Moabit

Moabit (German: [moaˈbiːt] ^ⓘ) is an inner city locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2022, about 84,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial and working-class neighbourhood is fully surrounded by three watercourses, which define its present-day border. Between 1945 and 1990, Moabit was part of the British sector of West Berlin and directly bordered East Berlin.

Until the administrative reform in 2001, Moabit was a part of the district of Tiergarten.

Colloquially, the name Moabit also refers to the Central Criminal Court (Strafgericht) and detention centre, which deals with all criminal cases in Berlin and is based in Moabit.

The origin of the name Moabit is disputed. According to one account, it can be traced back to the Huguenots, in the time of King Frederick William I of Prussia. These French refugees are said to have named their new residence in reference to the Biblical description of the Israelites in the country of Moab, where they stayed before being allowed to enter Canaan. Other possible origins include the German (Berlin dialect) "Moorjebiet" (swamp area).

In the 13th century the waste area along the road to Spandau known as Grosse Stadtheide ("great city heath") was a hunting ground of the electors of Brandenburg. Settlement began in 1685 with the erection of the Staakensetzerhaus at the western border of what is now Moabit. 1716 saw the formation of the colony of Old Moabit by the Huguenots, who were meant to cultivate white mulberry trees for silkworms, but failed because of the low soil quality.

In 1818 New Moabit was founded and grew together with Old Moabit to an industrial suburb district, which was incorporated into the city of Berlin in 1861. The industrialization started in 1820 when, with the financial support of court counsellor Baillif, a simple bridge was built to connect the island to the Berlin mainland. The bridge was followed by factories, a power plant, the Berlin-Spandau Canal, the Westhafen port and the Hamburger Bahnhof train station which connected Berlin with Hamburg. A network of streets was laid out in the Hobrecht-Plan in an area that came to be known architecturally as the Wilhelmine Ring. All of that activity resulted in an exponential growth of the population and the subsequent construction of tenements in Moabit and neighbouring Wedding, facilitating the spread of a smallpox epidemic.

In consequence, Berlin's city council, exhorted to do so by Rudolf Virchow, built a second hospital (after the Charité), the Krankenhaus Moabit in 1872. In the 1880s, Robert Koch worked here on the sterilization of surgical instruments and the isolation of the tuberculosis bacterium. A teaching hospital from 1920 on, the Krankenhaus Moabit employed notable physicians like the Nobel Laureate Werner Forssmann, Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner and the resistance fighter Georg Groscurth.

A first prison, the Zellengefängnis (Cell Prison) on Lehrter Strasse was built between 1842 and 1849 by order of King Frederick William IV of Prussia, according to the "separate system" of Pentonville Prison. In 1878 Max Hödel, who had shot at Emperor Wilhelm I of Germany, was beheaded here. Political activists like Karl Radek, Erich Mühsam, Werner Scholem and Musa Cälil were detained in Moabit. Wilhelm Voigt, the "Hauptmann von Köpenick", and the writer Wolfgang Borchert served their prison sentences in the prison.