The Ku'damm (Kurfurstendamm)

(Back to Berlin - Weimar Republic)

(see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurf%C3%BCrstendamm)

 The Ku'damm The city's neon-lit midway for high-end shopping and expensive nightclubs, the Kurfurstendamm is almost universally referred to as "the Ku'damm". Running through the western boroughs of Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf, the Ku'damm also boasts some of the finest examples of Berlin nightlife: cabarets featuring cross-dressing performers, cafes to lesbian clientele, bars in the American style, and pleasure palaces. The Ku'damm is where the most semi-professional "Half-Silk" prostitutes come after they knock off their day shifts, and where Boot-Girls stand outside expensive boutiques, offering their own version of merchandise.Heading east along the boulevard at the Auguste-Viktoria-Platz, the Ku'damm turns into Tauentzienstrasse, hunting grounds of the infamously stylish "T-Girls" - mother-daughter prostitute teams that are always on the cutting edge of fashion and ready with a quick quip for journalists (or investigators) looking for the latest street gossip. The Auguste-Viktoria-Platz is also the site of three famous Berlin institutions: the Romanisches Cafe, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, and the Heaven and Hell Club.

Anchoring Tauentzienstrasse at its eastern end is the formidable Kaufhaus des Westens (colloquially and affectionately called the "KaDeWe"), one of Berlin's great department stores. Opened in 1907, the sprawling site covers 260,000 square feet (more than 24,150 square meters) spread over five stories. So popular is the store that it single-handedly transforms Tauentzienstrasse from a quiet residential street to a bustling commercial extension of Ku'damm. In 1929, the store is enlarged even more. Within, customers may shop for everything from luxury Paris fashions and exotic foods to everyday items. The store provides a registry, tailor, hairdressing, hotel and home delivery, money changing, and even buggy and car rentals. The top-floor food court is one of the most popular destinations for casual dining in the city.

The Ku'damm's destination status is strictly a post-war phenomenon. Long a quiet suburban avenue, it is only after the Great War that the Ku'damm supplants Friedrichstrasse as the city's premier hotspot; this does not sit well with traditionalists and reactionaries, many of whom see the Ku'damm as emblematic of Berlin's fallen status. The region's large Jewishpopulation only adds fuel to the fire of anti-Semitic Nationalists (Organisation Consul in the early-1920's, Bund Wiking (Viking League) in the mid-1920's, and the National Socialists in the late-1920's and early-1930's) who link Berlin's moral degradation with imagined Jewish conspiracies. As a result, the street and neighborhoods are subject to civil unrest and turmoil, culminating in 1932 with mass attacks on Jewish-owned businesses and worshipers leaving synagogues on the night of Rosh Hashanah.