Kaufhaus des Westens — “Department Store of the West” — opened in 1907 and grew into continental Europe’s largest department store: 60,000 m², eight floors. The name became literal after 1961: for West Berlin, a walled island inside the DDR, KaDeWe was the glittering proof that the island lifestyle worked. Every subsidised West Berliner luxury the East couldn’t have was stacked here eight storeys high, twenty minutes’ walk from the death strip.
When the Wall opened, East Berliners with their 100 Deutschmarks of “welcome money” streamed across the city — and famously, one of the first places they went was KaDeWe, just to look. News footage from those days shows crowds simply standing in the food halls, staring. The sixth-floor Feinschmecker-Etage — the legendary gourmet floor with its oyster bars and a wall of chocolates — is still the show-stopper. Go hungry, leave broke.
The station in front (1913) is a listed jewel with its original wooden ticket hall. By the exit, note the dark memorial board listing concentration camps — “Places of terror that we should never forget” — placed where West Berlin’s shopping mile begins. Very Berlin: glamour and memory on the same square.