Lessing, Mendelsohn and the town houses on Nikolaikirchplatz

The picturesque view behind the St. Nicholas Church is without question one of our visual highlights. People usually stop here in front of the “Kaffeestube” and take photos down the street towards Eiergasse. On the left, facing Nikolaikirchplatz, stands the Nikolaikirche, Berlin’s oldest preserved church building, with its rustic fieldstone and brick walls. On the other side of the street there is an ensemble of town houses and in the middle you will find the traditional cobblestones.

What has been created here in the Nikolaiviertel is a row of reconstructed historic town houses, which is completed on the right by the “Kaffeestube im Nikolaiviertel” and on the left by the restaurant “Zum Paddenwirt”. What makes the ensemble a real and charming eye-catcher is the authentic, historical wealth of designs, as no two buildings are alike here. There are different widths and heights, some of the houses have three storeys, others four. Each of the façades, house entrances and wrought-iron handrails is designed differently, and the Paddenwirt building is also slightly offset to the side, creating a niche-like transition to the neighboring Lessinghaus.

Here, on the narrowest plot of land on Nikolaikirchplatz, once stood a 17th century house in which Gotthold Ephraim Lessing lived until 1755. Today, a plaque on the building commemorates the important poet and dramatist, although scholars disagree as to whether Lessing finished writing “Minna von Barnhelm” right here or a few minutes’ walk away, in his subsequent apartment at Am Königsgraben 10.

What is undisputed is that Lessing met Moses Mendelsohn, the important German-Jewish philosopher of the Enlightenment, here in the Nikolai Quarter. Mendelsohn, who was the same age, lived in an attic room at Propststrasse 3 at the time and the two men shared a lifelong friendship, which allegedly began in 1754 over a game of chess in the Nikolai Quarter.

So a stroll through the alleyways around Nikolaikirchplatz not only promises lots of beautiful photos, but is also a great idea for anyone who wants to follow in the footsteps of Lessing and Mendelsohn, two of the most important German-speaking pioneers of tolerance and enlightenment of the 18th century.