Lichterfelde (Berlin)

Lichterfelde is a locality in the borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf in Berlin, Germany.

houses. The settlements and the historical villages of "Lichterfelde" and "Giesensdorf" where united in 1880 under the name of "Groß-Lichterfelde" (Greater-Lichterfelde).

Lichterfelde was chosen seat of the Prussian Main Military academy ("Hauptkadettenanstalt") in 1882 and became home to many famous German noble families that were linked to the Prussian Army.

In 1920 Lichterfelde became part of Greater Berlin. While from 1933 on the ground of the military academy in Lichterfelde was the home of the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, the Kreisauer Kreis resistance group around Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg and Helmuth James Graf von Moltke held its secret meetings in Wartenburg's apartement on "Hortensienstraße 50", Lichterfelde-West during the Third Reich. Generaloberst Ludwig Beck had his house on "Goethestraße 24" in Lichterfelde-Ost.

From 1945 to 1994 the "Hauptkadettenanstalt" was used as "Andrews Barracks" by the United States Army Berlin, today it belongs to the German Federal Archives ("Bundesarchiv") in Koblenz. Two other kasernes "Roosevelt Barracks" on "Gardeschützenweg" and "Mc Nair Barracks", a former Telefunken manufacturing plant on "Goerzallee" were nearby.

While Lichterfelde-Ost was in parts badly hit by World War II, Lichterfelde-West is still largely intact and today one of the prime residential areas of Berlin. The Lichterfelde locality also houses the Berlin Botanical Garden and the "Campus Benjamin Franklin", built in 1968 and today part of the Charité university hospital.