Leipziger Straße

Leipziger Strasse is a major thoroughfare in the central Mitte district of Berlin, capital of Germany. It runs from Leipziger Platz, an octagonal square adjacent to Potsdamer Platz in the west, to Spittelmarkt in the east. Part of the Bundesstraße 1 highway, it is today one of the city's main east-west road links.

Leipziger Straße has existed along this line since about the Baroque Friedrichstadt extension, laid out in 1688 at the behest of Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg. It was named after Leipzig Gate near Spittelmarkt, part of the Berlin Fortress which was finally slighted in 1738. In 1734 the road was extended up to the new Potsdam Gate, present-day Potsdamer Platz, one of the western entrances in what was then the Berlin Customs Wall.

Near the eastern end, Leipziger Strasse traversed Dönhoffplatz, named after Prussian general lieutenant Alexander von Dönhoff (1683–1742), where an obelisk marked the zero point of the mileage on the road to Potsdam. Prime minister Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822) had a city palais built here, which from 1848 served as seat of the Prussian Landtag. Around the corner a Concerthaus was erected in the 1860s, the concert hall of the Benjamin Bilse orchestra, predecessor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Next to it Oscar Tietz (1858-1923) opened his first department store in 1900, financed by his uncle Hermann Tietz (Hertie), starting the development of Leipziger Straße into a major shopping street.

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