Berlin
Berlin is the capital of Germany and its largest city, 3.5 million inhabitants (down from 4.5 million before World War II).
Colors: Landesfarben are white/red with a black upright Berlin Bear.
Geography
Berlin is located on the river Spree. It is situated in, but not part of, the Bundesland Brandenburg. Formerly it was a part of Mark Brandenburg, but since 1920 it has been a separate state.
Sights
- Tiergarten (Berlin's biggest park), Tegel, and Grunewald Forests.
- Kreuzberg , Insulaner
- Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church). The church was bombed out in World War II and its ruin has been preserved in the damaged state.
- Potsdamer Platz: the center of the new Berlin. It contains the Sony Center and the Daimler-Chrysler Quartier, both of which are outstanding examples of modern architecture. In the 1920s, this was the busiest spot in the whole of Europe, and during the Cold War it lay in the middle of the death strip. After that, it was Europe's biggest construction site. (Schaustelle) is now the place to go if you are into film. It has three cinemas with more than forty screens, a film academy and a film museum.
- Reichstag: The old and new seat of German parliament, rebuilt by Sir Norman Foster
- New Synagogue in the Oranienburger Strasse: built in the 1860s in Moorish style with a large golden dome.
Museums
- Museums Insel (museum island)
- German Technic Museum Berlin
Culture
After the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), many houses partially destroyed in World War II and not yet rebuilt were situated in the city center (formerly the western part of East Berlin). They became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture as well as many nightclubs, including the world-famous Tresor, which is one of the most important Techno clubs on earth. Berlin has a rich art scene, but it is increasingly coming under financial pressure, because rents have been increasing since the German government moved back to Berlin from Bonn.
Important Theaters
- Schaubühne
- Volksbühne
- Deutsches Theater
- Berliner Ensemble
Large Opera Houses
- Deutsche Oper
- Staatsoper Unter den Linden
- Komische Oper
Large Universities
- Freie Universität Berlin
- Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
- Technische Universität Berlin
Famous Streets, Avenues, Places
- Brandenburg Gate
- Unter den Linden
- Kurfürstendamm
- Strasse des 17ten Juni
- Potsdamer Platz
- Alexander Platz
- Nicolai Viertel
- Kennedy Platz
- Rathaus Schoeneberg
Domes, Churches
- Berliner Dom
- Franzoesische Dom
- Nicolai Kirche church
- Gedaechtnis Kirche
- St.Hedwigs Kathedrale
History
see also: History of Germany
Origin
Since ancient times, the area of Berlin contained small fishing and farm villages. Around 1200, two towns were founded on the banks of the river Spree: Cölln and Berlin. It is not known when exactly they received city rights; the first mention of those rights for Berlin is 1251 and for Cölln 1261. In 1307 the two trading cities decided to unite on political and security matters. Around 1400 Berlin and Cölln had 8,000 inhabitants.
Mark Brandenburg
In 1417 Friedrich_I_of_Brandenburg became Elector of Brandenburg. Until 1918 members of the Hohenzollern-family ruled Berlin, successively as Margraves of Brandenburg, Kings of Prussia, and Emperors of Germany. The Berlin people were not enthusiastic about this change. In 1447 they revolted unsuccessfully against the monarch, losing a lot of their political and economic liberties.
When Berlin became the residence of the Hohenzollerns, it had to give up Hanseatic League free city status. Its main economical activity changed from trade to the production of (luxurious) goods for the court. Population figures rose fast (12,000 inhabitants around 1600), leading to poverty. The Jews were the usual suspects: in 1510 100 Jews were accused of stealing and desecrating hosts. Thirty-eight of them were burned to death; others were banished, losing their possessions, only to be returned by later margraves.
In 1540 Joachim II introduced the Protestant Reformation in Brandenburg and confiscated church possessions, the secularization. He used the money to pay for his big projects, like the building of an avenue, the Kurfuersten Damm, between his hunting castle Grunewald and his palace, Stadtschloss Berlin.
The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) brought harsh consequences for Berlin: a third of the houses were damaged, the population halved. Friedrich Wilhelm I of Brandenburg (1640-1688), the Great Elector, started a policy of immigration and religious tolerance. In 1671, 50 Jewish families from Austria were offered a home. With the Edict of Potsdam (1685), he invited the French Calvinist Huguenots to Brandenburg. Around 15,000 French arrived, 6,000 of whom settled in Berlin. Around 1700, 20 percent of the inhabitants of Berlin were French and their cultural influence was important. Many people from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg also took refuge. Friedrich Wilhelm also built a standing army.
Kingdom of Prussia
In 1701 Friedrich III (1688-1701) crowned himself as Friedrich I (1701-1713), King in Prussia. (Not of Prussia, because he didn't possess all of Prussia). He was mostly interested in decorum: he ordered the building of the castle Charlottenburg in the west of the city. His son, Friedrich Wilhelm I (1713-1740), in contrast was a sparing man, who made Prussia an important military power. In 1709 Berlin counted 55,000 inhabitants, of whom 5,000 served in the army. In 1755 the figures were 100,000 and 26,000. Furthermore Friedrich Wilhelm built a wall around the city with 14 gates. One of them was the Brandenburg Gate (Brandenburger Tor), which achieved its present appearance at the end of the 18th century.
In 1740 Friedrich II, known as Frederick the Great (1740-1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosopher on the throne, a center of the Enlightenment, the city of Immanuel Kant and Moses Mendelssohn. Stagnation followed under the rule of Friedrich Wilhelm II. He was an adversary of the Enlightenment and practiced censorship and repression.
In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin. The Prussians realised that they were beaten, not only by the French, but also by their own backwardness. One of the consequences was that Berlin was granted self-government. In 1809 the first elections for the Berlin parliament took place, in which only the well-to-do could vote. In 1810 the Berlin University (nowadays the Humboldt University) was founded. Its first rector was the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. In 1812 Jews were allowed to practise all occupations.
The defeat of the French in 1814 meant an end to the reforms. But economically the city was in good shape. The population grew from 200,000 to 400,000 in the first half of the 19th century, making Berlin the fourth-largest city in Europe.
As in other European cities, 1848 was a revolutionary year in Berlin. Friedrich Wilhelm IV (1840-1861) managed to suppress the revolution. One of his reactions was to raise the income condition to partake in the elections, with the consequence was that only five percent of the citizens could vote. This system would stay in place until 1918.
In 1861, Wilhelm I (1861-1888) became the new king. In the beginning of his reign there was hope for liberalization. He appointed liberal ministers and built the city hall, Das Rote Rathaus. The appointment of Otto von Bismarck ended these hopes.
German Empire
Prussia was the dominant factor in the unification of Germany. When the German Empire was established in 1871, Wilhelm I became emperor, Bismarck chancellor, and Berlin the capital.
In the meantime, Berlin had become an industrial city with 800,000 inhabitants. Improvements of the infrastructure were needed; in 1896 the construction of the subway (U-Bahn) and city train (S-Bahn) began. The neighborhoods around the city center (including Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain and Wedding) were filled with tenement blocks.
The economic boom caused by the new function of Berlin was followed by a crisis in the second half of the 1870s.
In 1884 the building of the parliament building, the Reichstag, was started.
World War I led to hunger in Berlin. In the winter of 1916/1917 150,000 people were dependent on food aid. Strikes broke out. When the war ended, Wilhelm II (1888-1914) abdicated. The socialist Philipp Scheidemann and the communist Karl Liebknecht both proclaimed the republic. In the next months Berlin became a battleground between the two political systems.
Weimar Republic
In late December 1918, the German Communist Party (Kommunistische Partei Deutschland, KPD) was founded in Berlin. In January 1919, it tried to seize power (the Spartacist revolt). The coup failed and at the end of the month right-wing forces killed the communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. In March 1920, Wolfgang Kapp, founder of the right wing German Fatherland Party (Deutschen Vaterlands-Partei), tried to bring down the government. The Berlin garrison chose his side, and the government buildings were occupied (the government had already left Berlin). Only a general strike could stop this putsch. In 1922 the foreign minister Walter Rathenau was murdered in Berlin. The city was in shock: half a million people attended his funeral.
The economic situation was bad. Germany had to pay large sums of reparation money after the Treaty of Versailles, and the government reacted by printing so much money that inflation was enormous. Especially workers and pensioners were the victim of this policy. From 1924 onwards the situation became better because of newly arranged agreements with the allied forces, American help, and a sounder fiscal policy.
The heyday of Berlin began. It became the largest industrial city of the continent. People like the architect Walter Gropius, physicist Albert Einstein, painter George Grosz and writers Arnold Zweig, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Tucholsky made Berlin the cultural center of Europe. Night life was blooming.
In 1922 the S-Bahn was electrified, and a year later Tempelhof airport was opened. Berlin was the second inland harbour of the country. All this infrastructure was needed to transport and feed the over 4 million Berliners.
But not all was well. Even before the 1929 crash, 450 thousand people were unemployed. In the same year Hitler's Nazi Party won its first seats in the city parliament. On July 20, 1932, the Prussian government under Otto Braun in Berlin was ousted by a military coup. The republic was nearing its breakdown, under the influence of extreme forces from the right and the left. On January 30, 1933, Hitler became Chancellor, after doing away with the Social Democrats.
Berlin had never been a center of the national socialist movement, which had its roots in Bavaria. As the capital of the Weimar Republic, it constituted what the Nazis were fighting. But now it became the capital of the Third Reich.
On February 27 the Reichstag building was set on fire. The fire gave Hitler the opportunity to set aside the constitution.
Around 1933, some 160,000 Jews were living in Berlin, a third of all German Jews. They constituted four percent of the population. A third of them were poor immigrants from Eastern Europe, who lived mainly in Scheunenviertel near Alexanderplatz. The Jews were persecuted from the beginning of the Nazi regime. In March all the Jewish doctors had to leave the Charité hospital. A month later, Nazi officials ordered the German population not to buy at Jewish shops.
In 1936 the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin. They became a showcase for Nazi Germany. The 'forbidden for Jews' signs were removed.
Around 1939, there were still 75 thousand Jews living in Berlin. 50 thousand of them were deported to the concentration camps, where most were murdered. Over 1200 Jews survived in Berlin by being hidden.
Thirty kilometers northwest of Berlin, near Oranienburg, was Sachsenhausen, where mainly political opponents and Russian prisoners of war were incarcerated. Tens of thousands would die there. Sachsenhausen had subcamps near industries, where the prisoners had to work. Many of these camps were in Berlin.
In 1943, the Allied bombardment of Berlin started. On April 30, 1945 Hitler killed himself in the bunker underneath the Chancellery. On May 2, the city capitulated to the Soviet army.
The destruction was nearly 100% in parts of the inner city business and residential sectors. The outlying sections suffered relatively litle damage. This averages to a fifth of all buildings (50% in the inner city) for overall Berlin.
Divided city
During the Cold War of the 20th century Ost-Berlin, the east part of Berlin, was the capital of the German Democratic Republic, while Berlin (West), the western part of the city, was de jure still under Allied rule, but for most practical purposes a part of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
Blockade Luftbruecke
In June 1948, the Soviet government blockaded all surface traffic in and out of West Berlin, in the hope of gaining control of the entire city. The United States government responded with the Berlin Airlift, flying food, medicine, and other necessary supplies into the city until September 1949, although the blockade was lifted on May 12, 1949. As part of this project, US Army engineers expanded Tempelhof Airport.
In 1953, unarmed East Berliners walked to the Brandenburg Gate, and took down the Soviet Union red flag. Over 200 were gunned down by Soviet tanks.
On August 13, 1961 the communist East German government started to build the Berlin Wall, consolidating the division. According to most Westerners, the reason for it was to prevent East Germans from immigrating to the West, although the East German government called it the anti fascist protection wall.
When the first stone blocks were laid down at the Potsdamer Platz in the early hours of August 13, US troops stood ready with ammunition issued and watched the wall being built, stone by stone. US Military with Berlin police kept Berliners 300 meters away from the border. Congress did not want to interfere, but instead sent protest notes to Moscow. Massive demonstrations took place for a long time.
John F. Kennedy gave a speech about the Berlin Wall in which he said, "Ich bin ein Berliner" -- " I am a Berliner" -- which meant much to a city that was a democratic island in communist territory. Much of the Cold War was fought in Berlin, with espionage and counter-espionage.
Soviet nuclear weapons were set to hit "the West". American nuclear weapons were set to hit "the East". Both sides had their weapons set for a range that could hit Germany.
In 1968 and the following years, Berlin became one of the centers of the student revolt; in particular, the Kreuzberg district was the center of many riots.
Reunited
After the breakdown of Communism in Europe the city, like the whole country, was united in 1991 and soon became capital of all of Germany once again.
At the anniversary celebration of the communist GDR in East Berlin Mikhail Gorbachev attended. By him answering the East Berliners and East Germans directly it came as a lightning bolt. This time there would be no Soviet tanks rolling through Berlin.
Berlin is also the name of several places in the United States of America:
Berlin is also the name of a music group known mostly (only) for Take My Breath Away from the movie Top Gun.