Karl-Marx-Allee

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Karl-Marx-Allee

Aerial view of Karl-Marx-Allee with the twin towers of Frankfurter Tor in the background The western part of the boulevard is marked by panel buildings (1967)
Location within Berlin
Former name(s)	Full length: Frankfurter Straße (c. 1701–before 1786) Große Frankfurter Straße (before 1786–1872) Main part: Große Frankfurter Straße (1872–1950) Weberwiese to east end: Frankfurter Allee (1872–1950) Full length: Stalinallee (1950–1961)[1]
Part of	Bundesstraße 1 Bundesstraße 5
Namesake	Karl Marx
Type	Boulevard
Length	2.3 km (1.4 mi)[2]
Width	90 m (300 ft)[2][3]
Location	Berlin, Germany
Quarter	Mitte, Friedrichshain
Nearest metro station	Alexanderplatz Schillingstraße Strausberger Platz Weberwiese Frankfurter Tor
Coordinates	52°31′04″N 13°26′07″E / 52.51769°N 13.43525°E / 52.51769; 13.43525
West end	Alexanderstraße Alexanderplatz Otto-Braun-Straße [de]
Major junctions	Schillingstraße [de] Berolinastraße Strausberger Platz Lichtenberger Straße Andreasstraße Lebuser Straße Koppenstraße Straße der Pariser Kommune
East end	Frankfurter Tor Warschauer Straße Petersburger Straße [de] Frankfurter Allee

Karl-Marx-Allee (Karl Marx Avenue) is a boulevard built by the GDR between 1952 and 1960 in Berlin Friedrichshain and Mitte. Today the boulevard is named after Karl Marx. It should not be confused with the Karl-Marx-Straße in the Neukölln district of Berlin.

The boulevard was named Stalinallee between 1949 and 1961 (previously Große Frankfurter Straße), and was a flagship building project of East Germany's reconstruction programme after World War II. It was designed by the architects Hermann Henselmann, Hartmann, Hopp, Leucht, Paulick, and Souradny to contain spacious and luxurious apartments for workers, as well as shops, restaurants, cafés, a tourist hotel, and an enormous cinema, the Kino International.

The avenue, which is 90 metres (300 ft) wide^[2][3] and 2.3 kilometres (1.4 mi) long,^[2] is lined with monumental eight-story buildings designed in the wedding-cake style, the socialist classicism of the Soviet Union. At each end are dual towers at Frankfurter Tor and Strausberger Platz designed by Hermann Henselmann. The buildings differ in the revetments of the facades which contain often equally, traditional Berlin motifs by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Most of the buildings are covered by architectural ceramics.

By 1989 half the tiles on the outer facades of these buildings had fallen off,^[4] necessitating sheltering structures over the sidewalks in some places to protect pedestrians.^{[citation needed]}

A monumental Stalin statue presented to the East German government by a Komsomol delegation on the occasion of the Third World Festival of Youth and Students was formally dedicated on 3 August 1951 after being temporarily placed at a location on the newly designed and impressive boulevard. It remained there until 1961 when it was removed in a clandestine operation in the course of de-Stalinization.

On 17 June 1953 the Stalinallee became the focus of a worker uprising which endangered the young state's existence. Builders and construction workers demonstrated against the communist government, leading to a national uprising. The rebellion was crushed with Soviet tanks and troops, resulting in the deaths of 125 people. ^{[citation needed]}

Later the street was used for East Germany's annual May Day parade, featuring thousands of soldiers along with tanks and other military vehicles to showcase the power and the glory of the communist government.

De-Stalinization led to the renaming of the street, after the founder of Marxism, in late 1961. Since the collapse of Eastern European communism in 1989/1990, renaming the street back to its prewar name Große Frankfurter Straße has periodically been discussed, so far without conclusive results.

The boulevard later found favour with postmodernists, with Philip Johnson describing it as 'true city planning on the grand scale', while Aldo Rossi called it 'Europe's last great street.'^[5] Since German reunification most of the buildings, including the two towers, have been restored.