When Berlin was separated into East and West Berlin, the Kurfürstendamm became the leading commercial street in West Berlin. It starts near Bahnhof Zoo (that used to be a major railway station, before the Lehrter Bahnhof was opened which is now the Berliner Hauptbahnhof (Central Train Station)) at the Zoologischer Garten, near the ruins of the KaiserWilhelm
Memorial Church, and runs through Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.
THE KU` DAM WEST BERLIN
The avenue with four lines of plane trees runs for 3.5 km (2 mi) through the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf borough in western Berlin. It branches off from the Breitscheidplatz near Bahnhof Zoo and the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and leads southwestward through the Charlottenburg district. At the junction with Joachimstaler Straße it passes the Café Kranzler, successor of the Café des Westens, a famous venue for artists and bohémiens of the pre-World-War-I era.
Near Uhlandstraße U-Bahn station is the Kempinski hotel as well as the Theater am Kurfürstendamm at the site of a former exhibition hall of the Berlin Secession art association.
At Adenauerplatz the boulevard reaches the district of Wilmersdorf, where it passes the Schaubühne theatre on Lehniner Platz. The more sober western or "upper" end of the Kurfürstendamm is marked by the Berlin-Halensee railway station on the Ringbahn line and the junction with the Bundesautobahn 100 (Stadtring) at the Rathenauplatz roundabout, featuring the long disputed 1987 "Beton Cadillacs" sculpture by Wolf Vostell.
After German reunification the Kurfürstendamm rivaled with central places like Potsdamer Platz, Friedrichstraße or Alexanderplatz, which led to the closing of numerous cafés and cinemas. It retained the character of a flâneur and upscale shopping street as the western continuation of the Tauentzienstraße with its large department stores.
EUROPA CENTER
Especially during the "Golden Twenties" the Kurfürstendamm area of the "New West" was a centre of leisure and nightlife in Berlin, an era that ended with the Great Depression and the Nazi Machtergreifung in 1933. The shops and businesses owned by Jewish tradespeople became the target of several pogroms, culminating in the "Reichskristallnacht" of November 9, 1938. In World War II the boulevard suffered severe damages from air raids and the Battle of Berlin.
Nevertheless after the war rebuilding started quickly and when Berlin was separated into East and West Berlin, the Kurfürstendamm became the leading commercial street of West Berlin in its Wirtschaftswunder days. It was therefore the site of protests and major demonstrations of the German student movement, while on April 11, 1968 spokesman Rudi Dutschke leaving the office of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund on Kurfürstendamm No. 140 was shot in the head.
