
The Neue Wache on Unter den Linden in August 2018, today the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Dictatorship.
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After the ceremony in the State Opera, Hindenburg inspected an honour company and the nationalist associations and laid a wreath in the memorial to the dead of the First World War, set up in Schinkel’s guardhouse in 1931.
Today
Since 1993 the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Dictatorship, with Käthe Kollwitz’s sculpture ‘Mother with her Dead Son’ inside.
Wilhelmstraße 49 in June 2010, the main entrance of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. According to the Commons record the building went up in 1885 beside the Palais Leopold, which has not survived, and was absorbed into the Propaganda Ministry in the 1930s.
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Ordenspalais (Palais Leopold), Wilhelmplatz
Wilhelmstraße 49, 10117 Berlin (former Wilhelmplatz 8–9)
Seat of the Reich government’s press office since 1918. Goebbels arrived here on the afternoon of 13 March; it became the home of his new Propaganda Ministry.
Today
The complex was badly damaged in 1945. Parts of the ministry buildings, extended in the Nazi years, survive at Wilhelmstraße 49, which since the late 1990s has been the Berlin seat of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.
Apartment houses of the artists’ colony around Ludwig-Barnay-Platz in Berlin-Wilmersdorf in August 2017.
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The housing estate built in 1927–30 for actors, writers and journalists, known for its left-wing residents, was sealed off and searched by police and SA auxiliaries; fourteen people were arrested and books were burned on the square.
Today
The estate still stands and is a listed monument. On the green of Ludwig-Barnay-Platz a boulder with a bronze plaque, unveiled in 1988, reads ‘Mahnmal für die politisch Verfolgten der Künstlerkolonie’.
The Titania-Palast in Schloßstraße, Berlin-Steglitz, on an evening in February 2022, during the Berlin film festival.
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One of the two Berlin cinemas where Max Ophüls’s Liebelei began its run on 16 March, in the last days before its director left Germany.
Today
The cinema palace of 1928 survived the war and is a listed building (since 1984), used commercially. A Berlin memorial plaque unveiled in 1989 recalls its opening, the Philharmonic’s first post-war concert there in 1945 and the founding of the Free University in 1948.
Inside the Olympiastadion in March 2023, looking towards the Marathon Gate and the bell tower beyond. The stadium was built in 1934–36 on the site of the Deutsches Stadion, where Germany played France on 19 March 1933.
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The Deutsches Stadion, opened in 1913 inside the Grunewald racecourse, where some 45,000 people watched Germany draw 3–3 with France.
Today
In December 1933 Hitler approved plans that included demolishing the Deutsches Stadion; the Olympiastadion, built in 1934–36 for the Olympic Games, now stands on the site.
Fritz Höger’s Kirche am Hohenzollernplatz in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, consecrated on 19 March 1933, in July 2023.
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The new brick church by Fritz Höger and Ossip Klarwein was consecrated with a festival service before large crowds.
Today
The church, parish hall and rectory survive and are a listed monument (Hohenzollerndamm 202–203); the Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz funded work on the ensemble in 2022.
Theodor-Heuss-Platz in Berlin-Westend in May 2023, with the blue obelisk on the square. From 1933 to 1945 it was called Adolf-Hitler-Platz.
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The Berlin police president announced that Reichskanzlerplatz in Charlottenburg was renamed ‘Adolf-Hitler-Platz’.
Today
The square was called Reichskanzlerplatz again from 1947 and has been Theodor-Heuss-Platz since 18 December 1963, named after the first President of the Federal Republic.
The rebuilt tower of the Garrison Church in Potsdam, opened in August 2024, photographed in May 2026.
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Scene of the state ceremony opening the Reichstag: speeches by Hindenburg and Hitler, and wreaths laid at the coffins of Frederick William I and Frederick the Great in the crypt.
Today
The church was left a ruin by the war, and its tower was blown up in the early summer of 1968. A rebuilt tower opened on 23 August 2024, together with an exhibition on the church’s history.
Schinkel’s St. Nikolaikirche on Potsdam’s Alter Markt, with the obelisk in front, in September 2025.
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Protestant service for Hindenburg and the deputies before the state ceremony; the clergy led by Dr Dibelius received the Reich President at the door, and the service was relayed by loudspeaker to the crowd in the palace courtyard.
Today
Schinkel’s domed church, whose dome and portico were destroyed or badly damaged at the end of the war, was rebuilt and reconsecrated in May 1981 and is open to visitors as a parish church with a busy cultural life.
The former Prussian Landtag in Niederkirchnerstraße, since 1993 the seat of Berlin’s Abgeordnetenhaus, in August 2020.
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Former Prussian Landtag (Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin)
The Prussian Landtag elected on 5 March held its constituent sitting here, opened by its Nazi senior member, Litzmann.
Today
Opened in 1899 for the Prussian House of Representatives, the building was converted for Göring in 1936 into the ‘Haus der Flieger’, an officers’ club. Since 1993 it has been the seat of Berlin’s state parliament, the Abgeordnetenhaus.
The information board on the Kroll Opera House beside the Große Querallee in the Tiergarten, near the site of the building, photographed in 2023; behind it rises the Carillon.
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The disused opera house a few hundred metres from the burnt-out Reichstag, converted into a provisional chamber, where the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act.
Today
Hit in an air raid in November 1943, the building was largely blown up in March 1951 and its ruins cleared by 1957. Today a memorial stone recalls the building in which parliamentary democracy in Germany ended in 1933.
The Haus des Rundfunks on Masurenallee, today the headquarters of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, in May 2020.
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Built by Hans Poelzig in 1929–30 and opened on 31 January 1931 as Germany’s second purpose-built broadcasting house; here Goebbels addressed the heads of the German radio companies and the staff of the Berlin stations.
Today
A listed building and, since 2003, the headquarters of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb); from 1957 it housed Sender Freies Berlin, after serving the Soviet-run Berliner Rundfunk from 1945 to 1952.
The Berliner Rathaus (Rotes Rathaus) seen from Rathausstraße in August 2016.
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Seat of the city government, where the newly elected council was sworn in at midday under the black-white-red flag, with the Prussian colours and the swastika on the corner turrets.
Today
The red-brick Neo-Renaissance building of 1861–69 by Hermann Friedrich Waesemann houses the Governing Mayor of Berlin and the Senate Chancellery; its ceremonial rooms are open to visitors.
The Elßholzstraße portal of the Kammergericht in Berlin-Schöneberg, photographed in 2009.
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SA men entered Prussia’s highest court; hearings involving Jewish judges, prosecutors or lawyers were broken off, and those concerned had to take off their robes and leave by a staircase lined with SA men.
Today
The Kammergericht again sits in the building by the Kleistpark. To the left of the main entrance a memorial plaque commemorates the Jewish jurists of Berlin persecuted between 1933 and 1945.
The Stolperstein for the N. Israel department store at the corner of Spandauer Straße and Rathausstraße, inscribed ‘Hier stand Kaufhaus Nathan Israel, gegründet 1815, arisiert 1939’ (here stood the N. Israel department store, founded 1815, ‘Aryanised’ 1939). Photograph of 2008.
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Kaufhaus N. Israel (site)
Spandauer Straße 26–32, corner of Rathausstraße, 10178 Berlin-Mitte
Rainer Görß’s ‘Denkzeichen Modezentrum Hausvogteiplatz’ of 2000: three tall mirrored panels at the U-Bahn exit on Hausvogteiplatz, photographed in 2015.
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The centre of Berlin’s garment industry, built up largely by Jewish manufacturers and merchants, fell silent as its Jewish-owned firms closed for the boycott.
Today
Since July 2000 the ‘Denkzeichen Modezentrum Hausvogteiplatz’ by Rainer Görß, three tall mirrored panels at the U-Bahn exit, and the names of Jewish fashion firms on the steps of the station recall the owners and employees who were driven out.
The former Prussian House of Lords, seat of the Bundesrat, seen across Leipziger Straße in July 2023.
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The ‘German Christians’ opened their first national conference with a crowded public rally in the chamber of the former Prussian House of Lords, demanding a single Reich Church.
Today
The building, completed in 1904 for the Prussian House of Lords, has been the seat of the Bundesrat, the chamber of the German federal states, since September 2000.
The bronze plaque on Potsdamer Straße marking where the Sportpalast stood from 1910 to 1973; it recalls Goebbels’s ‘total war’ speech there in February 1943. Photograph of 2009.
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Almost 18,000 SA and SS men filled the Sportpalast for Hitler’s broadcast roll-call of the storm troopers on the evening of 8 April 1933.
Today
The Sportpalast was demolished in 1973. The large housing complex of some 550 flats on the site, once called the ‘Sozialpalast’, is now the Pallasseum; a bronze plaque at Potsdamer Straße 170, unveiled in 1993, recalls the hall and Goebbels’s ‘total war’ speech of 1943.
The Berlin memorial plaque at Birkbuschstraße 49 marking the site of the Bauhaus, searched and sealed on 11 April 1933.
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Bauhaus Berlin (former telephone factory)
Birkbuschstraße 49, 12167 Berlin (Lankwitz, Steglitz-Zehlendorf)
The last home of the Bauhaus, in a disused telephone factory, was searched by police and SA on 11 April 1933 and sealed; 32 students were arrested.
Today
The factory building no longer stands. A Berlin memorial plaque at Birkbuschstraße 49, unveiled on 30 November 1989, records that the Bauhaus was closed here in 1933 and that many of its members were persecuted or emigrated.
A former runway of Tempelhof airport, now part of the Tempelhofer Feld park, in May 2024, with the airport buildings low on the horizon at right.
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Tempelhof airfield (Zentralflughafen)
Tempelhofer Feld, Berlin (entrances from Tempelhofer Damm, Columbiadamm and Oderstraße)
Berlin’s central airport, where the Easter air show was held on 16 and 17 April 1933 and where Hans Bertram landed at about 16:30 on Easter Monday.
Today
Air traffic ended in 2008. Since 2010 the 300-hectare airfield, with its two runways, has been a public park, the Tempelhofer Feld; the former terminal building, now a listed building, is used for events and trade fairs.
The Konzerthaus Berlin, Schinkel’s former theatre on the Gendarmenmarkt, photographed in April 2015.
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The Prussian State Theatre gave the premiere of Hanns Johst’s ‘Schlageter’ here on the evening of Hitler’s birthday, with Goebbels, Frick, Rust and Kerrl in the boxes.
Today
Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s theatre of 1818–1821 was destroyed in the Second World War and reopened as a concert hall in 1984; it is now the Konzerthaus Berlin.
Theodor-Heuss-Platz in Berlin-Westend in May 2023; on the left is the Blue Obelisk by the Berlin artist Hella Santarossa.
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The Reichskanzlerplatz, laid out in 1906 in the new Neu-Westend district, was renamed Adolf-Hitler-Platz, as announced on 21 April 1933. It was later meant to mark the western end of the east–west axis planned for Hitler’s ‘world capital Germania’.
Today
In 1963, after the death of Theodor Heuss, Berlin renamed it Theodor-Heuss-Platz. Since 1955 an ‘Eternal Flame’ has burned there for the victims of flight and expulsion; Heuss inaugurated the memorial.
The former Prussian Landtag on Niederkirchnerstraße, seat of Berlin’s Abgeordnetenhaus, in August 2020, with the statue of Freiherr vom Stein in the forecourt.
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Prussian Landtag (now Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin)
Niederkirchnerstraße 5 (formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Straße), 10117 Berlin
In the plenary hall of the former Prussian Landtag, the Berlin press association and the Fighting League for German Culture held their rally ‘Deutsche Presse’ at midday on 23 April 1933, with Otto Dietrich as the main speaker.
Today
The listed parliament building of 1892–1899, heavily damaged in the war and later altered, was restored and has housed Berlin’s state parliament, the Abgeordnetenhaus, since 1993.
The Topography of Terror site in November 2013: on the left the documentation centre, on the right the excavated basement walls of the Gestapo headquarters beneath a surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall.
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Topography of Terror (former Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8)
The Secret State Police Office created by the Prussian law of 26 April 1933 set up its headquarters in the former School of Applied Arts at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8, with a house prison in the basement from August 1933.
Today
The site is the Topography of Terror documentation centre, whose permanent exhibition documents the Gestapo, the SS and the Reich Security Main Office in Wilhelmstraße and Prinz-Albrecht-Straße.
The west front of the Reichstag building with Norman Foster’s glass dome, photographed in March 2014.
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Two months after the fire that destroyed its plenary chamber, the SPD held its Reich conference in its parliamentary group’s rooms here on 26 April 1933 and elected Wels and Vogel as chairmen.
Today
Rebuilt by Norman Foster with a new dome, the Reichstag building has been the seat of the German Bundestag since 19 April 1999; traces of the 1933 fire and the war were left visible.
The memorial to the 96 Reichstag deputies murdered by the Nazis, in front of the Reichstag building, in November 2016: cast-iron plates set on edge, each inscribed along its top with a deputy’s name.
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Memorial to the 96 Reichstag deputies murdered by the Nazis
Platz der Republik, corner of Scheidemannstraße, 10557 Berlin-Tiergarten
Albert Funk, Communist member of the Reichstag from 1930 to 1932, died on 27 April 1933 after torture at Recklinghausen police headquarters.
Today
Since 12 September 1992 a row of 96 cast-iron plates in front of the Reichstag has named the deputies of the Weimar Reichstag killed by the Nazis; one reads “Albert Funk *1894 +1933 Polizeipräsidium Recklinghausen KPD”.
The main entrance of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin-Dahlem, photographed in March 2013.
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As director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry here, Fritz Haber asked on 30 April 1933 to be retired rather than carry out the dismissal of his Jewish colleagues.
Today
Since 1953 the institute has carried Haber’s name as the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society; Max von Laue unveiled a commemorative plaque to Haber there on 9 December 1952.
The Tempelhofer Feld from the air in December 2020: the former airfield, with its runways, is now a public park.
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On the evening of 1 May 1933 the regime staged its mass rally for the “Day of National Labour” here, with Hitler speaking from a tribune designed by Albert Speer near the old parade-ground poplar.
Today
The former airfield is an open park. Panel 18 of the information trail on the history of the Tempelhofer Feld, “Massenkundgebung”, stands close to where the tribune was, and describes the rally as the propaganda prelude to the destruction of the unions the next day.
In the morning Hindenburg addressed the youth rally here; at midnight Göring spoke at the end of the torchlight march from the Tempelhofer Feld.
Today
Still a garden in 1933, the Lustgarten was paved as a parade ground in 1935 and stayed so until 1998. The present lawns, by the garden architect Hans Loidl, reinterpret Schinkel’s layout in front of the Altes Museum.
The former ADGB headquarters by Max Taut and Franz Hoffmann at the corner of Wallstraße and Inselstraße, photographed in April 2022.
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ADGB Bundeshaus (Hermann-Schlimme-Haus)
Wallstraße 61–65, corner of Inselstraße 6, 10179 Berlin-Mitte
The headquarters of the General German Trade Union Federation, a model of the New Building movement by Max Taut and Franz Hoffmann (1922–23), was occupied in 1933 and the ADGB expropriated; on 2 May its leaders were taken into “protective custody”.
Today
The listed building was restored in 1997–98 and is used by the IGBCE, the mining, chemical and energy workers’ union, and its foundation.
The former trade union house at Engeldamm 62–64, built in 1899–1900, photographed in March 2010.
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One of the first union houses in Germany, built in 1899–1900 with money from the physicist Leo Arons, it was occupied by the Nazis on 2 May 1933; Arons’s grave in the courtyard was destroyed.
Today
A glass memorial plaque by Erika Klagge, unveiled in 2002, records that the destruction of the free trade union movement began with the occupation of this house on 2 May 1933.
Excavated brick cellar walls of the former Gestapo headquarters at the Topography of Terror, with the outdoor exhibition beside them, in August 2016.
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Topography of Terror (former Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8)
Göring’s circular, published on 3 May 1933, gave Berlin SW 11, Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8, the former School of Applied Arts, as the seat of the Secret State Police Office.
Today
The site of the former Gestapo headquarters is the Topography of Terror documentation centre, whose permanent exhibition documents the Gestapo, the SS and the Reich Security Main Office.
The Avus grandstand beside the Berlin exhibition grounds, seen from the air in June 2022; it was built in 1936–37, after Czaykowski’s record.
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On 5 May 1933 Count Czaykowski set a world one-hour record of 213.8 km/h on the Avus, then a private race and test track through the Grunewald.
Today
The Avus is part of the A 115 motorway. At its northern end the grandstand of 1936–37 and the round tower of the former administration building, now a motorway service station, are listed monuments; racing ended in 1998.
The memorial stele by Georg Seibert (1994) for the Institute for Sexual Science and Magnus Hirschfeld, on the Spree bank at Bettina-von-Arnim-Ufer, photographed in August 2016.
Babewyn / CC BY-SA 4.0.
CC BY-SA 4.0,
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Site of the Institute for Sexual Science
Bettina-von-Arnim-Ufer, near the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 10557 Berlin-Tiergarten
On the morning of 6 May 1933 students occupied and plundered Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science at Beethovenstraße 3 and declared it closed.
Today
Since July 1994 a memorial stele on the Spree bank (Bettina-von-Arnim-Ufer), near the former Congress Hall, recalls the institute; since September 2011 two stelae on the opposite Magnus-Hirschfeld-Ufer commemorate the first homosexual emancipation movement.
Haus Liebermann on Pariser Platz, next to the Brandenburg Gate, in June 2025, hung with a banner for the exhibition ‘Liebermanns Welt’.
Roy Zuo / CC BY-SA 4.0.
CC BY-SA 4.0,
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The Stolperstein for Robert Neppach, laid beside his wife Nelly’s and photographed the day after it was laid in October 2015. It records that he was forced to give up his firm in 1936, fled to Switzerland in 1938 and took his own life on 18 August 1939.
OTFW , Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0.
CC BY-SA 3.0,
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Stolpersteine for Nelly and Robert Neppach
Corner of Nachodstraße and Prager Straße, 10779 Berlin-Wilmersdorf
Nelly Neppach, former German tennis champion, took her own life in the couple’s flat at Prager Straße 24 in May 1933 after being excluded from German tennis as a Jew.
Today
Because the house no longer exists, Stolpersteine for Nelly and Robert Neppach were set into the pavement at the corner of Nachodstraße and Prager Straße on 22 October 2015; hers reads “humiliated / deprived of rights”.
Schinkel’s Neue Wache on Unter den Linden, since 1993 the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany, photographed in February 2015.
Ansgar Koreng / CC BY 3.0 (DE).
CC BY 3.0 de,
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Schinkel’s royal guardhouse of 1816–18, converted by Heinrich Tessenow in 1930–31 into a memorial to the fallen of the World War. On 9 May 1933 the Berlin guard troops mounted guard here for the first time, watched by thousands.
Today
Since the national day of mourning in 1993 the Neue Wache has been the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany, with an enlarged replica of Käthe Kollwitz’s figure of a mourning mother in Tessenow’s restored interior.
The former execution shed of Plötzensee prison, now at the centre of the Plötzensee Memorial, photographed in April 2015.
A.Savin / CC BY-SA 3.0.
CC BY-SA 3.0,
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On the morning of 9 May 1933 Ernst Reins and Johannes Kabelitz, both convicted of murder, were executed in Plötzensee prison. Until 1937 executions here were carried out in the yard by the executioner with a hand axe.
Today
Since 1951–52 the former execution shed and its yard have been a memorial “to the victims of the Hitler dictatorship of the years 1933–1945”. Between 1933 and 1945, 2,891 people were put to death at Plötzensee, among them many members of the resistance.
Micha Ullman’s “Library” set into the paving of Bebelplatz in August 2009: through the glass plate, empty shelves below ground; behind it, St Hedwig’s Cathedral.
Kemmi.1 (Stefan Kemmerling) / CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Then called the Opernplatz. Late on 10 May 1933 students burned an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 books on a pyre in the middle of the square, and Goebbels spoke at the fire. The square was renamed Bebelplatz in 1947.
Today
The square lies between the State Opera, St Hedwig’s Cathedral and the “Kommode”, the Humboldt University’s law faculty. Since 1995 Micha Ullman’s memorial “Library” has lain beneath a glass plate in its centre: an underground room painted white, whose empty bookshelves stand for the cultural loss caused by the Nazi dictatorship. The Berlin Senate took up the idea of a memorial soon after reunification.
The former Prussian House of Lords on Leipziger Straße, seat of the Bundesrat since 2000, photographed in July 2023.
Gerd Eichmann / CC BY 4.0.
CC BY 4.0,
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Built for the Prussian House of Lords and completed in 1904. On the afternoon of 10 May 1933 its plenary hall, then used by the Prussian State Council, held the first congress of the German Labour Front, at which Hitler spoke.
Today
Partly destroyed in the Second World War and later used by East German institutions, the building was converted from 1997 and has been the seat of the Bundesrat, the chamber of the federal states, since September 2000. The plenary hall, almost entirely destroyed in the war, was rebuilt as a modern chamber.
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