Friedrichstadt (Berlin)
The official boundaries of Friedrichstadt extend from the Spittelmarkt starting between northbound streets Niederwall- and Oberwallstraße, along Behrenstraße west to Ebertstraße, and then south over the Potsdamer Platz, Stresemann- and Gitschiner Straße, ending at the Hallesches Tor, and then again north over Linden- and Axel-Springer-Straße, back to the Spittelmarkt.
A large portion of the Spittelmarkt and adjoining Hausvogteiplatz were once part of a military installation associated with the historical suburb of Friedrichswerder.
Friedrichstadt was designed with an unusually austere geometric style for the time, with broad streets which intersected at right angles to each other.
Jerusalem's Chapel, which used to stand outside of the built-up area before, was included into Friedrichstadt's municipal borders and became its first parish church.
In 1689 and 1693–1695 Giovanni Simonetti restored and extended the chapel to become Jerusalem's Church, which was continuously staffed with a Calvinist and a Lutheran preacher from 1694 on, thus becoming a simultaneum.
[1] In 1701 the Judge Krause at the neighboured Kammergericht (then Supreme Court of Brandenburg) added a sepulchre chapel for his family to the church building.
In 1711 at the corner of Jäger and Markgrafen streets a new building for the "Societät der Wissenschaften" (English: Society of the Sciences), founded by Gottfried Leibniz, opened.
Friedrichstadt fared favorably, when a French baron, François Mathieu Vernezobre de Laurieux, built a large palace on Wilhelm Street because of the marriage of his daughter to a local army captain.
In 1735 the Marcher Consistory, the Kammergericht and all the other supreme courts of the different territories ruled in personal union by the Hohenzollern moved into the new so-called Collegienhaus, without formally merging the different juridical systems.
In 1913 the Kammergericht (meanwhile having incorporated the other courts) moved into a new edifice and the Collegienhaus was exclusively used by the Consistory (then competent for Berlin and Brandenburg, the predecessor of today's Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia).
The main director of construction in the neighbourhood, Philipp Gerlach, developed these open areas into important city plazas, and they were originally named the Wilhelms-Markt, the Achteck am Potsdamer Thor, and the Rondell.
In 1800, the Nationaltheater was replaced with a larger theater, the Schauspielhaus (English: Play House), whose architecture had to be designed to compete with the new cupola towers on the Gendarmenmarkt's twin churches.
However, public reaction to the new theater's design was negative, and many people called the Carl Gotthard Langhans-designed building the "Koffer" (English: Trunk or suitcase).
Luckily for dissatisfied Berliners, the Schauspielhaus burnt to the ground in 1817 and a new theater, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, was built in its place.
The fortified walls which surrounded greater Berlin became a hindrance to traffic, which was becoming consistently busier and more uncontrolled.
Friedrichstadt was severely damaged in the widespread destruction which accompanied World War II, especially in the first area bombardment organised and carried out by the United States Air Force on the morning of February 3, 1945.
The bombing was so dense that it caused a city fire spreading eastwards, driven by the wind, over the centre and south of Friedrichstadt and the northwest of neighboured Luisenstadt.
In the northern portion of the neighbourhood, which lay within the boundaries of Mitte Borough, which was part of East Berlin, systematic rebuilding began in 1970.
[citation needed] In the middle of the plaza is a major theater, flanked by two important churches, the Deutscher and Französischer Dom (English: German and French cathedrals).
Due to the destruction from World War II, the oldest surviving building on the Gendarmenmarkt is the former Prussian State Bank, built in 1901.
The neighbourhood is also host to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a large and sometimes controversial monument located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate.
Another famous landmark in Friedrichstadt is Checkpoint Charlie, the most infamous border crossing between East and West Berlin between 1945 and 1990.
Although many ministries occupy older buildings, many are opting for newer, more modern headquarters, and new construction to accommodate these departments is not uncommon.
These countries are: Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brunei, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, Greece, Ireland, Kenya, Libya, Morocco, Myanmar, New Zealand, North Korea, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, and South Africa.
