The Otto-Braun-Straße near Berlin’s famous Alexanderplatz runs along the boundaries between the districts of Prenzlauer Berg and Friedrichshain. The street has had several names throughout its lengthy history that begins in medieval Berlin. Between 1810 and 1966 it was known as the Neue Königstraße, the new king’s street, and featured as one of the city’s most important residential and commercial streets. Its historical architecture was entirely destroyed during the Second World War – none of its original fabric exists today.
The street’s name was changed to Hans-Beimler-Straße with the redesign of the Alexanderplatz in the 1960s. Beimler was a parliament representative of the German Communist Party during the Weimar Republic. His story reads a little like a communist archetype. He was the son of a field labourer, trained to become a locksmith and served as a soldier during World War I. He continued to co-found the German Communist Party in 1919 and travelled to Moscow as a member of the first German Worker’s Delegation to the Soviet Union in 1925.
After the take over of National Socialism, Beimler secretly continued his work for the Communist cause. Not long after, he was arrested in 1933, tortured and sent to the concentration camp Dachau. He managed to escape shortly after his incarceration, reportedly killing an SS-Officer to steal his uniform. Via Munich he fled to Prague, where, in the same year, he published a pamphlet on Dachau, which is considered the first authentic report on the conditions within a National Socialist concentration camp. 1936 he travelled to Barcelona to support the Republic against the rise of fascism during the Spanish Civil War by founding the International Brigades. He became the political commissar the ‘Thälmann-Battallion’ of the XI. International Bridage. He was shot and died during the battle for Madrid in December 1936.
In November 1995, Hans-Beimler-Straße was renamed to Otto-Braun-Straße under urging of the Berlin Senate. Otto Braun was a member of the Social Democrats Party and was repeatedly elected president of the Free State of Prussia during the Weimar Republic. Occassionally titled the Red Czar of Prussia, Braun is known for defending republican values and pushing for social reforms that were largely dismantled under the Nazis. He was forced to flee into exile when Hitler came to power and almost faded from public memory until the 1970s, when his memory was reinvigorated through academic interest. Like Clara Zetkin, another figure expunged from Berlin’s named urban fabric, Beimler appears vilified for his political orientation as a communist, even though he was persecuted under National Socialism and contributed to resistance efforts beyond Germany’s borders.
