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Meeting point flower bed

Berlin has many rose gardens, including one in Friedrichshain, between Friedensstraße and Frankfurter Tor. Originally, a cinema was to be built here, but when the plan was abandoned in the spring of 1953 for somewhat unclear reasons, flowerbeds were laid out in a small park instead. At around the same time, the increase in work quotas hit Eastern Germany like a bolt from the blue, as there were no plans to adjust wages for employees.

The fact that quiet protests and petitions to the prime minister had no effect became clear on 15 June, when wages were paid. The Berlin construction workers, already affected by work stoppages and wage cuts due to material shortages and poor organisation, went on strike the following day at the Friedrichshain hospital construction site. When word spread that the strikers were being detained there, colleagues gathered in solidarity behind the newly laid out park and marched in protest to the House of Ministries on Leipziger Strasse. This was the prelude to what would later go down in history as the popular uprising of 17 June. A commemorative plaque on a small wall in the rose garden on Karl-Marx-Allee serves as a reminder.