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Nights in Kreuzberg

The first person to receive the Iron Cross from the hands of the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III. was his wife Luise – posthumously and on her birthday. His beloved consort had confronted Napoleon and pleaded for the preservation of the Prussian state; she died with only 34 years. After her death she became almost a saint for her subjects.
The king himself drafted the design of the cross; with the elaboration of details he entrusted his court architect Schinkel.He placed the Iron Cross as a finial on top of a memorial for the war of liberation. Only the top of a Gothic, cast-iron cathedral peeps out of the hillock; the rest of the building seems to be hidden within the hill – a clever way to solve the problem of notorious lack of money. During the inauguration the hill was named “Kreuzberg” ( lit.: cross mountain); the surrounding part of Berlin was named accordingly.