Zehlendorf (Berlin) - Locale

Locale

Visitors can stop at the Dahlem Church, where the vicar, Pastor Martin Niemöller, served from 1931 through 1937. Niemöller's sermons against the Nazis led to his imprisonment and the publication of them in English during the war helped shape discussion of the nature of National Socialism in Christian circles.

Many walking trips are available in and around Zehlendorf. Popular destinations include the Grunewald trails north from the Onkel Toms Hütte U-Bahn station and neighborhood shopping center, the walk from Krumme Lanke U-Bahn station to the lake of the same name, and the cross-Zehlendorf walk from the end of the U-Bahn at Krumme Lanke to the S-Bahn station in the center of old Zehlendorf. Zehlendorf shopping center has undergone major changes with plenty of new construction centering around the S-Bahn station "Zehlendorf".

When American forces occupied Berlin and later were stationed in Berlin during the Cold War, Zehlendorf with the "Steuben Barracks", Dahlem and Lichterfelde were the areas where most of those forces were centered, including the Berlin Brigade stationed at the McNair Barracks. The U.S. Consulate is still located in Dahlem and one can usually see a line of German citizens waiting in line to enter the facility. Zehlendorf is also home to the John F. Kennedy School, an international school and one of the several campuses of the Free University of Berlin (FU), Berlin's largest university. For many years, broken by WW2, there was an annual school exchange between the gymnasium in Zehlendorf and Wallasey Grammar School in the UK.