Friedenau

Friedenau is the smallest locality (Ortsteil) of the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district, covering only about 1.6 km². It is bounded roughly by the Ringbahn to the north, Laubacher Straße towards Wilmersdorf to the west, Bornstraße towards Steglitz to the south-west and Haupt- and Fregestraße towards Schöneberg to the east. About 30,000 people were registered here on 30 June 2026, which works out at roughly 18,000 residents per km², a higher density than in neighbouring Wilmersdorf or Schöneberg.

Friedenau was founded in 1871 as a planned suburban colony by the merchant Johann Anton Wilhelm von Carstenn. It was first conceived with villas on large plots, but quickly gained four- and five-storey apartment buildings; its population grew from about 1,100 in 1875 to 43,000 by 1912. The mix of early country houses and taller apartment buildings still shapes the streets today, and a preservation ordinance from 1986 protects the historic townscape. More than 185 buildings are listed monuments.

The locality has long attracted writers and artists: the district office names residents such as Günter Grass and Uwe Johnson, and Theodor Heuss, later the first Federal President, lived here in the Weimar years.

Friedenau is quiet, leafy and residential, with a strong sense of a small town inside the city. On 30 June 2026 about 19% of residents held a non-German citizenship (Berlin: about a quarter), and about 21% were 65 or older (Berlin: about 19%).

The street plan is distinctive:

• Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz, the historic centre, laid out in the manner of a village green (Anger).
• A horseshoe-shaped ring of streets (Stubenrauch- and Handjerystraße) linking smaller squares: Perelsplatz, Renée-Sintenis-Platz, Schillerplatz and the cemetery on Stubenrauchstraße.
• Breslauer Platz, where a market has been held several times a week since 1881, one of the oldest markets in Berlin.
• Rheinstraße and Hauptstraße, the main shopping street running diagonally through the locality, and Bundesallee, its north-south axis.

Local institutions include the town hall (Rathaus Friedenau, 1916), a bookshop trading since 1926 and a small theatre founded in 1973.

• U9 stops at Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz and Walther-Schreiber-Platz, with Bundesplatz on the Wilmersdorf border: north to Zoologischer Garten, Moabit and Wedding; south to Schloßstraße and Rathaus Steglitz.
• Innsbrucker Platz in the north-east combines the Ringbahn (S41/S42) and S46 with the U4 to Bayerischer Platz and Nollendorfplatz.
• Bundesplatz adds another Ringbahn stop on the north-western edge.
• S1 stops at Friedenau station, just across the eastern boundary, for direct trains to Potsdamer Platz and Friedrichstraße or south to Steglitz and Wannsee.

Everything in Friedenau is within walking distance, and the Schloßstraße shopping area in Steglitz is one or two U9 stops south.

Almost all housing is in historic apartment buildings and former villas from the founding decades up to the 1930s, many with original front gardens. Because the preservation ordinance protects buildings from before 1939 against demolition and major alterations, there is little room for new construction.

There is no official rent figure for Friedenau alone. As a citywide anchor, the IBB Housing Market Report 2025 found a median asking rent of €15.78 per m² net cold for flats advertised in Berlin in 2025. Check offers against the official rent index query (Mietspiegel 2026); the rent brake (Mietpreisbremse) has been extended in Berlin until the end of 2029.

Children under 15 make up about 12% of residents (Berlin: about 13%, 30 June 2026). Friedenau has no large park of its own, but its many squares, such as Perelsplatz, Renée-Sintenis-Platz and Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz, provide everyday green space. Larger parks are close by: Volkspark Wilmersdorf and the Rudolph-Wilde-Park to the north and the Natur-Park Südgelände to the south-east.

For childcare, search by address in the city's Kita-Navigator. Primary school places are normally allocated by registered address, as decided by the district school office.