It’s just a normal street in Berlin….right?
Welcome to “Tromsöer Straße” in the Berlin district of Gesundbrunnen, which, up until the 11th of December 1940, used to go by the rather banal name of “Strasse 69c”.
But why was the street name changed in late 1940?
Well, the street was renamed to “Tromsöer Strasse” in honour of Germany’s occupation of Norway, which began in June 1940!
Incredibly, despite Germany losing the war in the end, the street was never renamed, and thus even today, 80 years on from the end of the German occupation of Norway, the street still bears the name of the Norwegian city of Tromsø.
To be fair, many streets in the area have Scandinavian names, and even the adjacent U Bahn station is called ‘Osloer Straße’, but those street names pre-date the war, thus ‘Tromsöer Strasse’ is the only street to have received a name change as a direct consequence of the war.
Ironically, many street names in Berlin have been renamed in recent years as a rejection of imperial Germany’s colonial past (such as when Lüderitzstrasse – named after the German colonialist Adolf Lüderitz – was changed to Cornelius-Friedricks Strasse, in honour of a Namibian anti-colonialist).
However, it seems that Tromsöer Strasse has somehow slipped through the net. After all, I would argue that invading and occupying Norway for 5 years is pretty ‘colonialist’…
But if that wasn’t enough history for one street, then check out the huge GSG building, which used to be an AEG factory. The factory was originally built between 1939 – 1941, and during the war, the AEG-Telefunken factory supplied tubes and electrical equipment for the telecommunications of the Wehrmacht.
Outside, on the pavement, you can still see the Mannesmann Luftschutz metal gates, which I strongly suspect to be covers for the ventilation shafts that would have provided air to underground air raid shelters.
It was commonplace for factories to have shelters in order to provide refuge for workers during Allied bombing raids. And during the battle of Berlin, these shelters often doubled up as safe places to hide whilst the fighting raged outside in the streets…