Map - Oberschöneweide

Oberschöneweide (, literally Upper Schöneweide) is a German locality (Ortsteil) within the Berlin borough (Bezirk) of Treptow-Köpenick. It is, with Niederschöneweide (Lower Schöneweide), part of the geographic area of Schöneweide. Until 2001 it was part of the former borough of Köpenick.

First mentioned in 1598 as Schöne Weyde, it became an industrial town at the end of the 19th century. In 1920 it merged into Berlin as a result of the Greater Berlin Act.

The Berlin territorial reform, in effect from 1 April 1938, also affected the districts of Treptow and Köpenick. The districts of Oberschöneweide and Wuhlheide were removed from the Treptow district and incorporated into the Köpenick district.

In the Nazi era, Oberschöneweide developed into a stronghold of resistance against National Socialism, which despite constant arrests and death sentences could not be broken. The resistance cells were most numerous from 1942-1944. The factories in Oberschoeneweide remained the foundation of the illegal Berlin KPD headquarters.

The mass recalls from 1941 resulted in a lack of staff in the factories. In order to maintain production, more forced laborers from all over Europe were employed. Several barracks camps were built for forced laborers in Wuhlheide. Located here was also the Gestapo subordinate Berlin work education camp of the same name. More than 6,000 foreign forced laborers worked in Kabelwerk Oberspree and other factories located in the AEG factory complex, as well as female inmates at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from 1944-1945.

In the Allied air raids on 21 June and 6 August 1944, Oberschöneweide endured heavy carpet bombing, while the Kabelwerk Wilhelminenhof was heavily damaged. The attack of 26 February 1945 greeted Oberschöneweide once again in its entirety. Among the casualties were many foreign forced laborers.

On 16 April 1945, during the Battle of Berlin (one of the last battles of World War II in Europe), the retreating German forces tried to stop the Red Army at the Kaisersteg and Treskowbrücke bridges. On April 24 the area fell into the hands of the Soviet 8th Guards Army.

With the administrative division of Greater Berlin by the victorious Allied powers, Oberschöneweide fell with the other districts of the district of Köpenick under Soviet control. As with everywhere else in the Soviet occupation zone, all intact means of production were dismantled and brought to the Soviet administration in Oberschöneweide. This followed the expropriation of the industrial enterprises; they were later converted into state-owned enterprises.

The Queen Elisabeth Hospital served Soviet troops as a military hospital from October 1945 and remained in that capacity until the complete withdrawal of Soviet/Russian troops from Germany in 1994.

In the 1950s, the Nalepastraße radio house was built. Here, all the radio programs of the GDR were produced centrally by the GDR radio service.