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(Why) are there many Russians in Berlin Mitte?
I know I'm over generalizing here, but I feel like this is a pattern I've come across since moving here. If someone could give me a history lesson on the following questions I'd greatly appreciate it.
1) are there a lot of Russians living or working around Friedrichstraße/Mitte? 2) if yes, what's the historical background? Does this have to do anything with the October revolution and Russians for Educated backgrounds fleeing to Berlin?
Thanks!
there's also a wave from the 90s and early 2000s that people forget about. after the soviet union collapsed a lot of russian-speaking jews and their families moved to berlin under the contingent refugee program, and a good chunk of them settled in the west, especially around charlottenburg and wilmersdorf, but also into mitte. the educated accent thing makes sense too, a lot of them were academics or professionals back home who retrained here
if you walk down friedrichstraße toward oranienburger straße you'll still see a bunch of russian bookshops and cafes from that era, though they're shrinking now. the october revolution wave is real but that's more the older intellectual exiles, your pharmacy workers are probably from the 90s migration
the 1920s wave is real but honestly the bigger reason is the 1990s. after the soviet union collapsed, germany had this program for jewish migrants from the former ussr, and a ton of them settled in berlin. mitte was cheap then, friedrichstraße had empty storefronts, so a lot of those families opened shops or got jobs in retail around there. their kids grew up bilingual and educated, that's why you hear perfect german with a slight accent. the area around oranienburger straße still has a lot of russian bookstores and cafes too if you want to see the older layer
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What is the correct spelling for a street name that appears differently on multiple signs in Charlottenburg?
Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.
if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point
honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.