Berlin

PRINTEMAILSAVETEXT

City and state, NE Germany coextensive with and the capital of Berlin Land, one of the 16 states of Germany, as well as the seat of the German federal government. The city-state covers an area of 891 sq km (344 sq mi) and is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg on the flatlands of the North German Plain. The city's name probably comes from a word for island; its slight elevation made it a site for human settlement even in prehistoric times.

Located on the Spree and Havel rivers, the city of Berlin was the capital of Prussia until 1945 and the capital of Germany between 1871 and 1945 and again following the reunification of Germany on Oct. 3, 1990. Between 1949 and 1990 it was divided into East Berlin and West Berlin. Bonn the former capital of West Germany, fulfilled the role of national capital from June 1991 to April 1999, the official date of inauguration of Berlin as the seat of the federal government.

In the early 2000s, people from more than 180 countries were living and working here. The foreign population was estimated at more than 430,000, of whom about one-third came from Turkey and another third from Central and Eastern Europe. Pop. (2007 est.) 3,404,037. The whole Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan area has a population of about 5 million.

Economy and Government

In the decades following World War II the economy of East Berlin was totally integrated with that of East Germany and also benefited from a steady stream of visitors from West Berlin and West Germany. It was the hub of East Germany's commercial, financial, and transportation systems, and, although it comprised less than one-half of the old unified city, it was also a huge manufacturing center. Among the main manufactures were steel and rubber goods, electrical and transportation equipment, chemicals, and processed food.

Much of West Berlin's industrial capacity was destroyed in World War II, and its economy suffered again in 1948-49, when the Soviet Union blockaded the area in an attempt to drive out the Western powers. Beginning in the 1950s, however, West Berlin's economy was rejuvenated, as West Germany and the U.S. provided much assistance. The city soon became an important manufacturing center, producing electric and electronic equipment and substantial quantities of machinery, metal, textiles, clothing, chemicals, printed materials, and processed food. The city also developed as a center for international finance and for the important West German film industry.

Renovation and Reconstruction

During the 1990s, as Berlin reclaimed its place among the great European capitals, construction and renovation projects transformed the city's skyline and infrastructure at a cost of more than $120 billion. Today, public and private services (especially financial services), commerce, and transportation together account for two-thirds of the city's economy; manufacturing provides the remainder. The major industries are food and tobacco processing; office machinery, data-processing equipment, and other engineering products; paper processing, publishing, and printing; chemicals; and motor vehicles. High-technology enterprises, including bioengineering, environmental engineering, and telecommunications, have also been encouraged.

Berlin's transportation network has been renovated and expanded in recent years. Buses, streetcars, and surface and underground railways together carried more than 1.2 billion passengers annually in the late 1990s. When completed, a rail modernization program will provide Berlin with eight main stations, creating a single interconnected system of long-distance, regional, and local services. Also planned are a high-speed rail link from Berlin to Verona, Italy, via Leipzig and Munich; and a "Transrapid" magnetic-levitation rail line from Berlin to Hamburg. A plan to consolidate the city's air services by 2007 calls for the closure of Tempelhof and Tegel airports and the construction of a huge new terminal, Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport, on the site of the current Schönefeld facility.

Federal and Local Government

The Bundestag, or lower house, of the federal parliament, meets in the Reichstag building (1884-94). The Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, or federal council, meets in the Preussisches Herrenhaus (1904), the former home of the upper chamber of the Prussian parliament. The official residence of the federal president is in Bellevue Palace (1787), and the Federal Chancellery was built (1995-2001) to serve as the official residence of Germany's chancellor. Most federal ministries and foreign embassies have their headquarters in Berlin.

Berlin is divided into 23 districts, each with its own elected assembly. The House of Representatives has 150 elected members who serve 4-year terms and choose the governing mayor, who combines the executive functions of mayor of the city and governor of the state. The governing mayor nominates the members of the Senate, subject to confirmation by the House. Since October 1991 the Berlin Town Hall, generally referred to as the Rotes Rathaus, the "red town hall" (built 1861-69), has been the seat of the governing mayor of Berlin and of the Senate Chancellery.

The Urban Landscape

The imposing Brandenburg Gate (1788-91), inspired by the Propylaea of the Parthenon in Athens, is located adjacent to the border that divided East and West Berlin, at the W end of Unter den Linden, a famous boulevard that extends E to Museum Island, in the Spree R. On or near the boulevard are the classical-style State Opera House (1743); the State Library (1774-80); the baroque Arsenal building (1695-1706; designed by Andreas Schlüter), now housing a museum of history; Saint Hedwig's Cathedral (1747-73); the Gothic Church of St. Nicholas (late 14th-early 15th cent.); and the Wilhelm von Humboldt University (1809; formerly known as Friedrich-Wilhelm University). Well-known streets crossing Unter den Linden are the Friedrichstrasse and the Wilhelmstrasse, on which once stood the Reichschancery of Adolf Hitler. Attractions of the nearby Museum Island (1830) include the Pergamon Museum (1930), with a fine collection of Greco-Roman and Oriental art; the Bode Museum, with displays of ancient Egyptian and Byzantine art; and the National Gallery, with exhibitions of 19th- and 20th-century painting and sculpture. On the E bank of the Spree is Alexanderplatz, a major transportation center; nearby is the Television Tower (365 m/1197 ft), one of the tallest structures in Europe, built by East Germany in the 1960s.

To the W of the Brandenburg Gate is the large Tiergarten Park, which extends for some 3 km (some 2 mi) and includes a zoo, an aquarium, and numerous monuments and statues. At the E edge of the Tiergarten, N of the Brandenburg Gate, is the Reichstag building, now the seat of the Bundestag. The building was gutted by fire in 1933, completely destroyed in 1945, and reconstructed in the 1960s. Renovation of the building, supervised (1995-99) by the British architect Sir Norman Foster, included the addition of a large, illuminated glass dome. Located on the E side of the Tiergarten, on more than 2.02 ha (5 acres), is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (2005), designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman (1932-    ) in the form of a vast grid of 2711 concrete pillars. The Spreebogen area, a bend in the Spree at the NE extremity of the Tiergarten, is the site of a new complex of federal government buildings. Another huge construction project centers around Potsdamer Platz, at the Tiergarten's SE corner; this residential, commercial, and entertainment complex is rising in an area that had been the heart of Berlin during the 1920s but had fallen on hard times during the period of division. Just W of Potsdamer Platz is another constellation of cultural attractions, including the striking Philharmonie Concert Hall (1963), an asymmetrical structure that serves as the home of the world-noted Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; the New National Gallery (housed in a 1968 structure designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe), with a collection of 19th- and 20th-century art; the Picture Gallery (1998), with a superb assemblage of early European paintings; the Musical Instrument Museum at the State Institute of Musicology; and the Museum of Applied Arts (1985).

Extending from the SW corner of the Tiergarten is the Kurfürstendamm, the most famous boulevard of western Berlin, which is lined with fashionable hotels, restaurants, shops, and movie theaters. At its E end is a ruined tower, all that remains of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (1891-95; destroyed during World War II), maintained as a reminder of the destructiveness of war. Adjacent to the ruins are a polygonal church and its separate campanile (1959-61). Branching from the Kurfürstendamm is the Tauentzienstrasse, a major shopping street and the site of the Europa Center (1963-65)--a tall complex including restaurants, shops, a planetarium, and an ice-skating rink.

W of the Tiergarten is Charlottenburg Palace (begun 1695), which houses a history museum and a gallery of 19th-century German painting. The Egyptian Museum contains a world-famous bust of the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti (fl. 1340 BC) and several art galleries; formerly located near the palace, it moved to the Altes Museum on Museum Island (see above) in 2005 until its collection could be housed in its eventual home, the Neues Museum--also on the island--which was undergoing renovations that weren't expected to be completed until 2008. To the SW of the city center is the vast Grunewald forest, which contains much woodland and the large Wannsee lake, formed by the Havel R., as well as a Renaissance-style hunting lodge (principally mid-16th cent., with 18th-cent. additions), the large Olympic Stadium (built for the 1936 Olympic Games), and a 138-m (453-ft) high broadcasting tower (1924-26). In the Dahlem district, S of the Grunewald, are a group of cultural institutions, which include the Museum of Indian Art, the Museum of East Asian Art, the Museum of Folklore, and the Museum of European Cultures. The Deutsche (German) Guggenheim Berlin, a component of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City in partnership with the Deutsche Bank, is located on Unter den Linden.

The leading institutions of higher education include the Free University of Berlin, founded in 1948 mainly by professors and students dissatisfied with conditions at the Humboldt University in East Berlin, and the Technical University of Berlin, established in 1879. Also located in the city are the German Film and Television Academy (1966), the College of the Arts (1975), and the Hanns Eisler College of Music (1950). Additional performing-arts facilities include the German Opera, the Comic Opera, the Schiller and Hebbel theaters, and the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, home of the Berliner Ensemble, noted for productions of plays by Bertolt Brecht, its founder. Berlin is the site of an important annual film festival.

History

Berlin is first mentioned in the mid-13th century, along with Kölln, its twin settlement across the Spree River. The two towns prospered commercially and in 1359 joined the Hanseatic League. In 1415 Berlin-Kölln, as part of the electorate of Brandenburg, came under the rule of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Both towns were then forced to withdraw from the league and were jointly made the capital of Brandenburg. (They were not formally merged into one town until 1709.) Under the Hohenzollerns, important leather, textile, and paper industries were developed in Berlin, and it also became known for its potteries and breweries. Beginning in 1576, however, repeated outbreaks of plague reduced its population by many thousands. In 1600 Berlin had about 12,000 inhabitants.

During the Thirty Years' War Berlin at first benefited from Brandenburg's neutrality, but after 1631 it had to provide quarters for several Swedish armies, which also exacted heavy contributions. New outbreaks of plague, as well as arson and robberies, further impoverished and depopulated the town.

Prussian Capital

Frederick William, the Great Elector, quickly rehabilitated Berlin. His son Frederick I, transformed Brandenburg into the kingdom of Prussia and adorned the new royal capital with elaborate public buildings.

Berlin continued to grow throughout the 18th century. Even the Seven Years War did not long delay the city's expansion; by the death (1786) of Frederick the Great, grandson of Frederick William, Berlin's population had grown to 150,000.

After the Napoleonic Wars during part of which Berlin was occupied by the French, the city became a lively cultural center, with a world-famous university. It was a focus of the German Revolution of 1848, but suffered little disruption; it prospered during the subsequent political and economic ascendance of Prussia and by 1870 boasted a population of 800,000.

European Metropolis

In 1871 Berlin became the capital of the unified German Empire. During the following decades it grew into a major industrial center, specializing in machinery, electrical goods, and textiles. Culturally it won worldwide fame for its excellent theaters, concerts, and exhibitions; commercially, it benefited from a wide network of railroads that converged on it. Extensive construction turned it into the most modern of European capitals.

After World War I Berlin's adjacent communities were incorporated into the city, raising its population to 3,850,000. Economically Berlin suffered setbacks during the troubled Weimar Republic, but the wealth of its theatrical, musical, and other cultural offerings remained unequaled.

During the restrictive Nazi years Berlin's cultural life lost much of its élan. An ambitious building program, by which Adolf Hitler aimed to make the city the world's foremost capital, was architecturally uninspired and never completed. In 1936 the city was host to the Olympic Games. During World War II large parts of Berlin were destroyed by air raids and, toward the end of the war, by artillery fire and street fighting.

Divided City

When Germany was divided into American, Soviet, British, and French occupation zones after the war, Berlin, although located within the Soviet Zone, became a separate unit. The arrangement symbolized the city's continuing role as the capital of a Germany that was still considered one country. In 1948, however, soon after the breakup of the four-power administration of all Germany, the joint administration of Berlin also came to an end. Claiming that Berlin had lost its status as the capital of a united Germany and should therefore be incorporated into the Soviet Zone, the USSR tried to force the Western powers out of their respective sectors of the city by blockading the land routes to that part of Berlin. The attempt was foiled with a massive airlift, but the city remained divided into two parts. Soviet-held East Berlin was eventually incorporated into the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), but West Berlin remained a separate territory, with its own government and close economic and cultural ties to the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). In 1961 the East German government built a wall along the dividing line between East and West Berlin to stop the flight of East Germans to West Berlin and from there to West Germany.

Berlin Reunified

By the 1980s, West Berlin again enjoyed a rich cultural life and material prosperity, thanks to West German government subsidies. East Berlin, which in 1953 was the scene of an uprising of desperate workers, also made major improvements; it too was a well-known cultural center, and its government quarter was rebuilt. West Berliners gained access to East Berlin in 1972, but East Berliners could not pass freely into West Berlin until late 1989, when dismantling of the wall began. When Germany unified in October 1990, a reunited Berlin again became the national capital.   

During the 1990s the German federal parliament and many other federal institutions were transferred from Bonn to Berlin; the Bundestag's inaugural session in Berlin was held in April 1999, and the federal chancellor took up residence in the new Federal Chancellery two years later. The demand for new government, commercial, and residential facilities, combined with the need to upgrade and integrate the city's transportation services, sparked a building boom that continued throughout the 1990s and into the next decade. The city also launched an ambitious program to restore and modernize the cultural attractions of Museum Island, at a cost of more than $1 billion.       A.Do.

For further information on this topic, see the Bibliography, sections Cold War, Berlin, German Federal Republic (West), German Democratic Republic (East).