Oranienburger Straße is a street in central Berlin, the capital of Germany. It is located in the borough of Mitte, north of the River Spree, and runs south-east from Friedrichstraße to Hackescher Markt.
The street is popular with tourists and Berliners for its nightlife with numerous restaurants and bars. Formerly a centre of Jewish life in Berlin, the street contains the restored New Synagogue. Another tourist landmark is the Kunsthaus Tacheles, an alternative art center and night club. Locals tend to congregate in Monbijou Park or other areas of the city. Oranienburger Straße is also known for relatively prominent street prostitution, which is legal in Germany.
There are also two lesser known streets named "Oranienburger Straße" in Berlin, in Reinickendorf and in Lichtenrade.
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In the 19th and early 20th centuries this was the main Jewish area of Berlin. There are a number of memorials to the former Jewish residents of the area, including sites of former Jewish schools, orphanages, old people's homes and cemeteries. All these institutions were closed during the Nazi regime, and the great majority of the area's Jewish residents were deported to their deaths in extermination camps in occupied Poland.
The most notable building on Oranienburger Straße is the New Synagogue (Neue Synagoge), which at the time of its opening in 1866 was the largest synagogue in Berlin. The synagogue was saved from destruction by the Nazis on Kristallnacht in 1938 by the actions of Wilhelm Krützfeld, a local police officer. It was largely destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943, and most of the ruins were demolished in 1958 by the German Democratic Republic authorities. The restored front section of the synagogue was reopened in 1995 as a museum and Jewish community centre.
Oranienburgerstraße is home to one of Berlin's few ghost legends: The ghost wall ('Gespenstermauer'). According to the legend, one can sometimes see the spirits of two children dash into the street and disappear near Oranienburgerstraße 41 (just West of the bar 'X-terrain, and slightly East and across the street from Tacheles). The identity of the children is unknown, as is the time period in which they supposedly originate (the visions are small and vague and shadowy, apparently usually seen only quickly out of the corner of one's eye), but legend has it that the child spirits will do small favors in exchange for pennies. The procedure is to stick a penny in the crumbling mortar of the old wall near Oranienburgerstraße 41 and make a wish. If the wish is modest (e.g. one that two ghost children could do), and unselfish, then it will supposedly be granted. It is unclear when the legend started, but it was known at least prior to the 1990's, among former residents of East Berlin. An inspection of the wall shows that indeed there are many pennies (and other small denomination coins) pushed into the crumbling mortar. In some versions of the story popular in GDR times, the ghost children grant wishes in return for candy.