City West

It is located southwest of the central Mitte locality and the Großer Tiergarten park, along Kurfürstendamm and Tauentzienstraße, two leading shopping streets meeting at Breitscheidplatz, where the landmark of the ruined Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church rises.

Likewise, the Theater des Westens opened in 1896 or the Romanisches Café from 1916 were newly established cultural institutions.

In the time of the Weimar Republic after World War I, the New West incorporated by the 1920 Greater Berlin Act became synonymous to the Golden Twenties.

Large cinemas like the Ufa-Palast am Zoo opened, then the main locations of German film, accompanied by a lively variety and Kabarett scene, while in 1928 Max Reinhardt took over the Kurfürstendamm theatres in the rooms of the former Berlin Secession.

Shortly afterwards, first antisemitic encroachments occurred on Jewish residents and shopkeepers, culminating in the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938.