Grunewald is a locality within the Berliner borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Famous for the homonymous forest, until 2001 administrative reform it was part of the former district of Wilmersdorf. The locality is situated in the western side of the city and is separated from Spandau by the river Havel. The Grunewald forest is 10 km away from Berlin. The name derives from the Grunewald hunting lodge of 1543, the oldest preserved castle in Berlin, which is, however, officially located on the grounds of the adjacent Dahlem locality. It was erected in an Early Renaissance style by order of Elector Joachim II Hector of Brandenburg and named Zum Gruenen Wald. A corduroy road leading from the Berlin Stadtschloss to the lodge was laid out, which later would be known as the Kurfürstendamm boulevard. Today, Grunewald is one of the most prestigious and expensive residential areas in Berlin.
The neighbourhood developed out of a so-called “mansion colony” at the western end of the Kurfürstendamm. Promoted by Otto von Bismarck the upper class of Berlin from 1880 on discovered Grunewald as an attractive site for living, which was incorporated into Greater Berlin in 1920. Today, the social structure of Grunewald is still influenced by these origins. The Rot-Weiss Tennis Club, home of the WTA Tour German Open, has been located in the district since 1897.
On June 24, 1922 Foreign Minister of Germany Walther Rathenau was assassinated by ultra-nationalist radicals of the Organisation Consul in a curve of the main street called Koenigsallee. A memorial stone marks the scene of the crime. Since 1981 the Grunewald district is the home of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study. It also houses the embassies of Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Kuwait, Laos, Luxembourg, the Republic of Macedonia, Poland, Serbia and Turkey. Within the Grunewald forest is the artificial Teufelsberg hill, once a listening station of the US National Security Agency. At the shore of the Havel the Grunewaldturm, built by Franz Heinrich Schwechten in 1898, offers panoramic views of the Havelland region.
Between October 1941 and February 1945 more than 50,000 Jews were deported by Nazis to extermination camps from the Grunewald freight railway station and murdered. Nowadays, memorials from the district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and the Deutsche Bahn (“Gleis 17”) commemorate this dark spot in Grunewald’s history. The area is accessible by the Berlin-Grunewald station.
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