Geschichtsmeile Wilhelmstraße

A street that governed a nation

The northern stretch of Wilhelmstraße, between Unter den Linden and Leipziger Straße, was laid out in the 1730s as an elegant residential quarter for leading figures of the Prussian state. By the 19th century it had become the seat of Prussia's most important ministries, joined from 1871 by the ministries of the newly unified German Reich. Under the National Socialists the government district was extended south toward the terror apparatus of the SS and police. After 1945 the street lay largely in Berlin's eastern sector, and surviving buildings were put to use by East German authorities—in 1949 the Wilhelmplatz was renamed Thälmann-Platz, and in 1964 Wilhelmstraße itself became Otto-Grotewohl-Straße, before the original names were restored in 1993.↗↗

Today the avenue again houses federal ministries, embassies and centers of remembrance. The History Mile marks selected sites along this layered street so that visitors can read its past against the present-day streetscape—much of which survived the war as rubble.↗

The thirty stations

The exhibition was first commissioned in 1996 by the then Senator for construction, housing and transportation, and was fundamentally redesigned and expanded in 2007 with bilingual German–English presentation. Along the street it now reaches some thirty stations: tall informational steles, each combining archival photographs and text to tell the story of one former building or institution.↗↗

The stations trace the full arc of the government quarter. Near Unter den Linden you meet the old Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) and the Reichspräsidentenpalais; at Wilhelmstraße 77 stands the marker for the Reich Chancellery, with the New Reich Chancellery extension on Voßstraße nearby; the monumental former Reich Aviation Ministry (Reichsluftfahrtministerium) and the Reich Ministry for Propaganda recall the Nazi build-out of the district. Embassies—the British, French and Soviet missions—and, at the southern end, the Prinz-Albrecht site of the Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office, connect this street to the terror institutions documented at the adjacent Topographie des Terrors. A station also notes the Berlin Wall that once divided the area.↗↗

Many of the buildings commemorated no longer exist—the presidential palace, the Prussian Ministry of State and the Reich Chancellery were all destroyed—so the steles often mark empty lots or modern offices standing on the historic footprints. That absence is part of the experience: the History Mile makes a vanished seat of power legible in the pavement, the street numbers and the gaps between buildings.↗

How to walk the mile

This is a self-guided, open-air exhibition rather than a ticketed venue: you simply walk the length of Wilhelmstraße and stop at the boards as interest takes you. A companion booklet is available at the Topographie des Terrors exhibition on Niederkirchnerstraße 8, and the site's plan with house numbers helps you line up the stations before you set out.↗↗

Most visitors combine the History Mile with the Topographie des Terrors documentation center, the outdoor exhibition along the Wall remnant on Niederkirchnerstraße, and the underground excavation displays—all a few minutes' walk away, and all run by the same foundation with free admission. Doing the two together turns a single walk into a coherent account of how Berlin's government district functioned and what its institutions did.↗↗

The area around the Topographie complex is open daily from 10:00 until 20:00, with outdoor sections accessible until dusk (at the latest 20:00). The steles themselves stand on a public street and can be read any time, but pairing them with the indoor documentation rooms during opening hours gives the photographs and names their fuller context.↗↗