Tiefwerder encompasses both a village and a Werder along the Havel River in the Berlin district of Spandau. While the village of Tiefwerder, along with the neighboring southern port of Spandau, falls under the jurisdiction of the district of Spandau, the surrounding forested areas, meadows, and water areas of the Werder are administratively part of the district of Wilhelmstadt.
An early Slavic settlement existed at Faulen See until the 13th century. The village of Tiefwerder was established as a colonist village in 1815. It was during this time that descendants of the Spandau Kietz fishermen were resettled on the Werder. Today, a significant portion of the historic houses lining the village street has been preserved and is recognized as the entire ensemble of the colonist settlement Tiefwerder. The building at Dorfstraße 5 from 1895, which has been home to the Ballhaus Spandau since the 1920s, is also a listed building. The Tiefwerder waterworks, built in 1914, supplied drinking water to six Berlin districts.
To the south and east, the village of Tiefwerder is bordered by the Tiefwerder Wiesen landscape conservation area. This area, intersected by ancient arms of the Havel River, is Berlin's last preserved natural floodplain and a spawning ground for pike. It has wet meadows, remnants of floodplain forests, and reed beds with natural land-water transitions. Due to the numerous watercourses and settlements along the ditches, Tiefwerder is also known as the "Little Venice of Spandau".
Geography Location and definition Tiefwerder
Tiefwerder originally began as a field name, with its earliest documented reference dating back to 1674/1675, noted as aufm Tiefwerder. The addition of 'Tief' to the field name 'Werder' served to distinguish it from the neighboring Pichelswerder to the south, which features an elevated eastern side as an extension of the Teltow plateau. This field name eventually became associated with the village founded in 1816.
The entirety of Tiefwerder stretches between the Havel River and the Havelchaussee, with somewhat unclear northern and southern boundaries. Tiefwerder, a part of Spandau, encompasses both the historic village center and its later buildings. This area lies between Spandau's Südhafen, an old Havel River arm created through river straightening, and the Kleinen and Großer Jürgengraben waterways. On occasion, the southern harbor of Spandau is considered part of the village. While the town originally extended northward to the Tiefwerderbrücke bridge, today, some areas further north, including those up to the Stresow, are occasionally included.
With the overall designation Tiefwerder, the lowland areas of the Werder belonging to Wilhelmstadt are added. These areas include the now-filled-in Freiheitswiesen (freedom meadows) to the northeast of the village, the region surrounding the Faulen See (lazy lake), and the island located south of the village between Tiefwerder and Pichelswerder, which is not represented on the accompanying map from 1894. Presently, this island serves as the last remaining floodplain and the heart of the Tiefwerder Wiesen landscape conservation area. A footbridge over the Kleiner Jürgengraben connects the central meadow area to the village.
Mapping as "Lebensweltlich orientierter Raum" (LOR) In 2006, the planning departments of the Senate, the districts, and the Amtes für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg (Berlin-Brandenburg Office of Statistics) agreed on the so-called "Lebensweltlich orientierte Räume" (LOR). These spaces were developed based on the social areas previously defined by the youth welfare department. The concept of LOR was officially adopted on 1 August 2006 through a Senate resolution, marking a new spatial framework for planning, forecasting, and monitoring demographic and social developments in Berlin. In their 2008 mapping efforts, the Office for Statistics took a comprehensive approach when defining the Tiefwerder living space (area 27 in Spandau). This broader definition encompassed not only the village and the Werder but also extended to the entire northern area, reaching up to the Ruhlebener Straße/Charlottenburger Chaussee street line within the Tiefwerder living space. The LOR concept serves as an innovative spatial framework, facilitating the planning, forecasting, and monitoring of demographic and social developments in Berlin.
This article describes Tiefwerder in the boundary of the LOR system excluding the northwest corner located between the Havel River and Ruhlebener Straße, since this corner belongs to the historical and present-day Stresow area. The northeast corner in the area of Elsgrabenweg/Ruhlebener Straße/Teltower Straße is included in this article, according to the LOR mapping, even though it was part of the historical estate district of Grunewald-Forst or, from 1914, of the estate district of Heerstraße in the district of Teltow, while Tiefwerder belonged to the district of Osthavelland. The inclusion of this area in the article is because it became part of Spandau in 1920 during the formation of Greater Berlin and currently falls administratively under the district of Wilhelmstadt. Therefore, this article outlines Tiefwerder within the following boundaries:
Western border: Havel Northern boundary: Schoolenburgstraße /Charlottenburger Chaussee street Eastern boundary: S-Bahn wall of the Spandau suburban railway (largely parallel to Havelchaussee ) Southern boundary: lowland area south of the Kleiner Jürgengraben.
In the east, the Spandauer Vorortbahn forms the boundary to the district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, while the historic town of Spandau is situated approximately 1.8 kilometers to the northwest. The central area of Tiefwerder, centered around the old village core, is primarily accessible from the north, with Dorfstraße being the sole street serving this region.
Geomorphology and natural environment
Tiefwerder Wiesen The biotope and landscape function of the Tiefwerder Wiesen landscape conservation area, also known as the Hechtlaichwiesen, depends crucially on their flood dynamics. Changes like the reduction of Spree tributaries in Lusatia or the deepening of the Havel River have caused a decline in the Havel water level since 1990. This alteration has resulted in a significant deterioration of these dynamics, limiting access to spawning meadows for pike only in certain years.Landschaftsschutzgebiet Tiefwerder Wiesen. In: Senatsverwaltung The future of flood dynamics is further jeopardized by the 'German Unity' transport project 17 (VDE No. 17), which is anticipated to further decrease water levels. If the project proceeds, the state of Berlin intends to mitigate this impact by artificially irrigating the Tiefwerder Wiesen with Havel water and constructing fish ladders as a compensatory measure. Since 2007, the state of Berlin has been exploring the possibility of extending the protected status to that of a nature reserve.
History
Early Slavic settlement at Faulen See
On the eastern shore of the silting-up Faulen See, a remnant of an old arm of the Havel River, there existed an early Slavic settlement until the first half of the 13th century. Archaeological findings from 1962, particularly vessel fragments of the Prague type identified by Adriaan von Müller, suggest a settlement dating back to the 6th to 8th centuries. If one prioritize the 6th-century dating, the village would have been established during the initial Slavic settlement wave into the Havelland, making it older than the central Slavic settlement chamber of the Spandau area on the Havel Island beneath the Burgwall.Winfried Schich: Die Entstehung der mittelalterlichen Stadt Spandau. In: Slawenburg, Landesfestung, Industriezentrum. Untersuchungen …, pp. 90.Eberhard Bohm: Die letzten 150 Jahre des hevellischen Alt-Spandau. In: Slawenburg, Landesfestung, Industriezentrum. Untersuchungen … pp. 25.
Eberhard Bohm: Die Frühgeschichte des Berliner Raums. In: Geschichte Berlins …, pp. 62 mit Anm. 29, pp. 86.
The settlement was situated at the present location of the Tiefwerder waterworks. The Faule See was known as Wirchen-See until the 19th century, and Winfried Schich speculates that the lake's name is linked to the village name. Like the village Ferch near Potsdam, the name might be etymologically derived from the Slavic "verch/virch," meaning height or elevation, referring here to the neighboring Teltow slopes. As late as 1704, Spandau's hereditary register records Wirchow as a field name: "[...] biß hinter Pichelstorff a die Scharpelancke und Wirchow" (Scharpelancke = Scharfe Lanke).Erbregister des Amtes Spandau aus dem Jahr 1704. Rep. 2, 1. Dom.Reg. Amt Sp. Fach 4 Nr. 2, fol. 47. Angabe aus: Gerhard Schlimpert: Brandenburgisches Namenbuch, Teil 3, Die Ortsnamen des Teltow, Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., Weimar 1972, pp. 238, Anm. 259; pp. 341. (Schlimpert interpretiert Wirchow allerdings als („möglicherweise“) alten Namen des Pichelsdorfer Berges.) Likely, the same name is also concealed in Jürgengraben, which was still called Würgengraben in the 19th century.
Fishing village 1816
Resettlement of the Spandau Kietzers to Tiefwerder
After the founding of the Mark Brandenburg by the Ascanian Albrecht the Bear in 1157 and the medieval eastern settlement that began thereafter, the Slavic population of the Spandau area was largely assimilated by German immigrants. However, a service settlement near the Spandau castle remained occupied by Slavic Kietzers. The Wends uff dem Kytze doselbst vor Spanndow had 25 houses in 1375 and possessed extensive fishing rights on the Havel and the Spree, but no civil rights.Winfried Schich: Die Entstehung der mittelalterlichen Stadt Spandau. In: Slawenburg, Landesfestung, Industriezentrum. Untersuchungen …, pp. 86f, 118. Eight days a year they had to perform court service at the castle. During the expansion of the citadel, the Kietz was abandoned in 1559 and the Kietzers were relocated to the Burgwall. In 1813, during the siege of Spandau by Russian troops in the Wars of liberation, the French division general and governor Bruny had the suburbs cleared and burned down, including the dwellings of the descendants of the Kietzers on the Burgwall.Felix Escher: Spandau im Schatten der Festung. In: Slawenburg, Landesfestung, Industriezentrum. Untersuchungen …, pp. 169, 173, 204. The former Kietzers had to be resettled again and came to Tiefwerder as colonists (from the city of Spandau to Brandenburg).Wolfgang Ribbe: Spandau im Zeitalter der Industrialisierung. In: Slawenburg, Landesfestung, Industriezentrum. Untersuchungen … pp. 250. The evening edition of the Berliner Tageblatt reported somewhat differently on 3 March 1916, under the headline Hundertjahrfeier in Tiefwerder:
The village of Tiefwerder was founded in the year 1816. For much of its history, the primary occupation of its residents remained predominantly fishing. In the 2000s, the Tiefwerder-Pichelsdorf Fishermen’s Association emerged as one of the most influential fishing organizations in the region, overseeing 1682 hectares of fishing waters in the state of Berlin and 3847 hectares in the state of Brandenburg.
Monuments on the Tiefwerder
Fifteen colonist houses on Dorfstraße have been preserved and are listed as part of the entire ensemble known as Kolonistensiedlung Tiefwerder (settlement and village complex). A pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) located at the end of Dorfstraße, on the embankment of Kleiner Jürgengraben, has been designated as a natural monument. This approximately 200-year-old tree stands at a height of 15 to 20 meters, boasts a crown diameter of about 20 meters, and possesses a trunk circumference ranging from 2.50 to 3 meters.