Bersarinplatz is a square in Friedrichshain , Berlin .
35-576: On 4 April 1895 the square was named Baltenplatz , after the Balts . However, on 31 July 1947, after World War II , the square was renamed Bersarinplatz after Nikolai Berzarin , the Russian Red Army General and former Commander of Berlin. In the 19th century, the area under consideration here did not yet belong entirely to Berlin but was located on the Berlin Feldmark, on the border between
70-591: A group of Proto-Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the lower Vistula and southeast shore of the Baltic Sea and upper Daugava and Dnieper rivers, and which over time became differentiated into West and East Balts. In the fifth century CE, parts of the eastern Baltic coast began to be settled by the ancestors of the Western Balts, whereas the East Balts lived in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. In
105-643: A group of peoples inhabiting the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea who speak Baltic languages . Among the Baltic peoples are modern-day Lithuanians (including Samogitians ) and Latvians (including Latgalians ) — all East Balts — as well as the Old Prussians , Curonians , Sudovians , Skalvians , Yotvingians and Galindians — the West Balts — whose languages and cultures are now extinct. The Balts are descended from
140-500: A high frequency of the derived HERC2 allele which codes for light eye color and possess an increased frequency of the derived alleles for SLC45A2 and SLC24A5, coding for lighter skin color. Baltic hunter-gatherers still displayed a slightly larger amount of WHG ancestry than Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers (SHGs). WHG ancestry in the Baltic was particularly high among hunter-gatherers in Latvia and Lithuania. Unlike other parts of Europe,
175-541: A house directly on Baltenplatz that no longer exists, was uncovered in the years after 1990. They were members of the Saefkow-Jacob-Bästlein organization. The district council had two stumbling stones placed on the west side of the square - Petersburger Street on the corner of Weidenweg - in their memory. The air raids and battles at the end of the Second World War around Berlin's city center ultimately led to
210-595: A line on the Pomeranian coast eastward to include or nearly include the present-day sites of Berlin , Warsaw , Kyiv , and Kursk , northward through Moscow to the River Berzha, westward in an irregular line to the coast of the Gulf of Riga , north of Riga . However, other scholars such as Endre Bojt (1999) reject the presumption that there ever was such a thing as a clear, single "Baltic Urheimat ": 'The references to
245-745: A low yew hedge, delight passers-by together with 20 boulders on a gravel surface. 52°31′08″N 13°27′11″E / 52.519°N 13.453°E / 52.519; 13.453 Balts This is an accepted version of this page Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Balts or Baltic peoples ( Lithuanian : baltai , Latvian : balti ) are
280-473: A number of conservative or archaic features, perhaps because the areas in which they are spoken are geographically consolidated and have low rates of immigration. Some of the major authorities on Balts, such as Kazimieras Būga , Max Vasmer , Vladimir Toporov and Oleg Trubachyov , in conducting etymological studies of eastern European river names, were able to identify in certain regions names of specifically Baltic provenance, which most likely indicate where
315-687: A result of the Northern Crusades of the Middle Ages . Baltic peoples such as the Latvians , Lithuanians and Old Prussians had their distinct mythologies. The Lithuanians have close historic ties to Poland, and many of them are Roman Catholic . The Latvians have close historic ties to Northern Germany and Scandinavia , and many of them are irreligious. In recent times, the Baltic religion has been revived in Baltic neopaganism . The Balts are included in
350-630: The Corded Ware culture in the eastern Baltic in the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age is accompanied by a significant infusion of steppe ancestry and EEF ancestry into the eastern Baltic gene pool. In the aftermath of the Corded Ware expansion, local hunter-gatherer ancestry experienced a resurgence. Haplogroup N reached the eastern Baltic only in the Late Bronze Age, probably with the speakers of
385-524: The Galindae or Galindians towards the east, and later, East Balts towards the west. In the eighth century, Slavic tribes from the Volga regions appeared. By the 13th and 14th centuries, they reached the general area that the present-day Balts and Belarusians inhabit. Many other Eastern and Southern Balts either assimilated with other Balts, or Slavs in the fourth–seventh centuries and were gradually slavicized. In
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#1732906254866420-607: The "North European" gene cluster together with the Germanic peoples , some Slavic groups (the Poles and Northern Russians ) and Baltic Finnic peoples . Saag et a. (2017) detected that the eastern Baltic in the Mesolithic was inhabited primarily by Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHGs). Their paternal haplogroups were mostly types of I2a and R1b , while their maternal haplogroups were mostly types of U5 , U4 and U2 . These people carried
455-719: The 12th and 13th centuries, internal struggles and invasions by Ruthenians and Poles , and later the expansion of the Teutonic Order , resulted in an almost complete annihilation of the Galindians, Curonians, and Yotvingians. Gradually, Old Prussians became Germanized or Lithuanized between the 15th and 17th centuries, especially after the Reformation in Prussia . The cultures of the Lithuanians and Latgalians/Latvians survived and became
490-527: The 1990s and the district administration moved to new premises at Samariter street subway station. After the merging of districts, the office building now houses the Citizens' Office 2, the registration office 62 and the social welfare office of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district as well as the administration of the "Kindergarten City - Eigenbetrieb des Senats von Berlin". In 2006 , the buildings on
525-528: The Balts at various Urheimat locations across the centuries are often of doubtful authenticity, those concerning the Balts furthest to the West are the more trustworthy among them. (...) It is wise to group the particulars of Baltic history according to the interests that moved the pens of the authors of our sources.' The area of Baltic habitation shrank due to assimilation by other groups, and invasions. According to one of
560-579: The Balts lived in prehistoric times. According to Vladimir Toporov and Oleg Trubachyov , the eastern boundary of the Balts in the prehistoric times were the upper reaches of the Volga , Moskva , and Oka rivers, while the southern border was the Seym river . This information is summarized and synthesized by Marija Gimbutas in The Balts (1963) to obtain a likely proto-Baltic homeland. Its borders are approximately: from
595-554: The almost destruction of the buildings on Baltenplatz. Reconstruction work from the autumn of 1945 onward resulted in the area being cleared of rubble and leveled. The residents then used every free patch of earth to improve their food supply, for example by growing vegetables. After the fatal accident of Soviet Colonel General and first city commander of Berlin Nikolai Erastowitsch Bersarin, the city administration renamed Baltenplatz to Bersarinplatz on July 31, 1947 . At
630-663: The ancestors of the populations of the modern-day countries of Latvia and Lithuania . Old Prussian was closely related to the other extinct Western Baltic languages , Curonian , Galindian and Sudovian . It is more distantly related to the surviving Eastern Baltic languages , Lithuanian and Latvian . Compare the Prussian word seme ( zemē ), Latvian zeme , the Lithuanian žemė ( land in English). The Balts originally practiced Baltic religion . They were gradually Christianized as
665-529: The early 20th century, either "Latvian" or "Lithuanian" could be used to mean the entire language family. The Balts or Baltic peoples, defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages , a branch of the Indo-European language family, are descended from a group of Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the lower Vistula and southeast shore of the Baltic Sea and upper Daugava and Dnieper rivers. The Baltic languages, especially Lithuanian, retain
700-539: The first millennium CE, large migrations of the Balts occurred. By the 13th and 14th centuries, the East Balts shrank to the general area that the present-day Balts and Belarusians inhabit. Baltic languages belong to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages . One of the features of Baltic languages is the number of conservative or archaic features retained. Medieval German chronicler Adam of Bremen in
735-475: The former commercial premises have been re-let. There are restaurants, an optician, a bank branch and other service providers around the square. As the district lacked the funds to plant the square, it launched a fundraising campaign together with the Berliner Zeitung in 1995 to redesign the 4,000 m green space in the middle of Bersarinplatz, which also included the installation of small art objects. A lawn
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#1732906254866770-462: The hunter-gatherers of the eastern Baltic do not appear to have mixed much with Early European Farmers (EEFs) arriving from Anatolia . During the Neolithic , increasing admixture from Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (EHGs) is detected. The paternal haplogroups of EHGs was mostly types of R1a , while their maternal haplogroups appears to have been almost exclusively types of U5, U4, and U2. The rise of
805-570: The hypothesised Dniepr Balts , were living in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Germanic peoples lived to the west of the Baltic homelands; by the first century AD, the Goths had stabilized their kingdom from the mouth of the Vistula, south to Dacia . As Roman domination collapsed in the first half of the first millennium CE in Northern and Eastern Europe, large migrations of the Balts occurred — first,
840-472: The idea of erecting a monument to the recently deceased Reich President Friedrich Ebert on the square. Due to political differences of opinion with the district officials, most of whom belonged to the KPD, this project was not realized. Just two years later, however, another object by a sculptor was to dominate the square. Hugo Lederer had been commissioned to design a fertility fountain in 1927 . The commissioned work
875-429: The latter part of the 11th century AD was the first writer to use the term "Baltic" in reference to the sea of that name . Before him various ancient places names, such as Balcia, were used in reference to a supposed island in the Baltic Sea. Adam, a speaker of German, connected Balt- with belt , a word with which he was familiar. In Germanic languages there was some form of the toponym East Sea until after about
910-516: The municipality of Lichtenberg and the property of the city of Berlin, known as the Magistrat. In 1862 , James Hobrecht developed the first development plan for the future expansion of Berlin. He gave the square on the eastern city boundary the working name Platz N in Division XIII, Section 2. This plan was revised again in 1882 and now took into account existing buildings on this site. These were, on
945-541: The one hand, the bone mill and glue factory of Rentier Schulz and, on the other, a residential building belonging to J. G. Möses, who operated a Dutch windmill nearby on Lichtenberg land. The property of the bone mill was bought by the Actien-Gesellschaft für den Bau landwirtschaftlicher Maschinen und Geräthe für Wagenfabrikation, which had emerged from Heinrich Ferdinand Eckert's factory for agricultural machinery and iron foundry. In 1925, Berlin city planners developed
980-467: The piping system would have been far too expensive; the estimated cost was 120,000 Reichsmark. As a result, the completed colossal structure was finally moved to Arnswalder Platz in 1934 , where it still stands today. In the time of National socialists, bumerous people from the residential area around Baltenplatz were also taken away for deportation. As part of the "Stolpersteine" campaign, the fate of Gustav and Hermann Wegener (father and son), who lived in
1015-482: The same time, Petersburger Street was given the name Bersarin street. In 1964, the Friedrichshain Town Hall was added as the first new building on the south-western corner of the square. This purely functional building served as the administrative headquarters of the former Friedrichshain district until reunification. A memorial plaque to Nikolai Bersarin, who was made an honorary citizen of Berlin that year,
1050-414: The square were renovated and the facades were given thermal insulation and a uniform coat of paint. The plaster surfaces of the corner buildings on Bersarinplatz were decorated with colorful gecko silhouettes by the new owners. In front of the building on the north-western edge, a wall drawing refers to the marketing name Geckohaus, which the property owners gave to the renovated prefabricated building. All of
1085-661: The theories which has gained considerable traction over the years, one of the western Baltic tribes, the Galindians , Galindae, or Goliad, migrated to the area around modern-day Moscow, Russia around the fourth century AD. Over time the Balts became differentiated into West and East Balts. In the fifth century AD parts of the eastern Baltic coast began to be settled by the ancestors of the Western Balts: Brus/Prūsa ("Old Prussians"), Sudovians / Jotvingians , Scalvians , Nadruvians , and Curonians . The East Balts, including
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1120-677: The year 1600, when maps in English began to label it as the Baltic Sea. By 1840, German nobles of the Governorate of Livonia adopted the term "Balts" to distinguish themselves from Germans of Germany. They spoke an exclusive dialect, Baltic German, which was regarded by many as the language of the Balts until 1919. In 1845, Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann proposed a distinct language group for Latvian , Lithuanian , and Old Prussian , which he termed Baltic . The term became prevalent after Latvia and Lithuania gained independence in 1918. Up until
1155-447: Was completed in 1932 and was given the names Ochsenbrunnen or Stierbrunnen because of its impressive figures. Lederer's inspiration for the motifs came from the nearby central cattle yard. This fountain and all its parts weighed around twelve tons. Now the construction experts realized that Baltenplatz was not suitable for the installation due to its construction method with its underground cast-iron gas, water and sewage pipes. And re-laying
1190-448: Was created, which is bordered by yew hedges and rose bushes towards the street. The green area was enlarged to a diameter of between 60 and 85 meters by removing the footpath in front of the hedge. In 2006, landscape planner Marc-Rajan Köppler designed a 500 m gravel garden in the center of the square voluntarily with financial support from the district. Around 1800 low-maintenance plants such as summer lilacs, yarrow and asters, surrounded by
1225-415: Was placed next to the main entrance in 1975 . The bronze plaque with a portrait of Bersarin was created by the sculptor Fritz-Georg Schulz. Some years after the reunification of Germany , Around 1995, the renaming or renaming of Bersarinplatz was the subject of much controversy. However, unlike Bersarin street, which was renamed Petersburger street, the square kept its name. The town hall was abandoned in
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