largest city
The United Nations uses three definitions for what constitutes a city, as not all cities in all jurisdictions are classified using the same criteria. Cities may be defined as the cities proper, the extent of their urban area, or their metropo ...
of
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...
State of Brandenburg
Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 squar ...
and contiguous with
Potsdam
Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of ...
, Brandenburg's capital. Berlin's urban area, which has a population of around 4.5 million, is the second most populous urban area in Germany after the
Ruhr
The Ruhr ( ; german: Ruhrgebiet , also ''Ruhrpott'' ), also referred to as the Ruhr area, sometimes Ruhr district, Ruhr region, or Ruhr valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 2,800/km ...
Rhine-Ruhr
The Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region (german: Metropolregion Rhein-Ruhr) is the largest metropolitan region in Germany, with over ten million inhabitants. A polycentric conurbation with several major urban concentrations, the region covers ...
and
Rhine-Main
The Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region, often simply referred to as Frankfurt Rhine-Main, Frankfurt Rhine-Main area or Rhine-Main area (German: ''Rhein-Main-Gebiet'' or ''Frankfurt/Rhein-Main'', abbreviated FRM), is the second-largest metropolitan re ...
regions.
Berlin straddles the banks of the
Spree
Spree may refer to:
Geography
* Spree (river), river in Germany
Film and television
* '' The Spree'', a 1998 American television film directed by Tommy Lee Wallace
* ''Spree'' (film), a 2020 American film starring Joe Keery
* "Spree" (''Numbers ...
, which flows into the
Havel
The Havel () is a river in northeastern Germany, flowing through the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt. It is a right tributary of the Elbe and long. However, the direct distance from its source to its mo ...
(a
tributary
A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drai ...
of the
Elbe
The Elbe (; cs, Labe ; nds, Ilv or ''Elv''; Upper and dsb, Łobjo) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Re ...
) in the western borough of
Spandau
Spandau () is the westernmost of the 12 boroughs () of Berlin, situated at the confluence of the Havel and Spree rivers and extending along the western bank of the Havel. It is the smallest borough by population, but the fourth largest by land ...
. Among the city's main topographical features are the many lakes in the western and southeastern boroughs formed by the
Spree
Spree may refer to:
Geography
* Spree (river), river in Germany
Film and television
* '' The Spree'', a 1998 American television film directed by Tommy Lee Wallace
* ''Spree'' (film), a 2020 American film starring Joe Keery
* "Spree" (''Numbers ...
,
Havel
The Havel () is a river in northeastern Germany, flowing through the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt. It is a right tributary of the Elbe and long. However, the direct distance from its source to its mo ...
Lake Müggelsee
A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...
. Due to its location in the
European Plain
The European Plain or Great European Plain is a plain in Europe and is a major feature of one of four major topographical units of Europe - the ''Central and Interior Lowlands''.
, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. About one-third of the city's area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers, canals, and lakes. The city lies in the
Central German
Central German or Middle German (german: mitteldeutsche Dialekte, mitteldeutsche Mundarten, Mitteldeutsch) is a group of High German dialects spoken from the Rhineland in the west to the former eastern territories of Germany.
Central German d ...
dialect area, the
Berlin dialect
Berlin German, or Berlin dialect (High German: ''Berliner Dialekt'', ''Berliner Mundart'', ''Berlinerisch'' or ''Berlinisch''; derogative: ''Berliner Schnauze'', ), is the dialect spoken in the city of Berlin as well as its surrounding metro ...
being a variant of the Lusatian-New Marchian dialects.
First documented in the 13th century and at the crossing of two important historic
trade route
A trade route is a logistical network identified as a series of pathways and stoppages used for the commercial transport of cargo. The term can also be used to refer to trade over bodies of water. Allowing goods to reach distant markets, a sing ...
s, Berlin became the capital of the
Margraviate of Brandenburg
The Margraviate of Brandenburg (german: link=no, Markgrafschaft Brandenburg) was a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1157 to 1806 that played a pivotal role in the history of Germany and Central Europe.
Brandenburg developed out ...
(14171701), the
Kingdom of Prussia
The Kingdom of Prussia (german: Königreich Preußen, ) was a German kingdom that constituted the state of Prussia between 1701 and 1918.Marriott, J. A. R., and Charles Grant Robertson. ''The Evolution of Prussia, the Making of an Empire''. ...
(1701–1918), the
German Empire
The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
(1871–1918), the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a Constitutional republic, constitutional federal republic for the first time in ...
(1919–1933), and
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
(1933–1945). Berlin became a scientific, artistic and philosophical centre of Europe during the
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
and the reign of king
Frederick the Great
Frederick II (german: Friedrich II.; 24 January 171217 August 1786) was King in Prussia from 1740 until 1772, and King of Prussia from 1772 until his death in 1786. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Sil ...
, and subsequently a centre for
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism ...
and liberal revolution. The economic boom by industrialisation during the
Gründerzeit
(; "founders' period") was the economic phase in 19th-century Germany and Austria before the great stock market crash of 1873. In Central Europe, the age of industrialisation had been taking place since the 1840s. That period is not precisely ...
era multiplied Berlin's population rapidly. Berlin in the roaring 1920s was the third-largest city in the world by population.
After
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
and its subsequent occupation by the victorious countries, the devastated city was divided;
West Berlin
West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...
became a de facto
exclave
An enclave is a territory (or a small territory apart of a larger one) that is entirely surrounded by the territory of one other state or entity. Enclaves may also exist within territorial waters. ''Enclave'' is sometimes used improperly to deno ...
of
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 ...
, surrounded by the
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the gover ...
(from August 1961 to November 1989) and East German territory.
East Berlin
East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as West Berlin. From 13 August 1961 u ...
was declared capital of East Germany, while
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...
became the West German capital. Following
German reunification
German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...
in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all of Germany.
Berlin is a world city of
culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
,
politics
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
,
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass e ...
high-tech
High technology (high tech), also known as advanced technology (advanced tech) or exotechnology, is technology that is at the cutting edge: the highest form of technology available. It can be defined as either the most complex or the newest te ...
firms and the
service sector
The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the second ...
startup companies
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...
, research facilities, media corporations, and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular
tourist destination
A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or an exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement.
Types
Places of natural ...
healthcare
Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health pro ...
,
biomedical engineering
Biomedical engineering (BME) or medical engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology for healthcare purposes (e.g., diagnostic or therapeutic). BME is also traditionally logical sciences ...
,
biotechnology
Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used ...
electronics
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
,
social economy
The social economy is formed by a rich diversity of enterprises and organisations, such as cooperatives, mutuals, associations, foundations, social enterprises and paritarian institutions, sharing common values and features:
* Primacy of the ...
and clean tech.
Berlin is home to world-renowned universities such as the
Humboldt University
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiati ...
, the
Technical University
An institute of technology (also referred to as: technological university, technical university, university of technology, technological educational institute, technical college, polytechnic university or just polytechnic) is an institution of te ...
, the
Free University
A free university is an organization offering uncredited, public classes without restrictions to who can teach or learn. They differ in structure. In 1980 in the United States, about half were associated with a traditional university, about a ...
ESMT Berlin
The European School of Management and Technology, also known as ESMT Berlin, is a private non-profit business school based in Berlin, Germany. The business school was founded in 2002 by 25 global companies and institutions including McKinsey & C ...
Bard College Berlin
Bard College Berlin (formerly known as ECLA or European College of Liberal Arts) is a private, non-profit institution of higher education in Berlin, Germany. It was founded as a non-profit association in 1999. Courses are taught in the English l ...
. Its
Zoological Garden
A zoo (short for zoological garden; also called an animal park or menagerie) is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for conservation purposes.
The term ''zoological garden'' refers to zool ...
is the most visited zoo in Europe and one of the most popular worldwide. With
Babelsberg
Babelsberg () is the largest quarter ('' Stadtteil'') of Potsdam, the capital city of the German state of Brandenburg. The affluent neighbourhood named after a small hill on the Havel river is famous for Babelsberg Palace and Park, part of the Pala ...
being the world's first large-scale movie studio complex, Berlin is an increasingly popular location for international film productions. The city is well known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, and a very high quality of life. Since the 2000s, Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan
entrepreneurial
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...
World Heritage Sites
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for ...
:
Museum Island
The Museum Island (german: Museumsinsel) is a museum complex on the northern part of the Spree Island in the historic heart of Berlin. It is one of the most visited sights of Germany's capital and one of the most important museum sites in Europ ...
; the
Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin
Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin (german: Schlösser und Gärten von Potsdam und Berlin) are a group of palace complexes and extended landscape gardens located in the Havelland region around Potsdam and the German capital of Berlin. The te ...
Brandenburg Gate
The Brandenburg Gate (german: Brandenburger Tor ) is an 18th-century Neoclassical architecture, neoclassical monument in Berlin, built on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II of Prussia, Frederick William II after Prussian invasion ...
, the
Reichstag building
The Reichstag (, ; officially: – ; en, Parliament) is a historic government building in Berlin which houses the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany's parliament.
It was constructed to house the Imperial Diet (german: Reichstag) of the ...
,
Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Platz (, ''Potsdam Square'') is a public square and traffic intersection in the center of Berlin, Germany, lying about south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corn ...
, the
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (german: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), also known as the Holocaust Memorial (German: ''Holocaust-Mahnmal''), is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by arc ...
, the
Berlin Wall Memorial
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constituen ...
, the
East Side Gallery
The East Side Gallery (german: East-Side-Gallery) memorial in Berlin-Friedrichshain is a permanent open-air gallery on the longest surviving section of the Berlin Wall in Mühlenstraße between the Berlin Ostbahnhof and the Oberbaumbrücke alo ...
, the
Berlin Victory Column
The Victory Column (german: , from ''Sieg'' ‘victory’ + '' Säule'' ‘column’) is a monument in Berlin, Germany. Designed by Heinrich Strack after 1864 to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Second Schleswig War, by the time it was ...
,
Berlin Cathedral
The Berlin Cathedral (german: link=yes, Berliner Dom), also known as the Evangelical Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church, is a monumental German Evangelical church and dynastic tomb ( House of Hohenzollern) on the Museum Island in centra ...
, and the
Berlin Television Tower
The Berliner Fernsehturm or Fernsehturm Berlin ( en, Berlin Television Tower) is a television tower in central Berlin, Germany.
Located in the Marien quarter (''Marienviertel''), close to Alexanderplatz in the locality and district of Mitte, ...
, the tallest structure in Germany. Berlin has numerous museums, galleries, libraries, orchestras, and sporting events. These include
Museum Island
The Museum Island (german: Museumsinsel) is a museum complex on the northern part of the Spree Island in the historic heart of Berlin. It is one of the most visited sights of Germany's capital and one of the most important museum sites in Europ ...
with
Berlin Palace
The Berlin Palace (german: Berliner Schloss), formally the Royal Palace (german: Königliches Schloss), on the Museum Island in the Mitte area of Berlin, was the main residence of the House of Hohenzollern from 1443 to 1918. Expanded by orde ...
Jewish Museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area.
List of Jewish museums
Notable Jewish museums include:
*Albania
** Solomon Museum, Berat
*Australia
** Jewish Mu ...
,
Natural History Museum
A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...
,
State Library
A national library is established by the government of a nation to serve as the pre-eminent repository of information for that country. Unlike public libraries, they rarely allow citizens to borrow books. Often, they include numerous rare, valuab ...
Berlin Marathon
The Berlin Marathon (german: Berlin-Marathon, ) is a marathon event held annually on the streets of Berlin, Germany on the last weekend of September. Held annually since 1974, the event includes multiple races over the marathon distance of , i ...
.
History
Etymology
Berlin lies in northeastern Germany, east of the River
Elbe
The Elbe (; cs, Labe ; nds, Ilv or ''Elv''; Upper and dsb, Łobjo) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Re ...
, that once constituted, together with the River (Saxon or Thuringian)
Saale
The Saale (), also known as the Saxon Saale (german: Sächsische Saale) and Thuringian Saale (german: Thüringische Saale), is a river in Germany and a left-bank tributary of the Elbe. It is not to be confused with the smaller Franconian Saal ...
(from their
confluence
In geography, a confluence (also: ''conflux'') occurs where two or more flowing bodies of water join to form a single channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main stem); o ...
Frankish Realm
Francia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks ( la, Regnum Francorum), Frankish Kingdom, Frankland or Frankish Empire ( la, Imperium Francorum), was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe. It was ruled by the Franks duri ...
. While the Frankish Realm was primarily inhabited by Germanic tribes like the
Franks
The Franks ( la, Franci or ) were a group of Germanic peoples whose name was first mentioned in 3rd-century Roman sources, and associated with tribes between the Lower Rhine and the Ems River, on the edge of the Roman Empire.H. Schutz: Tools ...
and the
Saxons
The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic
*
*
*
*
peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...
, the regions east of the border rivers were inhabited by Slavic tribes. This is why most of the cities and villages in northeastern Germany bear Slavic-derived names (
Germania Slavica
''Germania Slavica'' is a historiographic term used since the 1950s to denote the landscape of the medieval language border (roughly east of the Elbe-Saale line) zone between Germans and Slavs in Central Europe on the one hand and a 20th-century s ...
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...
es of Slavic origin are ''-ow'', ''-itz'', ''-vitz'', ''-witz'', ''-itzsch'' and ''-in'',
prefix
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particul ...
es are ''Windisch'' and ''Wendisch''. The name ''Berlin'' has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of today's Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem ''berl-''/''birl-'' ("swamp"). or
Proto-Slavic
Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium B.C. through the 6th ...
'' bьrlogъ'', (lair, den). Since the ''Ber-'' at the beginning sounds like the German word ''Bär'' ("bear"), a bear appears in the coat of arms of the city. It is therefore an example of
canting arms
Canting arms are heraldic bearings that represent the bearer's name (or, less often, some attribute or function) in a visual pun or rebus.
French heralds used the term (), as they would sound out the name of the armiger. Many armorial all ...
.
Of Berlin's twelve boroughs, five bear a (partly) Slavic-derived name:
Pankow
Pankow () is the most populous and the second-largest borough by area of Berlin. In Berlin's 2001 administrative reform, it was merged with the former boroughs of Prenzlauer Berg and Weißensee; the resulting borough retained the name Pankow. ...
Marzahn-Hellersdorf
Marzahn-Hellersdorf () is the tenth borough of Berlin, formed in 2001 by merging the former boroughs of Marzahn and Hellersdorf.
Geography
It is situated in the northeast of Berlin. Marzahn-Hellersdorf borders to the Berlin boroughs of Lichte ...
,
Treptow-Köpenick
Treptow-Köpenick () is the ninth borough of Berlin, Germany, formed in Berlin's 2001 administrative reform by merging the former boroughs of Treptow and Köpenick.
Overview
Among Berlin's boroughs it is the largest by area with the lowest po ...
and
Spandau
Spandau () is the westernmost of the 12 boroughs () of Berlin, situated at the confluence of the Havel and Spree rivers and extending along the western bank of the Havel. It is the smallest borough by population, but the fourth largest by land ...
(named Spandow until 1878). Of its ninety-six neighborhoods, twenty-two bear a (partly) Slavic-derived name:
Altglienicke
Altglienicke (, literally ''Old Glienicke'') is a locality (''Ortsteil'') of Berlin in the borough (''Bezirk'') of Treptow-Köpenick. Until 2001 it was part of the former borough of Treptow.
History
The village of ''Glinik'' was first mentioned in ...
,
Alt-Treptow
Alt-Treptow (, literally ''Old Treptow'') is a German locality in the borough of Treptow-Köpenick in Berlin. Known also as Treptow it was, until 2001, the main and the eponymous locality of the former Treptow borough.
History
The locality, first ...
,
Britz
Britz () is a German locality (''Ortsteil'') within the Berlin borough (''Bezirk'') of Neukölln.
History
The village of ''Britzig'' was first mentioned in 1273. It was incorporated by the 1920 Greater Berlin Act. It is known for being the site ...
,
Buch
Buch (the German word for book or a modification of the German word '' Buche'' for beech) may refer to:
People
* Buch (surname), a list of people with the surname Buch Geography
;Germany:
* Buch am Wald, a town in the district of Ansbach, Bavaria ...
,
Buckow
Buckow ( or ) is a town in the Märkisch-Oderland district, in Brandenburg, Germany. The water cure resort is the administrative seat of the ''Amt'' (municipal association) Märkische Schweiz and located in the centre of the eponymous hill rang ...
Kladow
Kladow () is the southernmost district of the Borough of Spandau in Berlin, Germany.
Geography
Located approximately 17 Km from central Berlin (Charlottenburg), the district of Kladow is bordered by the District of Gatow to the north, by the Have ...
,
Köpenick
Köpenick () is a historic town and locality (''Ortsteil'') in Berlin, situated at the confluence of the rivers Dahme and Spree in the south-east of the German capital. It was formerly known as Copanic and then Cöpenick, only officially adopt ...
,
Lankwitz
Lankwitz () is a German locality (''Ortsteil'') within the borough (''Bezirk'') of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin. Until 2001 it was part of the former borough of Steglitz.
History
The locality was first mentioned in 1239 with the name of ''Lankow ...
Malchow
Malchow () is a Municipalities of Germany, municipality in the Mecklenburgische Seenplatte (district), Mecklenburgische Seenplatte district, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany.
Geography
It is situated on the river Elde, 25,5 km we ...
,
Marzahn
Marzahn () is a locality within the borough of Marzahn-Hellersdorf in Berlin. Berlin's 2001 administrative reform led to the former boroughs of Marzahn and Hellersdorf fusing into a single new borough. In the north the Marzahn locality inclu ...
,
Pankow
Pankow () is the most populous and the second-largest borough by area of Berlin. In Berlin's 2001 administrative reform, it was merged with the former boroughs of Prenzlauer Berg and Weißensee; the resulting borough retained the name Pankow. ...
,
Prenzlauer Berg
Prenzlauer Berg () is a locality of Berlin, forming the southerly and most urban district of the borough of Pankow. From its founding in 1920 until 2001, Prenzlauer Berg was a district of Berlin in its own right. However, that year it was incor ...
Spandau
Spandau () is the westernmost of the 12 boroughs () of Berlin, situated at the confluence of the Havel and Spree rivers and extending along the western bank of the Havel. It is the smallest borough by population, but the fourth largest by land ...
,
Stadtrandsiedlung Malchow
Stadtrandsiedlung Malchow () is a German locality (''Ortsteil'') within the Berlin borough (''Bezirk'') of Pankow. Until 2001 it was part of the former Weißensee borough.
History
The history of this locality is related to the neighboring quarter ...
,
Steglitz
Steglitz () is a locality of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough in Southwestern Berlin, the capital of Germany. is a Slavic name for the European goldfinch, similar to the German .
Steglitz was also a borough from 1920 to 2000. It contained th ...
Moabit
Moabit () is an inner city locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2016, around 77,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial and working-class neighbourhood ...
bears a French-derived name, and
Französisch Buchholz
Französisch Buchholz (), also known simply as Buchholz, is a German locality (''Ortsteil'') within the Berlin borough (''Bezirk'') of Pankow.
History
First mentioned in 1242 as ''Buckholtz'' in a document, it became the property of Frederick W ...
is named after the
Huguenots
The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster B ...
.
12th to 16th centuries
The earliest evidence of settlements in the area of today's Berlin are remnants of a house foundation dated to 1174, found in excavations in Berlin Mitte, and a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written records of towns in the area of present-day Berlin date from the late 12th century.
Spandau
Spandau () is the westernmost of the 12 boroughs () of Berlin, situated at the confluence of the Havel and Spree rivers and extending along the western bank of the Havel. It is the smallest borough by population, but the fourth largest by land ...
is first mentioned in 1197 and
Köpenick
Köpenick () is a historic town and locality (''Ortsteil'') in Berlin, situated at the confluence of the rivers Dahme and Spree in the south-east of the German capital. It was formerly known as Copanic and then Cöpenick, only officially adopt ...
in 1209, although these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns.
Cölln
Cölln () was the twin city of Old Berlin ( Altberlin) from the 13th century to the 18th century. Cölln was located on the Fisher Island section of Spree Island, opposite Altberlin on the western bank of the River Spree, until the cities ...
on the
Fischerinsel
Fischerinsel (, ''Fisher Island'') is the southern part of the island in the River Spree which was formerly the location of the city of Cölln and is now part of central Berlin. The northern part of the island is known as Museum Island. Fischeri ...
is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the
Spree
Spree may refer to:
Geography
* Spree (river), river in Germany
Film and television
* '' The Spree'', a 1998 American television film directed by Tommy Lee Wallace
* ''Spree'' (film), a 2020 American film starring Joe Keery
* "Spree" (''Numbers ...
in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. 1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, and profited from the
staple right
The staple right, also translated stacking right or storage right, both from the Dutch ''stapelrecht'', was a medieval right accorded to certain ports, the staple ports. It required merchant barges or ships to unload their goods at the port and to ...
on the two important
trade route
A trade route is a logistical network identified as a series of pathways and stoppages used for the commercial transport of cargo. The term can also be used to refer to trade over bodies of water. Allowing goods to reach distant markets, a sing ...
s ''
Via Imperii
Via Imperii (Imperial Road) was one of the most important of a class of roads known collectively as imperial roads (''german: Reichsstraßen'') of the Holy Roman Empire. This old trade route ran in a south–north direction from Venice on the Ad ...
'' and from
Bruges
Bruges ( , nl, Brugge ) is the capital and largest City status in Belgium, city of the Provinces of Belgium, province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium, in the northwest of the country, and the sixth-largest city of the countr ...
to
Novgorod
Veliky Novgorod ( rus, links=no, Великий Новгород, t=Great Newtown, p=vʲɪˈlʲikʲɪj ˈnovɡərət), also known as just Novgorod (), is the largest city and administrative centre of Novgorod Oblast, Russia. It is one of the ...
. In 1307, they formed an alliance with a common external policy, their internal administrations still being separated.Stöver B. Geschichte Berlins. Verlag CH Beck, 2010.
In 1415,
Frederick I Frederick I may refer to:
* Frederick of Utrecht or Frederick I (815/16–834/38), Bishop of Utrecht.
* Frederick I, Duke of Upper Lorraine (942–978)
* Frederick I, Duke of Swabia (1050–1105)
* Frederick I, Count of Zoll ...
became the
elector
Elector may refer to:
* Prince-elector or elector, a member of the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire, having the function of electing the Holy Roman Emperors
* Elector, a member of an electoral college
** Confederate elector, a member of ...
of the
Margraviate of Brandenburg
The Margraviate of Brandenburg (german: link=no, Markgrafschaft Brandenburg) was a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1157 to 1806 that played a pivotal role in the history of Germany and Central Europe.
Brandenburg developed out ...
, which he ruled until 1440. During the 15th century, his successors established Berlin-Cölln as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the
Hohenzollern
The House of Hohenzollern (, also , german: Haus Hohenzollern, , ro, Casa de Hohenzollern) is a German royal (and from 1871 to 1918, imperial) dynasty whose members were variously princes, electors, kings and emperors of Hohenzollern, Brandenb ...
family ruled in Berlin until 1918, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of
Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an e ...
, and eventually as
German emperor
The German Emperor (german: Deutscher Kaiser, ) was the official title of the head of state and hereditary ruler of the German Empire. A specifically chosen term, it was introduced with the 1 January 1871 constitution and lasted until the offi ...
royal palace
This is a list of royal palaces, sorted by continent.
Africa
* Abdin Palace, Cairo
* Al-Gawhara Palace, Cairo
* Koubbeh Palace, Cairo
* Tahra Palace, Cairo
* Menelik Palace
* Jubilee Palace
* Guenete Leul Palace
* Imperial Palace- ...
in the twin city Berlin-Cölln. The protests of the town citizens against the building culminated in 1448, in the "Berlin Indignation" ("Berliner Unwille"). This protest was not successful and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. After the royal palace was finished in 1451, it gradually came into use. From 1470, with the new elector Albrecht III Achilles, Berlin-Cölln became the new royal residence. Officially, the Berlin-Cölln palace became permanent residence of the Brandenburg electors of the Hohenzollerns from 1486, when John Cicero came to power. Berlin-Cölln, however, had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became
Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched ...
.
17th to 19th centuries
The
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648. Fought primarily in Central Europe, an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of batt ...
between 1618 and 1648 devastated Berlin. One third of its houses were damaged or destroyed, and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the "Great Elector", who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French
Huguenot
The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...
s.
By 1700, approximately 30 percent of Berlin's residents were French, because of the Huguenot immigration. Many other immigrants came from
Bohemia
Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
, and
Salzburg
Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label=Austro-Bavarian) is the fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872.
The town is on the site of the Roman settlement of ''Iuvavum''. Salzburg was founded ...
.
Since 1618, the Margraviate of Brandenburg had been in
personal union
A personal union is the combination of two or more states that have the same monarch while their boundaries, laws, and interests remain distinct. A real union, by contrast, would involve the constituent states being to some extent interli ...
with the
Duchy of Prussia
The Duchy of Prussia (german: Herzogtum Preußen, pl, Księstwo Pruskie, lt, Prūsijos kunigaikštystė) or Ducal Prussia (german: Herzogliches Preußen, link=no; pl, Prusy Książęce, link=no) was a duchy in the region of Prussia establish ...
. In 1701, the dual state formed the
Kingdom of Prussia
The Kingdom of Prussia (german: Königreich Preußen, ) was a German kingdom that constituted the state of Prussia between 1701 and 1918.Marriott, J. A. R., and Charles Grant Robertson. ''The Evolution of Prussia, the Making of an Empire''. ...
Königsberg
Königsberg (, ) was the historic Prussian city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was ...
. This was a successful attempt to centralise the capital in the very far-flung state, and it was the first time the city began to grow. In 1709, Berlin merged with the four cities of Cölln, Friedrichswerder, Friedrichstadt and Dorotheenstadt under the name Berlin, "Haupt- und Residenzstadt Berlin".
In 1740, Frederick II, known as
Frederick the Great
Frederick II (german: Friedrich II.; 24 January 171217 August 1786) was King in Prussia from 1740 until 1772, and King of Prussia from 1772 until his death in 1786. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Sil ...
(1740–1786), came to power. Under the rule of Frederick II, Berlin became a center of
the Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
, but also, was briefly occupied during the
Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a global conflict that involved most of the European Great Powers, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Other concurrent conflicts include the French and Indian War (1754 ...
by the Russian army. Following France's victory in the
War of the Fourth Coalition
The Fourth Coalition fought against Napoleon's French Empire and were defeated in a war spanning 1806–1807. The main coalition partners were Prussia and Russia with Saxony, Sweden, and Great Britain also contributing. Excluding Prussia, s ...
,
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader wh ...
marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815, the city became part of the new
Province of Brandenburg
The Province of Brandenburg (german: Provinz Brandenburg) was a province of Prussia from 1815 to 1945. Brandenburg was established in 1815 from the Kingdom of Prussia's core territory, comprised the bulk of the historic Margraviate of Brandenburg ...
.
The
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main railway hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, neighboring suburbs including
Wedding
A wedding is a ceremony where two people are united in marriage. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes. Most wedding ceremonies involve an exchange of marriage vo ...
,
Moabit
Moabit () is an inner city locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2016, around 77,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial and working-class neighbourhood ...
and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded
German Empire
The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
. In 1881, it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
20th to 21st centuries
In the early 20th century, Berlin had become a fertile ground for the
German Expressionist
German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...
movement. In fields such as architecture, painting and cinema new forms of artistic styles were invented. At the end of the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
in 1918, a
republic
A republic () is a " state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th ...
was proclaimed by
Philipp Scheidemann
Philipp Heinrich Scheidemann (26 July 1865 – 29 November 1939) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In the first quarter of the 20th century he played a leading role in both his party and in the young Weimar ...
at the
Reichstag building
The Reichstag (, ; officially: – ; en, Parliament) is a historic government building in Berlin which houses the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany's parliament.
It was constructed to house the Imperial Diet (german: Reichstag) of the ...
. In 1920, the
Greater Berlin Act
The Greater Berlin Act (german: Groß-Berlin-Gesetz), officially Law Regarding the Creation of the New Municipality of Berlin (german: Gesetz über die Bildung einer neuen Stadtgemeinde Berlin), was a law passed by the Prussian state government i ...
incorporated dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into an expanded city. The act increased the area of Berlin from . The population almost doubled, and Berlin had a population of around four million. During the
Weimar era
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is als ...
, Berlin underwent political unrest due to economic uncertainties but also became a renowned center of the
Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties, sometimes stylized as Roaring '20s, refers to the 1920s decade in music and fashion, as it happened in Western society and Western culture. It was a period of economic prosperity with a distinctive cultural edge in th ...
. The metropolis experienced its heyday as a major world capital and was known for its leadership roles in science, technology, arts, the humanities, city planning, film, higher education, government, and industries.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...
rose to public prominence during his years in Berlin, being awarded the
Nobel Prize for Physics
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
in 1921.
In 1933,
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and the ...
and the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
came to power. The National Socialist regime embarked on monumental construction projects in Berlin as a way to express their power and authority through
architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...
. Hitler envisioned Berlin's renewal projects were to turn the city into the new capital of the
Greater Germanic Reich
The Greater Germanic Reich (german: Großgermanisches Reich), fully styled the Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation (german: Großgermanisches Reich deutscher Nation), was the official state name of the political entity that Nazi Germany ...
. NSDAP rule diminished Berlin's Jewish community from 160,000 (one-third of all Jews in the country) to about 80,000 due to emigration between 1933 and 1939. After
Kristallnacht
() or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation fro ...
in 1938, thousands of the city's Jews were imprisoned in the nearby
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoner ...
. Starting in early 1943, many were shipped to
concentration camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
s, such as
Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...
. During World War II, large parts of Berlin were destroyed during Allied air raids and the 1945
Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin, designated as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, and also known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II.
After the Vistula– ...
. The Allies dropped 67,607 tons of bombs on the city, destroying 6,427 acres of the built-up area. Around 125,000 civilians were killed. After the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the
Western Allies
The Allies, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during the Second World War (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy ...
(the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) formed
West Berlin
West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...
, while the
Soviet sector
The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...
formed
East Berlin
East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as West Berlin. From 13 August 1961 u ...
.
All four
Allies
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
shared administrative responsibilities for Berlin. However, in 1948, when the Western Allies extended the currency reform in the Western zones of Germany to the three western sectors of Berlin, the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
imposed a
blockade
A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force.
A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are leg ...
on the access routes to and from West Berlin, which lay entirely inside Soviet-controlled territory. The
Berlin airlift
The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, ro ...
, conducted by the three western Allies, overcame this blockade by supplying food and other supplies to the city from June 1948 to May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 ...
and eventually included all of the American, British and French zones, excluding those three countries' zones in Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist
German Democratic Republic
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**G ...
was proclaimed in
East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In t ...
. West Berlin officially remained an occupied city, but it politically was aligned with the Federal Republic of Germany despite West Berlin's geographic isolation. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory, and East Germany proclaimed the Eastern part as its capital, a move the western powers did not recognize. East Berlin included most of the city's historic center. The West German government established itself in
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...
. In 1961, East Germany began to build the
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the gover ...
around West Berlin, and events escalated to a tank standoff at
Checkpoint Charlie
Checkpoint Charlie (or "Checkpoint C") was the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991), as named by the Western Allies.
East German leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and maneu ...
. West Berlin was now de facto a part of West Germany with a unique legal status, while East Berlin was de facto a part of East Germany. John F. Kennedy gave his "''
Ich bin ein Berliner
"" (; "I am a Berliner") is a speech by United States President John F. Kennedy given on June 26, 1963, in West Berlin. It is one of the best-known speeches of the Cold War and among the most famous anti-communist speeches.
Twenty-two mon ...
''" speech on 26 June 1963, in front of the Schöneberg city hall, located in the city's western part, underlining the US support for West Berlin. Berlin was completely divided. Although it was possible for Westerners to pass to the other side through strictly controlled checkpoints, for most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was prohibited by the government of East Germany. In 1971, a
Four-Power agreement
The Four Power Agreement on Berlin, also known as the Berlin Agreement or the Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin, was agreed on 3 September 1971 by the four wartime Allied powers, represented by their ambassadors. The four foreign ministers, Ale ...
guaranteed access to and from West Berlin by car or train through East Germany.
In 1989, with the end of the Cold War and pressure from the East German population, the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November and was subsequently mostly demolished. Today, the
East Side Gallery
The East Side Gallery (german: East-Side-Gallery) memorial in Berlin-Friedrichshain is a permanent open-air gallery on the longest surviving section of the Berlin Wall in Mühlenstraße between the Berlin Ostbahnhof and the Oberbaumbrücke alo ...
preserves a large portion of the wall. On 3 October 1990, the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin again became a reunified city.
Walter Momper
Walter Momper (born 21 February 1945) is a German politician and former Governing Mayor of Berlin (West Berlin 1989–1990, reunited Berlin 1990–1991). Whilst Governing Mayor, he served as President of the Bundesrat in 1989/90. He was at the ...
, the mayor of West Berlin, became the first mayor of the reunified city in the interim. City-wide elections in December 1990 resulted in the first "all Berlin" mayor being elected to take office in January 1991, with the separate offices of mayors in East and West Berlin expiring by that time, and Eberhard Diepgen (a former mayor of West Berlin) became the first elected mayor of a reunited Berlin. On 18 June 1994, soldiers from the United States, France and Britain marched in a parade which was part of the ceremonies to mark the withdrawal of allied occupation troops allowing a reunified Berlin (the last Russian troops departed on 31 August, while the final departure of Western Allies forces was on 8 September 1994). On 20 June 1991, the
Bundestag
The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Comm ...
(German Parliament) voted to move the seat of the German capital from Bonn to Berlin, which was completed in 1999.
Berlin's 2001 administrative reform
Berlin is both a city and one of Germany’s federated states (city state). Since the 2001 administrative reform, it has been made up of twelve districts (german: Bezirke, ), each with its own administrative body. However, unlike the municipaliti ...
merged several boroughs, reducing their number from 23 to 12.
In 2006, the
FIFA World Cup Final
The FIFA World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the ' (FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football), the sport's global governing body. The championship has ...
ISIL
An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...
, a truck was deliberately driven into a Christmas market next to the
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (in German: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, but mostly just known as Gedächtniskirche ) is a Protestant church affiliated with the Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia, a reg ...
, leaving 13 people dead and 55 others injured.
Berlin Brandenburg Airport
Berlin Brandenburg Airport ''Willy Brandt'' (german: Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg "Willy Brandt", , ) is an international airport in Schönefeld, just south of the German capital Berlin in the state of Brandenburg. Named after the former ...
(BER) opened in 2020, nine years later than planned, with Terminal 1 coming into service at the end of October, and flights to and from
Tegel Airport
Berlin Tegel "Otto Lilienthal" Airport (german: link=no, Flughafen Berlin-Tegel „Otto Lilienthal“) was the primary international airport of Berlin, the federal capital of Germany. The airport was named after aviation pioneer Otto Lilienth ...
ending in November. Due to the fall in passenger numbers resulting from the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
, plans were announced to temporarily close BER's Terminal 5, the former
Schönefeld Airport
Schönefeld (meaning ''beautiful field'') is a suburban municipality in the Dahme-Spreewald district, Brandenburg, Germany. It borders the southeastern districts of Berlin. The municipal area encompasses the old Berlin Schönefeld Airport (SXF) ...
, beginning in March 2021 for up to one year. The connecting link of U-Bahn line U5 from Alexanderplatz to Hauptbahnhof, along with the new stations Rotes Rathaus and Unter den Linden, opened on 4 December 2020, with the Museumsinsel U-Bahn station expected to open around March 2021, which would complete all new works on the U5. A partial opening by the end of 2020 of the
Humboldt Forum
The Humboldt Forum is a museum dedicated to human history, art and culture, located in the Berlin Palace on the Museum Island in the historic centre of Berlin. It is in honour of the Prussian scholars Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt. Considere ...
museum, housed in the reconstructed
Berlin Palace
The Berlin Palace (german: Berliner Schloss), formally the Royal Palace (german: Königliches Schloss), on the Museum Island in the Mitte area of Berlin, was the main residence of the House of Hohenzollern from 1443 to 1918. Expanded by orde ...
, which had been announced in June, was postponed until March 2021.
Berlin-Brandenburg fusion attempt
The legal basis for a combined state of Berlin and
Brandenburg
Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 squ ...
is different from other state fusion proposals. Normally, Article 29 of the Basic Law stipulates that a state fusion requires a federal law. However, a clause added to the Basic Law in 1994, Article 118a, allows Berlin and Brandenburg to unify without federal approval, requiring a referendum and a ratification by both state parliaments.
In 1996, there was an unsuccessful attempt of unifying the states of Berlin and Brandenburg. Both share a common history, dialect and culture and in 2020, there are over 225.000 residents of Brandenburg that commute to Berlin. The fusion had the near-unanimous support by a broad coalition of both state governments, political parties, media, business associations, trade unions and churches. Though Berlin voted in favor by a small margin, largely based on support in former
West Berlin
West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...
, Brandenburg voters disapproved of the fusion by a large margin. It failed largely due to Brandenburg voters not wanting to take on Berlin's large and growing public debt and fearing losing identity and influence to the capital.
Geography
Topography
Berlin is in northeastern Germany, in an area of low-lying marshy woodlands with a mainly flat
topography
Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps.
Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sc ...
, part of the vast
Northern European Plain
The North European Plain (german: Norddeutsches Tiefland – North German Plain; ; pl, Nizina Środkowoeuropejska – Central European Plain; da, Nordeuropæiske Lavland and nl, Noord-Europese Laagvlakte ; French : ''Plaine d'Europe du Nor ...
which stretches all the way from northern France to western Russia. The ''Berliner Urstromtal'' (an ice age
glacial valley
U-shaped valleys, also called trough valleys or glacial troughs, are formed by the process of glaciation. They are characteristic of mountain glaciation in particular. They have a characteristic U shape in cross-section, with steep, straight s ...
Teltow plateau Teltow [] is both a geological plateau and also a historical region in the German states of Brandenburg and Berlin. As an historical region, the Teltow was one of the eight territories out of which the March of Brandenburg was formed in the 12th an ...
to the south, was formed by meltwater flowing from ice sheets at the end of the last
Weichselian glaciation
The Weichselian glaciation was the last glacial period and its associated glaciation in northern parts of Europe. In the Alpine region it corresponds to the Würm glaciation. It was characterized by a large ice sheet (the Fenno-Scandian ice sheet) ...
. The
Spree
Spree may refer to:
Geography
* Spree (river), river in Germany
Film and television
* '' The Spree'', a 1998 American television film directed by Tommy Lee Wallace
* ''Spree'' (film), a 2020 American film starring Joe Keery
* "Spree" (''Numbers ...
follows this valley now. In Spandau, a borough in the west of Berlin, the Spree empties into the river
Havel
The Havel () is a river in northeastern Germany, flowing through the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt. It is a right tributary of the Elbe and long. However, the direct distance from its source to its mo ...
, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and the
Großer Wannsee
The Großer Wannsee (, "Greater Wannsee", "See" means lake) is a bight of the Havel river near the locality of Wannsee and Nikolassee (in the borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf), a south-western suburb of the German capital Berlin not far from Pots ...
. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the Großer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs
Reinickendorf
Reinickendorf () is the twelfth borough of Berlin. It encompasses the northwest of the city area, including the Berlin Tegel Airport, Lake Tegel, spacious settlements of detached houses as well as housing estates like Märkisches Viertel.
Subdi ...
and
Pankow
Pankow () is the most populous and the second-largest borough by area of Berlin. In Berlin's 2001 administrative reform, it was merged with the former boroughs of Prenzlauer Berg and Weißensee; the resulting borough retained the name Pankow. ...
lie on the Barnim Plateau, while most of the boroughs of
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf () is the fourth borough of Berlin, formed in an administrative reform with effect from 1 January 2001, by merging the former boroughs of Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf.
Overview
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf covers the ...
Tempelhof-Schöneberg
Tempelhof-Schöneberg () is the seventh borough of Berlin, formed in 2001 by merging the former boroughs of Tempelhof and Schöneberg. Situated in the south of the city it shares borders with the boroughs of Mitte and Friedrichshain-Kreuzber ...
, and
Neukölln
Neukölln () is one of the twelve boroughs of Berlin. It is located in the southeastern part from the city centre towards Berlin Schönefeld Airport. It was part of the former American sector under the Four-Power occupation of the city. It featu ...
lie on the Teltow Plateau.
The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Glacial Valley and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. Since 2015, the Arkenberge hills in Pankow at elevation, have been the highest point in Berlin. Through the disposal of construction debris they surpassed
Teufelsberg
Teufelsberg (; German for ''Devil's Mountain'') is a non-natural hill in Berlin, Germany, in the Grunewald locality of former West Berlin. It rises about above the surrounding Teltow plateau and above the sea level, in the north of Berlin' ...
(), which itself was made up of rubble from the ruins of the Second World War. The
Müggelberge
The Müggelberge (also formerly called the ''Müggelsberge''; en, Muggle Mountains) are a wooded line of hills with heights up to Catrin Gottschalk, Vermessungsamt Treptow-Köpenick: ' In: Bezirksamt Treptow-Köpenick von Berlin (publ.): ''Rathau ...
at elevation is the highest natural point and the lowest is the Spektesee in Spandau, at elevation.
Climate
Berlin has an
oceanic climate
An oceanic climate, also known as a marine climate, is the humid temperate climate sub-type in Köppen classification ''Cfb'', typical of west coasts in higher middle latitudes of continents, generally featuring cool summers and mild winters ...
( Köppen: ''Cfb''); the eastern part of the city has a slight continental influence (''Dfb''), one of the changes being the annual rainfall according to the
air mass
In meteorology, an air mass is a volume of air defined by its temperature and humidity. Air masses cover many hundreds or thousands of square miles, and adapt to the characteristics of the surface below them. They are classified according to l ...
es and the greater abundance during a period of the year. This type of climate features moderate summer temperatures but sometimes hot (for being semicontinental) and cold winters but not rigorous most of the time.
Due to its transitional climate zones, frosts are common in winter, and there are larger temperature differences between seasons than typical for many
oceanic climate
An oceanic climate, also known as a marine climate, is the humid temperate climate sub-type in Köppen classification ''Cfb'', typical of west coasts in higher middle latitudes of continents, generally featuring cool summers and mild winters ...
s. Furthermore, Berlin is classified as a
temperate
In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout ...
continental climate
Continental climates often have a significant annual variation in temperature (warm summers and cold winters). They tend to occur in the middle latitudes (40 to 55 north), within large landmasses where prevailing winds blow overland bringing so ...
(''Dc'') under the Trewartha climate scheme, as well as the suburbs of New York City, although the Köppen system puts them in different types.
Summers are warm and sometimes humid with average high temperatures of and lows of . Winters are cool with average high temperatures of and lows of . Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings and pavement. Temperatures can be higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg are the warmest and driest regions in Germany. Snowfall mainly occurs from December through March. The hottest month in Berlin was July 1834, with a mean temperature of and the coldest was January 1709, with a mean temperature of . The wettest month on record was July 1907, with of rainfall, whereas the driest were October 1866, November 1902, October 1908 and September 1928, all with of rainfall.
Cityscape
Berlin's history has left the city with a
polycentric
Polycentric is an English adjective, meaning "having more than one center," derived from the Greek words ''polús'' ("many") and ''kentrikós'' ("center"). Polycentricism (or polycentricity) is the abstract noun formed from polycentric. They may r ...
organization and a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings. The city's appearance today has been predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history during the 20th century. All of the national governments based in Berlin the Kingdom of Prussia, the 2nd German Empire of 1871, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, as well as the reunified Germany initiated ambitious reconstruction programs, with each adding its own distinctive style to the city's architecture.
Berlin was devastated by air raids, fires, and street battles during the Second World War, and many of the buildings that had survived in both East and West were demolished during the postwar period. Much of this demolition was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new business or residential districts and the main arteries. Much ornamentation on prewar buildings was destroyed following modernist dogmas, and in both postwar systems, as well as in the reunified Berlin, many important heritage structures have been reconstructed, including the ''Forum Fridericianum'' along with, the State Opera (1955),
Charlottenburg Palace
Schloss Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg Palace) is a Baroque palace in Berlin, located in Charlottenburg, a district of the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf borough.
The palace was built at the end of the 17th century and was greatly expanded during th ...
(1957), the monumental buildings on
Gendarmenmarkt
The Gendarmenmarkt ( en, Gut Market) is a square in Berlin and the site of an architectural ensemble including the Berlin concert hall and the French and German Churches. In the centre of the square stands a monumental statue of poet Fri ...
(1980s),
Kommandantur
This is a list of words, terms, concepts and slogans of Nazi Germany used in the historiography covering the Nazi regime.
Some words were coined by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi Party members. Other words and concepts were borrowed and appropriated, ...
(2003) and also the project to reconstruct the baroque façades of the City Palace. Many new buildings have been inspired by their historical predecessors or the general classical style of Berlin, such as
Hotel Adlon
The Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin is a luxury hotel in Berlin, Germany. It is on Unter den Linden, the main boulevard in the central Mitte district, at the corner with Pariser Platz, directly opposite the Brandenburg Gate.
The original Hotel Adlo ...
.
Clusters of
towers
A tower is a tall structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting structures.
Towers are specific ...
rise at various locations:
Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Platz (, ''Potsdam Square'') is a public square and traffic intersection in the center of Berlin, Germany, lying about south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corn ...
, the
City West
City West (formerly known as ''Neuer Westen'' ("New West") or ''Zooviertel'' ("Zoo Quarter")) is an area in the western part of central Berlin. It is one of Berlin's main commercial areas, and was the commercial centre of former West Berlin when ...
, and
Alexanderplatz
() ( en, Alexander Square) is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I, which also denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from in the no ...
, the latter two delineating the former centers of East and West Berlin, with the first representing a new Berlin of the 21st century, risen from the wastes of no-man's land of the Berlin Wall. Berlin has five of the top 50 tallest buildings in Germany.
Over one-third of the city area consists of green space, woodlands, and water. Berlin's second-largest and most popular park, the
Großer Tiergarten
The Tiergarten ( en, Animal Garden; formal German name: ( en, Greater Animal Garden)) is Berlin’s most popular inner-city park, located completely in the district of the same name. The park is in size and is among the largest urban garde ...
, is located right in the center of the city. It covers an area of 210 hectares and stretches from
Bahnhof Zoo
Berlin Zoologischer Garten station (german: Bahnhof Berlin Zoologischer Garten, colloquially Bahnhof Zoo, ) is a railway station in Berlin, Germany. It is located on the Berlin Stadtbahn railway line in the Charlottenburg district, adjacent t ...
in the City West to the
Brandenburg Gate
The Brandenburg Gate (german: Brandenburger Tor ) is an 18th-century Neoclassical architecture, neoclassical monument in Berlin, built on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II of Prussia, Frederick William II after Prussian invasion ...
in the east.
Among famous streets,
Unter den Linden
Unter den Linden (, "under the linden trees") is a boulevard in the central Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany. Running from the City Palace to Brandenburg Gate, it is named after the linden (lime in England and Ireland, not rela ...
and
Friedrichstraße
The Friedrichstraße () (lit. ''Frederick Street'') is a major culture and shopping street in central Berlin, forming the core of the Friedrichstadt neighborhood and giving the name to Berlin Friedrichstraße station. It runs from the northern pa ...
are found in the city's old city centre (and were included in the former East Berlin). Some of the major streets in City West are
Kurfürstendamm
The Kurfürstendamm (; colloquially ''Ku'damm'', ; en, Prince Elector Embankment) is one of the most famous avenues in Berlin. The street takes its name from the former ''Kurfürsten'' (prince-electors) of Brandenburg. The broad, long boulevar ...
Alexanderplatz
() ( en, Alexander Square) is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I, which also denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from in the no ...
in
Mitte
Mitte () is the first and most central borough of Berlin. The borough consists of six sub-entities: Mitte proper, Gesundbrunnen, Hansaviertel, Moabit, Tiergarten and Wedding.
It is one of the two boroughs (the other being Friedrichshain-Kre ...
is among the tallest structures in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its observation floor. Starting here, the
Karl-Marx-Allee
Karl-Marx-Allee ( en, Karl Marx Alley) is a monumental socialist boulevard built by the GDR between 1952 and 1960 in Berlin Friedrichshain and Mitte. Today the boulevard is named after Karl Marx. It should not be confused with the ''Karl-Mar ...
heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the
Socialist Classicism
Stalinist architecture, mostly known in the former Eastern Bloc as Stalinist style () or Socialist Classicism, is the architecture of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, between 1933 (when Boris Iofan's draft for the Palace o ...
style. Adjacent to this area is the
Rotes Rathaus
The Rotes Rathaus (, ''Red City Hall'') is the town hall of Berlin, located in the Mitte district on Rathausstraße near Alexanderplatz. It is the home to the governing mayor and the government (the Senate of Berlin) of the state of Berlin. The ...
(City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. In front of it is the
Neptunbrunnen
The Neptune Fountain (german: Neptunbrunnen) in Berlin was built in 1891 and was designed by Reinhold Begas. The Roman god Neptune is in the center. The four women around him represent the four main rivers of Prussia at the time the fountain was ...
, a fountain featuring a mythological group of Tritons,
personification
Personification occurs when a thing or abstraction is represented as a person, in literature or art, as a type of anthropomorphic metaphor. The type of personification discussed here excludes passing literary effects such as "Shadows hold their ...
s of the four main Prussian rivers, and
Neptune
Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the farthest known planet in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 time ...
on top of it.
The
Brandenburg Gate
The Brandenburg Gate (german: Brandenburger Tor ) is an 18th-century Neoclassical architecture, neoclassical monument in Berlin, built on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II of Prussia, Frederick William II after Prussian invasion ...
is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany; it stands as a symbol of eventful European history and of unity and peace. The
Reichstag building
The Reichstag (, ; officially: – ; en, Parliament) is a historic government building in Berlin which houses the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany's parliament.
It was constructed to house the Imperial Diet (german: Reichstag) of the ...
is the traditional seat of the German Parliament. It was remodeled by British architect
Norman Foster
Norman or Normans may refer to:
Ethnic and cultural identity
* The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries
** People or things connected with the Nor ...
in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
The
East Side Gallery
The East Side Gallery (german: East-Side-Gallery) memorial in Berlin-Friedrichshain is a permanent open-air gallery on the longest surviving section of the Berlin Wall in Mühlenstraße between the Berlin Ostbahnhof and the Oberbaumbrücke alo ...
is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division.
The
Gendarmenmarkt
The Gendarmenmarkt ( en, Gut Market) is a square in Berlin and the site of an architectural ensemble including the Berlin concert hall and the French and German Churches. In the centre of the square stands a monumental statue of poet Fri ...
is a neoclassical square in Berlin, the name of which derives from the headquarters of the famous Gens d'armes regiment located here in the 18th century. Two similarly designed cathedrals border it, the
Französischer Dom
The French (Reformed) Church of Friedrichstadt (french: Temple de la Friedrichstadt, german: Französische Friedrichstadtkirche, and commonly known as Französischer Dom, meaning 'French cathedral') is in Berlin at the Gendarmenmarkt, across the ...
with its observation platform and the Deutscher Dom. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The
Museum Island
The Museum Island (german: Museumsinsel) is a museum complex on the northern part of the Spree Island in the historic heart of Berlin. It is one of the most visited sights of Germany's capital and one of the most important museum sites in Europ ...
in the
River Spree
Spree may refer to:
Geography
* Spree (river), river in Germany
Film and television
* ''The Spree'', a 1998 American television film directed by Tommy Lee Wallace
* ''Spree'' (film), a 2020 American film starring Joe Keery
* "Spree" (''Numbers' ...
houses five museums built from 1830 to 1930 and is a
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...
World Heritage
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for ...
site. Restoration and construction of a main entrance to all museums, as well as reconstruction of the Stadtschloss continues. Also on the island and next to the
Lustgarten
The ' () is a park on Museum Island in central Berlin, near the site of the former () of which it was originally a part. At various times in its history, the park has been used as a parade ground, a place for mass rallies and a public park.
Th ...
and palace is
Berlin Cathedral
The Berlin Cathedral (german: link=yes, Berliner Dom), also known as the Evangelical Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church, is a monumental German Evangelical church and dynastic tomb ( House of Hohenzollern) on the Museum Island in centra ...
, emperor William II's ambitious attempt to create a Protestant counterpart to
St. Peter's Basilica
The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican ( it, Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano), or simply Saint Peter's Basilica ( la, Basilica Sancti Petri), is a church built in the Renaissance style located in Vatican City, the papal e ...
in Rome. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family.
St. Hedwig's Cathedral
St. Hedwig's Cathedral (german: St.-Hedwigs-Kathedrale) is a Catholic church on Bebelplatz in the historic centre of Berlin. Dedicated to Hedwig of Silesia, it was erected from 1747 to 1887 by order of Frederick the Great according to plans by ...
is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden
Unter den Linden (, "under the linden trees") is a boulevard in the central Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany. Running from the City Palace to Brandenburg Gate, it is named after the linden (lime in England and Ireland, not rela ...
is a tree-lined east–west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street, and part of
Humboldt University
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiati ...
is there.
Friedrichstraße
The Friedrichstraße () (lit. ''Frederick Street'') is a major culture and shopping street in central Berlin, forming the core of the Friedrichstadt neighborhood and giving the name to Berlin Friedrichstraße station. It runs from the northern pa ...
was Berlin's legendary street during the
Golden Twenties
The Golden Twenties ( also known as the Happy Twenties (german: Glückliche Zwanziger Jahre), was a five-year time period within the decade of the 1920s in Germany. The era began in 1924 after the end of the hyperinflation following on World W ...
. It combines 20th-century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Platz (, ''Potsdam Square'') is a public square and traffic intersection in the center of Berlin, Germany, lying about south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corn ...
is an entire quarter built from scratch after the
Wall
A wall is a structure and a surface that defines an area; carries a load; provides security, shelter, or soundproofing; or, is decorative. There are many kinds of walls, including:
* Walls in buildings that form a fundamental part of the s ...
came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the
Neue Nationalgalerie
The Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) at the Kulturforum is a museum for modern art in Berlin, with its main focus on the early 20th century. It is part of the National Gallery of the Berlin State Museums. The museum building and its s ...
and the
Berliner Philharmonie
The Berliner Philharmonie () is a concert hall in Berlin, Germany, and home to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
The Philharmonie lies on the south edge of the city's Tiergarten and just west of the former Berlin Wall. The Philharmonie is o ...
. The
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (german: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), also known as the Holocaust Memorial (German: ''Holocaust-Mahnmal''), is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by arc ...
, a
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
memorial, is to the north.
The area around
Hackescher Markt
Hackescher Markt ("Hacke's Market") is a square in the central Mitte locality of Berlin, Germany, situated at the eastern end of Oranienburger Strasse. It is an important transport hub and a starting point for the city's nightlife.
Overview ...
is home to fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the
Hackesche Höfe
The Hackesche Höfe ( en, Hacke's Courtyards) is a notable courtyard complex situated adjacent to the Hackescher Markt in the centre of Berlin. The complex consists of eight interconnected courtyards, accessed through a main arched entrance at ...
, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. The nearby New Synagogue is the center of Jewish culture.
The
Straße des 17. Juni
The Straße des 17. Juni (, en, 17th of June Street), is a street in central Berlin, the capital of Germany. Its name refers to the 1953 East German uprising, 17 June 1953 uprising in East Germany. It is the western continuation of the boule ...
, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as the central east–west axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately halfway from the Brandenburg Gate is the Großer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated in 1938–39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The
Kurfürstendamm
The Kurfürstendamm (; colloquially ''Ku'damm'', ; en, Prince Elector Embankment) is one of the most famous avenues in Berlin. The street takes its name from the former ''Kurfürsten'' (prince-electors) of Brandenburg. The broad, long boulevar ...
is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (in German: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, but mostly just known as Gedächtniskirche ) is a Protestant church affiliated with the Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia, a reg ...
at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Nearby on Tauentzienstraße is
KaDeWe
The Kaufhaus des Westens (), abbreviated to KaDeWe, is a department store in Berlin, Germany. With over of retail space and more than 380,000 articles available, it is the second-largest department store in Europe after Harrods in London. It att ...
, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The
Rathaus Schöneberg
Rathaus Schöneberg is the city hall for the borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg in Berlin. From 1949 until 1990 it served as the seat of the state senate of West Berlin and from 1949 until 1991 as the seat of the Governing Mayor.
History
The ...
Ich bin ein Berliner
"" (; "I am a Berliner") is a speech by United States President John F. Kennedy given on June 26, 1963, in West Berlin. It is one of the best-known speeches of the Cold War and among the most famous anti-communist speeches.
Twenty-two mon ...
!" speech, is in
Tempelhof-Schöneberg
Tempelhof-Schöneberg () is the seventh borough of Berlin, formed in 2001 by merging the former boroughs of Tempelhof and Schöneberg. Situated in the south of the city it shares borders with the boroughs of Mitte and Friedrichshain-Kreuzber ...
.
West of the center, Bellevue Palace is the residence of the German President.
Charlottenburg Palace
Schloss Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg Palace) is a Baroque palace in Berlin, located in Charlottenburg, a district of the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf borough.
The palace was built at the end of the 17th century and was greatly expanded during th ...
, which was burnt out in the Second World War, is the largest historical palace in Berlin.
The
Funkturm Berlin
The Berliner Funkturm or Funkturm Berlin (Berlin Radio Tower) is a former broadcasting tower in Berlin. Constructed between 1924 and 1926 to designs by the architect Heinrich Straumer, it was inaugurated on 3 September 1926, on the occasion of ...
is a lattice radio tower in the fairground area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree river is Berlin's most iconic bridge, connecting the now-combined boroughs of
Friedrichshain
Friedrichshain () is a quarter (''Ortsteil'') of the borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany. From its creation in 1920 until 2001, it was a freestanding city borough. Formerly part of East Berlin, it is adjacent to Mitte, Prenzl ...
and
Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg () is a district of Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte. During the Cold War era, it was one of the poorest areas of West Berlin, but since German reunification in 1990 it h ...
. It carries vehicles, pedestrians, and the U1
Berlin U-Bahn
The Berlin U-Bahn (; short for , "underground railway") is a rapid transit system in Berlin, the capital and largest city of Germany, and a major part of the city's public transport system. Together with the S-Bahn, a network of suburban tra ...
line. The bridge was completed in a
brick gothic
Brick Gothic (german: Backsteingotik, pl, Gotyk ceglany, nl, Baksteengotiek) is a specific style of Gothic architecture common in Northeast and Central Europe especially in the regions in and around the Baltic Sea, which do not have resourc ...
style in 1896, replacing the former wooden bridge with an upper deck for the U-Bahn. The center portion was demolished in 1945 to stop the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
from crossing. After the war, the repaired bridge served as a checkpoint and border crossing between the Soviet and American sectors, and later between East and West Berlin. In the mid-1950s, it was closed to vehicles, and after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, pedestrian traffic was heavily restricted. Following German reunification, the center portion was reconstructed with a steel frame, and U-Bahn service resumed in 1995.
Demographics
At the end of 2018, the city-state of Berlin had 3.75 million registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 4,206 inhabitants per km2. Berlin is the most populous city proper in the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...
. In 2019, the urban area of Berlin had about 4.5 million inhabitants. , the functional urban area was home to about 5.2 million people. The entire Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has a population of more than 6 million in an area of .
In 2014, the city-state Berlin had 37,368 live births (+6.6%), a record number since 1991. The number of deaths was 32,314. Almost 2.0 million households were counted in the city. 54 percent of them were single-person households. More than 337,000 families with children under the age of 18 lived in Berlin. In 2014, the German capital registered a migration surplus of approximately 40,000 people.
Nationalities
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, after the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes
The Edict of Nantes () was signed in April 1598 by King Henry IV and granted the Calvinist Protestants of France, also known as Huguenots, substantial rights in the nation, which was in essence completely Catholic. In the edict, Henry aimed pr ...
in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The
Greater Berlin Act
The Greater Berlin Act (german: Groß-Berlin-Gesetz), officially Law Regarding the Creation of the New Municipality of Berlin (german: Gesetz über die Bildung einer neuen Stadtgemeinde Berlin), was a law passed by the Prussian state government i ...
in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin and increased the population from 1.9 million to 4 million.
Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin triggered waves of immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. Berlin is home to at least 180,000 Turkish and Turkish German residents, making it the largest Turkish community outside of Turkey. In the 1990s the ''Aussiedlergesetze'' enabled immigration to Germany of some residents from the former
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
from countries of the former Soviet Union make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking community. The last decade experienced an influx from various Western countries and some African regions. A portion of the African immigrants have settled in the
Afrikanisches Viertel
The ''Afrikanisches Viertel'' ( en, African Quarter) is a neighborhood in Wedding, a locality of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. It is bounded by Müllerstraße, Seestraße, Volkspark Rehberge, Goethepark, and the border with the neighboring boroug ...
. Young Germans, EU-Europeans and Israelis have also settled in the city.
In December 2019, there were 777,345 registered residents of foreign nationality and another 542,975 German citizens with a "migration background" ''(Migrationshintergrund, MH)'', meaning they or one of their parents immigrated to Germany after 1955. Foreign residents of Berlin originate from about 190 countries. 48 percent of the residents under the age of 15 have migration background. Berlin in 2009 was estimated to have 100,000 to 250,000 unregistered inhabitants. Boroughs of Berlin with a significant number of migrants or foreign born population are
Mitte
Mitte () is the first and most central borough of Berlin. The borough consists of six sub-entities: Mitte proper, Gesundbrunnen, Hansaviertel, Moabit, Tiergarten and Wedding.
It is one of the two boroughs (the other being Friedrichshain-Kre ...
,
Neukölln
Neukölln () is one of the twelve boroughs of Berlin. It is located in the southeastern part from the city centre towards Berlin Schönefeld Airport. It was part of the former American sector under the Four-Power occupation of the city. It featu ...
and
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg () is the second borough of Berlin, formed in 2001 by merging the former East Berlin borough of Friedrichshain and the former West Berlin borough of Kreuzberg. The historic Oberbaum Bridge, formerly a Berlin border c ...
.
There are more than 20 non-indigenous communities with a population of at least 10,000 people, including Turkish, Polish, Russian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Serbian, Italian, Indian, Bosnian, Vietnamese, American, Romanian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Chinese, Austrian, Ukrainian, French, British, Spanish, Israeli, Thai, Iranian, Egyptian and Syrian communities.
Languages
German is the official and predominant spoken language in Berlin. It is a
West Germanic language
The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages). The West Germanic branch is classically subdivided into t ...
that derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
language family. German is one of 24 languages of the European Union, and one of the three
working language
A working language (also procedural language) is a language that is given a unique legal status in a supranational company, society, state or other body or organization as its primary means of communication. It is primarily the language of the dai ...
s of the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...
.
Berlinerisch or Berlinisch is not a dialect linguistically. It is spoken in Berlin and the surrounding metropolitan area. It originates from a Brandenburgish variant. The dialect is now seen more like a
sociolect
In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a form of language (non-standard dialect, restricted register) or a set of lexical items used by a socioeconomic class, profession, an age group, or other social group.
Sociolects involve both passive acquisiti ...
, largely through increased immigration and trends among the educated population to speak
standard German
Standard High German (SHG), less precisely Standard German or High German (not to be confused with High German dialects, more precisely Upper German dialects) (german: Standardhochdeutsch, , or, in Switzerland, ), is the standardized variety ...
in everyday life.
The most commonly spoken foreign languages in Berlin are Turkish, Polish, English, Persian, Arabic, Italian, Bulgarian, Russian, Romanian, Kurdish, Serbo-Croatian, French, Spanish and Vietnamese. Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, and Serbo-Croatian are heard more often in the western part due to the large Middle Eastern and former-Yugoslavian communities. Polish, English, Russian, and Vietnamese have more native speakers in East Berlin.
Religion
On the report of the 2011 census, approximately 37 percent of the population reported being members of a legally-recognized church or religious organization. The rest either did not belong to such an organization, or there was no information available about them.
The largest religious denomination recorded in 2010 was the
Protestant
Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
united church
A united church, also called a uniting church, is a church formed from the merger or other form of church union of two or more different Protestant Christian denominations.
Historically, unions of Protestant churches were enforced by the state ...
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
had 9.1 percent of residents registered as its members. About 2.7% of the population identify with other Christian denominations (mostly
Eastern Orthodox
Eastern Orthodoxy, also known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity, is one of the three main branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholicism and Protestantism.
Like the Pentarchy of the first millennium, the mainstream (or " canonical ...
, but also various Protestants). According to the Berlin residents register, in 2018 14.9 percent were members of the Evangelical Church, and 8.5 percent were members of the Catholic Church. The government keeps a register of members of these churches for tax purposes, because it collects
church tax
A church tax is a tax collected by the state from members of some religious denominations to provide financial support of churches, such as the salaries of its clergy and to pay the operating cost of the church.
The constitution of a number o ...
on behalf of the churches. It does not keep records of members of other religious organizations which may collect their own church tax, in this way.
In 2009, approximately 249,000
Muslim
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
s were reported by the Office of Statistics to be members of mosques and Islamic religious organizations in Berlin, while in 2016, the newspaper ''
Der Tagesspiegel
''Der Tagesspiegel'' (meaning ''The Daily Mirror'') is a German daily newspaper. It has regional correspondent offices in Washington D.C. and Potsdam. It is the only major newspaper in the capital to have increased its circulation, now 148,000, ...
'' estimated that about 350,000 Muslims observed
Ramadan
, type = islam
, longtype = Religious
, image = Ramadan montage.jpg
, caption=From top, left to right: A crescent moon over Sarıçam, Turkey, marking the beginning of the Islamic month of Ramadan. Ramadan Quran reading in Bandar Torkaman, Iran. ...
in Berlin. In 2019, about 437,000 registered residents, 11.6% of the total, reported having a migration background from one of the
Member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation founded in 1969 has 57 members, 56 of which are also member states of the United Nations with 49 countries being Muslim majority countries. Some, especially in West Africa, are – though with large Muslim ...
. Between 1992 and 2011 the Muslim population almost doubled.
About 0.9% of Berliners belong to other religions. Of the estimated population of 30,000–45,000 Jewish residents, approximately 12,000 are registered members of religious organizations.
Berlin is the seat of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Berlin and EKBO's elected chairperson is titled the bishop of EKBO. Furthermore, Berlin is the seat of many Orthodox cathedrals, such as the Cathedral of St. Boris the Baptist, one of the two seats of the
Bulgarian Orthodox
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church ( bg, Българска православна църква, translit=Balgarska pravoslavna tsarkva), legally the Patriarchate of Bulgaria ( bg, Българска патриаршия, links=no, translit=Balgarsk ...
Diocese of Western and Central Europe, and the Resurrection of Christ Cathedral of the Diocese of Berlin (Patriarchate of Moscow).
The faithful of the different religions and denominations maintain many places of worship in Berlin. The Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin. There are 36
Baptist
Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only ( believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul c ...
New Apostolic Church
The New Apostolic Church (NAC) is a Christian denomination, Christian church that split from the Catholic Apostolic Church during an 1863 schism in Hamburg, Germany.
The church has existed since 1863 in Germany and since 1897 in the Ne ...
es, 15
United Methodist
The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelica ...
churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, four Churches of Christ, Scientist (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 11th), six congregations of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Christianity, Christian church that considers itself to be the Restorationism, restoration of the ...
, an
Old Catholic
The terms Old Catholic Church, Old Catholics, Old-Catholic churches or Old Catholic movement designate "any of the groups of Western Christians who believe themselves to maintain in complete loyalty the doctrine and traditions of the Great Chu ...
church, and an
Anglican
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of t ...
church in Berlin. Berlin has more than 80 mosques, ten synagogues, and two
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
temples.
Government and politics
City state
Since
reunification
A political union is a type of political entity which is composed of, or created from, smaller polities, or the process which achieves this. These smaller polities are usually called federated states and federal territories in a federal governmen ...
on 3 October 1990, Berlin has been one of the three city states in Germany among the present 16 states of Germany. The
House of Representatives
House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...
(''Abgeordnetenhaus'') functions as the city and state parliament, which has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the
Senate of Berlin
The Senate of Berlin (german: Berliner Senat) is the executive body governing the city of Berlin, which at the same time is a state of Germany. According to the the Senate consists of the Governing Mayor of Berlin and up to ten senators appoint ...
(''Senat von Berlin''). The Senate consists of the Governing Mayor (''Regierender Bürgermeister''), and up to ten senators holding ministerial positions, two of them holding the title of "Mayor" (''Bürgermeister'') as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2015 exceeded €24.5 ($30.0) billion including a budget surplus of €205 ($240) million. The state owns extensive assets, including administrative and government buildings, real estate companies, as well as stakes in the Olympic Stadium, swimming pools, housing companies, and numerous public enterprises and subsidiary companies.
The
Social Democratic Party
The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology.
Active parties
For ...
(SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election. Since the 2016 state election, there has been a coalition between the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Left Party.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the City of Berlin (''Oberbürgermeister der Stadt'') and Minister President of the State of Berlin (''Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes''). The office of the Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2021, this office has been held by
Franziska Giffey
Franziska Giffey (, Süllke, born 3 May 1978) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as Governing Mayor of Berlin since December 2021, the first woman elected to this position. She previously served as ...
of the Social Democrats.
Boroughs
Berlin is subdivided into 12 boroughs or districts (''Bezirke''). Each borough has several subdistricts or neighborhoods (''Ortsteile''), which have roots in much older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. These subdistricts became urbanized and incorporated into the city later on. Many residents strongly identify with their neighborhoods, colloquially called '' Kiez''. At present, Berlin consists of 96 subdistricts, which are commonly made up of several smaller residential areas or quarters.
Each borough is governed by a borough council (''Bezirksamt'') consisting of five councilors (''Bezirksstadträte'') including the borough's mayor (''Bezirksbürgermeister''). The council is elected by the borough assembly (''Bezirksverordnetenversammlung''). However, the individual boroughs are not independent municipalities, but subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough's mayors make up the council of mayors (''Rat der Bürgermeister''), which is led by the city's Governing Mayor and advises the Senate. The neighborhoods have no local government bodies.
Twin towns – sister cities
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities.
Town twinning
A sister city or a twin town relationship is a form of legal or social agreement between two geographically and politically distinct localities for the purpose of promoting cultural and commercial ties.
While there are early examples of inter ...
between Berlin and other cities began with its sister city Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification but later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the Western World and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republi ...
and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as
Beirut
Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...
, Belgrade, São Paulo,
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan a ...
, Helsinki,
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...
,
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a Megacity#List of megacities, megacity, and is List of urban areas by p ...
,
Mumbai
Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the secon ...
, Oslo,
Hanoi
Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi i ...
, Shanghai,
Seoul
Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the Capital city, capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the North Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea ...
,
Sofia
Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and h ...
,
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...
, New York City and
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, and Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin is twinned with:
*Los Angeles, United States (1967)
*
Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...
, Poland (1991)
*Moscow, Russia (1991)
*
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
, Belgium (1992)
*
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...
, Hungary (1992)
*
Tashkent
Tashkent (, uz, Toshkent, Тошкент/, ) (from russian: Ташкент), or Toshkent (; ), also historically known as Chach is the capital and largest city of Uzbekistan. It is the most populous city in Central Asia, with a population of 2 ...
, Uzbekistan (1993)
*
Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
, Mexico (1993)
*
Jakarta
Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital city, capital and list of Indonesian cities by population, largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coa ...
, Indonesia (1993)
*Beijing, China (1994)
*Tokyo, Japan (1994)
*
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
, Argentina (1994)
*
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
, Czech Republic (1995)
*
Windhoek
Windhoek (, , ) is the capital and largest city of Namibia. It is located in central Namibia in the Khomas Highland plateau area, at around above sea level, almost exactly at the country's geographical centre. The population of Windhoek in 202 ...
, Namibia (2000)
*London, United Kingdom (2000)
Since 1987, Berlin also has an official partnership with Paris, France. Every Berlin borough also established its own twin towns. For example, the borough of
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg () is the second borough of Berlin, formed in 2001 by merging the former East Berlin borough of Friedrichshain and the former West Berlin borough of Kreuzberg. The historic Oberbaum Bridge, formerly a Berlin border c ...
has a partnership with the Israeli city of
Kiryat Yam
Kiryat Yam ( he, קִרְיַת יָם, lit. ''Sea Town'') is a city in the Haifa Bay district of Israel, north of Haifa. One of a group of Haifa suburbs known as the Krayot, it is located on the Mediterranean coast, between Kiryat Haim and the T ...
.
Capital city
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany. The
President of Germany
The president of Germany, officially the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany (german: link=no, Bundespräsident der Bundesrepublik Deutschland),The official title within Germany is ', with ' being added in international corres ...
, whose functions are mainly ceremonial under the
German constitution
The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (german: Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland) is the constitution of the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany.
The West German Constitution was approved in Bonn on 8 May 1949 an ...
, has their official residence in Bellevue Palace. Berlin is the
seat
A seat is a place to sit. The term may encompass additional features, such as back, armrest, head restraint but also headquarters in a wider sense.
Types of seat
The following are examples of different kinds of seat:
* Armchair, a chair ...
of the
German Chancellor
The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany,; often shortened to ''Bundeskanzler''/''Bundeskanzlerin'', / is the head of the federal government of Germany and the commander in chief of the Ge ...
(Prime Minister), housed in the
Chancellery building
The Federal Chancellery building in Bonn was used from 1976 to 1999 as the seat of the Federal Chancellery of the Federal Republic of Germany, and since 2006 as the seat of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. It is l ...
, the ''Bundeskanzleramt''. Facing the Chancellery is the
Bundestag
The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Comm ...
, the German Parliament, housed in the renovated
Reichstag building
The Reichstag (, ; officially: – ; en, Parliament) is a historic government building in Berlin which houses the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany's parliament.
It was constructed to house the Imperial Diet (german: Reichstag) of the ...
since the government's relocation to Berlin in 1998. The Bundesrat ("federal council", performing the function of an
upper house
An upper house is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the lower house.''Bicameralism'' (1997) by George Tsebelis The house formally designated as the upper house is usually smaller and often has more restric ...
Prussian House of Lords
The Prussian House of Lords (german: Preußisches Herrenhaus) in Berlin was the upper house of the Landtag of Prussia (german: Preußischer Landtag), the parliament of Prussia from 1850 to 1918. Together with the lower house, the House of Re ...
. The total annual federal budget managed by the German government exceeded €310 ($375) billion in 2013.
File:07.08.21.Bundeskanzleramt.jpg, The Federal Chancellery building, seat of the
Chancellor of Germany
The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany,; often shortened to ''Bundeskanzler''/''Bundeskanzlerin'', / is the head of the federal government of Germany and the commander in chief of the Ge ...
File:Berlin reichstag west panorama.jpg, The Reichstag, seat of the
Bundestag
The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Comm ...
File:Bellevue Palace Berlin 02-14.jpg,
Schloss Bellevue
Bellevue Palace (german: Schloss Bellevue, ), located in Berlin's Tiergarten district, has been the official residence of the President of Germany since 1994. The schloss is situated on the banks of the Spree river, near the Berlin Victory Co ...
, seat of the
President of Germany
The president of Germany, officially the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany (german: link=no, Bundespräsident der Bundesrepublik Deutschland),The official title within Germany is ', with ' being added in international corres ...
Prussian House of Lords
The Prussian House of Lords (german: Preußisches Herrenhaus) in Berlin was the upper house of the Landtag of Prussia (german: Preußischer Landtag), the parliament of Prussia from 1850 to 1918. Together with the lower house, the House of Re ...
, the seat of the
Bundesrat of Germany
The German Bundesrat ( lit. Federal Council; ) is a legislative body that represents the sixteen ''Länder'' (federated states) of Germany at the federal level (German: ''Bundesebene''). The Bundesrat meets at the former Prussian House of Lord ...
government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government i ...
and Bundestag to Berlin was mostly completed in 1999. However, some ministries, as well as some minor departments, stayed in the
federal city
The term federal city is a title for certain cities in Germany, Switzerland, and Russia.
Germany
In Germany, the former West German capital Bonn has been designated with the unique title of federal city (''Bundesstadt''). Since 28 April 1994, it ...
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...
, the former capital of West Germany. Discussions about moving the remaining ministries and departments to Berlin continue. The
Federal Foreign Office
, logo = DEgov-AA-Logo en.svg
, logo_width = 260 px
, image = Auswaertiges Amt Berlin Eingang.jpg
, picture_width = 300px
, image_caption = Entrance to the Foreign Office building
, headquarters = Werderscher Mark ...
and the ministries and departments of
Defense
Defense or defence may refer to:
Tactical, martial, and political acts or groups
* Defense (military), forces primarily intended for warfare
* Civil defense, the organizing of civilians to deal with emergencies or enemy attacks
* Defense indus ...
Finance
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of f ...
Health
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organ ...
, Transport and Digital Infrastructure and Education and Research are based in the capital.
Berlin hosts in total 158 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of many think tanks, trade unions, nonprofit organizations, lobbying groups, and professional associations. Due to the influence and international partnerships of the Federal Republic of Germany, the capital city has become a significant center of German and European affairs. Frequent official visits and diplomatic consultations among governmental representatives and national leaders are common in contemporary Berlin.
Economy
In 2018, the GDP of Berlin totaled €147 billion, an increase of 3.1% over the previous year. Berlin's economy is dominated by the
service sector
The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the second ...
, with around 84% of all companies doing business in services. In 2015, the total labor force in Berlin was 1.85 million. The unemployment rate reached a 24-year low in November 2015 and stood at 10.0%. From 2012 to 2015 Berlin, as a German state, had the highest annual employment growth rate. Around 130,000 jobs were added in this period.
Important economic sectors in Berlin include life sciences, transportation, information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology, environmental services, construction, e-commerce, retail, hotel business, and medical engineering.
Research and development have economic significance for the city. Several major corporations like Volkswagen, Pfizer, and SAP operate innovation laboratories in the city.
The Science and Business Park in Adlershof is the largest technology park in Germany measured by revenue. Within the
Eurozone
The euro area, commonly called eurozone (EZ), is a currency union of 19 member states of the European Union (EU) that have adopted the euro (€) as their primary currency and sole legal tender, and have thus fully implemented EMU pol ...
, Berlin has become a center for business relocation and international
investment
Investment is the dedication of money to purchase of an asset to attain an increase in value over a period of time. Investment requires a sacrifice of some present asset, such as time, money, or effort.
In finance, the purpose of investing is ...
s.
Companies
Many German and international companies have business or service centers in the city. For several years Berlin has been recognized as a major center of business founders. In 2015, Berlin generated the most venture capital for young
startup companies
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...
in Europe.
Among the 10 largest employers in Berlin are the City-State of Berlin,
Deutsche Bahn
The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder.
describes itself as the ...
, the hospital providers
Charité
The Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Charité – Berlin University of Medicine) is one of Europe's largest university hospitals, affiliated with Humboldt University and Free University Berlin. With numerous Collaborative Research C ...
and
Vivantes
The Vivantes Hospital Group is a state-owned healthcare company operating hospitals, primary health care centers, nursing facilities and other medical centers in Berlin. The company runs 10 hospitals with total capacity of about 6,000 beds and ...
, the Federal Government of Germany, the local public transport provider BVG,
Siemens
Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad.
The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', ''E ...
and
Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom AG (; short form often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a German telecommunications company that is headquartered in Bonn and is the largest telecommunications provider in Europe by revenue. Deutsche Telekom was ...
.
Siemens, a Global 500 and DAX-listed company is partly headquartered in Berlin. Other DAX-listed companies headquartered in Berlin are the property company Deutsche Wohnen and the online food delivery service
Delivery Hero
Delivery Hero is a German multinational online food-delivery service based in Berlin, Germany. The company operates in 50+ countries internationally in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and partners with 500,000+ restaurants. Deli ...
. The national railway operator
Deutsche Bahn
The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder.
describes itself as the ...
, Europe's largest digital publisher
Axel Springer
Axel Cäsar Springer (2 May 1912 – 22 September 1985) was a German publisher and founder of what is now Axel Springer SE, the largest media publishing firm in Europe. By the early 1960s his print titles dominated the West German daily press ma ...
as well as the
MDAX
The MDAX is a stock index which lists German companies trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The index is calculated by Deutsche Börse.
Until 2021 included the 60 Prime Standard shares from sectors that rank immediately below (in value of m ...
-listed firms
Zalando
Zalando SE is a publicly traded German online retailer of shoes, fashion and beauty. The company was founded in 2008 by David Schneider and Robert Gentz and has more than 50 million active users in 25 European markets. Zalando is active in a vari ...
and HelloFresh and also have their main headquarters in the city. Among the largest international corporations who have their German or European headquarters in Berlin are
Bombardier Transportation
Bombardier Transportation was a Canadian-German rolling stock and rail transport manufacturer, headquartered in Berlin, Germany.
It was one of the world's largest companies in the rail vehicle and equipment manufacturing and servicing industry ...
,
Securing Energy for Europe
SEFE Securing Energy for Europe GmbH, a company registered in Berlin, Germany, is headquarters of a diversified conglomerate, comprises 40 entities operating in more than 20 countries in Europe, Asia and North America. Under the former name Gazprom ...
,
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance bar, temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pembe ...
,
Pfizer
Pfizer Inc. ( ) is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in 1849 in New York by two German entrepreneurs, Charles Pfize ...
,
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
and
TotalEnergies
TotalEnergies SE is a French multinational integrated energy and petroleum company founded in 1924 and one of the seven supermajor oil companies. Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas exploration and ...
.
As of 2018, the three largest banks headquartered in the capital were
Deutsche Kreditbank
Deutsche Kreditbank (DKB) is the second-largest direct bank in Germany with 4.5 million customers, fully owned by Bayerische Landesbank. In 2018 the company, with its parent company BayernLB, ranked 7th on the list of the biggest banks in Ger ...
,
Landesbank Berlin
Landesbank Berlin Holding (formerly ''Bankgesellschaft Berlin''; ) is a large commercial bank based in Berlin, Germany. It is the holding company of the Berliner Sparkasse and Landesbank. In 2007, LBB was taken over by the Deutscher Sparkassen ...
and
Berlin Hyp
The Berlin Hyp AG, based in Berlin, is one of the large German real estate and mortgage banks. The bank was created in 1996 from the merger of ''Berliner Hypotheken- und Pfandbriefbank AG'' and ''Braunschweig-Hannoversche Hypothekenbank AG''.
T ...
.
Mercedes-Benz Group
The Mercedes-Benz Group AG (previously named Daimler-Benz, DaimlerChrysler and Daimler) is a German multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of the world's leading car manufacture ...
manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. In 2022, American electric car manufacturer Tesla opened its first European Gigafactory outside the city borders in Grünheide (Mark), Brandenburg. The Pharmaceuticals division of
Bayer
Bayer AG (, commonly pronounced ; ) is a German multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of business include pharmaceutic ...
and
Berlin Chemie
Berlin-Chemie AG is a German pharmaceutical company based in Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Menarini Group.
History
Berlin-Chemie considers the establishment of a plant for the laboratory preparations of the Chemical factory of Kahlbaum in ...
are major pharmaceutical companies in the city.
Tourism and conventions
Berlin had 788 hotels with 134,399 beds in 2014. The city recorded 28.7 million overnight hotel stays and 11.9 million hotel guests in 2014. Tourism figures have more than doubled within the last ten years and Berlin has become the third-most-visited city destination in Europe. Some of the most visited places in Berlin include:
Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Platz (, ''Potsdam Square'') is a public square and traffic intersection in the center of Berlin, Germany, lying about south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corn ...
,
Brandenburger Tor
The Brandenburg Gate (german: Brandenburger Tor ) is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin, built on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II after restoring the Orangist power by suppressing the Dutch popular unrest. On ...
Alexanderplatz
() ( en, Alexander Square) is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I, which also denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from in the no ...
Zoologischer Garten
A zoo (short for zoological garden; also called an animal park or menagerie) is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for conservation purposes.
The term ''zoological garden'' refers to zool ...
Mauerpark
Mauerpark is a public linear park in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district. The name translates to "Wall Park", referring to its status as a former part of the Berlin Wall and its Death Strip. The park is located at the border of Prenzlauer Berg ...
,
Botanical Garden
A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens, an ...
,
Französischer Dom
The French (Reformed) Church of Friedrichstadt (french: Temple de la Friedrichstadt, german: Französische Friedrichstadtkirche, and commonly known as Französischer Dom, meaning 'French cathedral') is in Berlin at the Gendarmenmarkt, across the ...
, Deutscher Dom and Holocaust-Mahnmal. The largest visitor groups are from Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and the United States.
According to figures from the
International Congress and Convention Association
The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) was founded in 1963 by a group of travel agents to exchange information on international congresses and conventions.
Headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the ICCA is a nonprof ...
in 2015, Berlin became the leading organizer of conferences globally, hosting 195 international meetings. Some of these congress events take place on venues such as CityCube Berlin or the Berlin Congress Center (bcc).
The Messe Berlin (also known as Berlin ExpoCenter City) is the main convention organizing company in the city. Its main exhibition area covers more than . Several large-scale trade fairs like the consumer electronics trade fair
IFA
IFA or Ifa may refer to:
Organisations
Economics
* Independent financial adviser, a type of financial services professional in the UK
* Index Fund Advisors
* Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, representing actuaries in the UK
* Institute of Ac ...
, the
ILA Berlin Air Show
The ILA Berlin Air Show (German: Internationale Luft- und Raumfahrtausstellung (ILA)) combines a major trade exhibition for the aerospace and defence industries with a public airshow.
It is held every even year at the new Berlin ExpoCenter Airp ...
, the
Berlin Fashion Week
Berlin Fashion Week (''Berliner Modewoche'') is a fashion week held twice annually (in January and July) in Berlin, Germany. Since its establishment in July 2007 it has gained great international attention for its many creative young designers wh ...
(including the ''Premium Berlin'' and the ''Panorama Berlin''), the
Green Week
Green week, or the green holidays, is a traditional Slavs, Slavic seasonal festival celebrated in early June. It is closely linked with the cult of the dead and the spring agricultural rites. In Eastern European villages, the seven weeks following ...
, the ''Fruit Logistica'', the transport fair InnoTrans, the tourism fair ITB and the adult entertainment and erotic fair
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...
are held annually in the city, attracting a significant number of business visitors.
Creative industries
The creative arts and entertainment business is an important part of Berlin's economy. The sector comprises music, film, advertising, architecture, art, design,
fashion
Fashion is a form of self-expression and autonomy at a particular period and place and in a specific context, of clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body posture. The term implies a look defined by the fash ...
, performing arts, publishing, R&D, software, TV, radio, and
video games
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...
.
In 2014, around 30,500 creative companies operated in the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan region, predominantly
SMEs
Superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) systems store energy in the magnetic field created by the flow of direct current in a superconducting coil which has been cryogenically cooled to a temperature below its superconducting critical ...
. Generating a revenue of 15.6 billion Euro and 6% of all private economic sales, the culture industry grew from 2009 to 2014 at an average rate of 5.5% per year.
Berlin is an important centre in the European and German film industry. It is home to more than 1,000 film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The historic
Babelsberg Studios
Babelsberg Film Studio (german: Filmstudio Babelsberg), located in Potsdam-Babelsberg outside Berlin, Germany, is the second oldest large-scale film studio in the world only preceded by the Danish Nordisk Film (est. 1906), producing films since ...
and the production company
UFA
Ufa ( ba, Өфө , Öfö; russian: Уфа́, r=Ufá, p=ʊˈfa) is the largest city and capital city, capital of Bashkortostan, Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Belaya River (Kama), Belaya and Ufa River, Ufa rivers, in the centre-n ...
are adjacent to Berlin in
Potsdam
Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of ...
. The city is also home of the German Film Academy (Deutsche Filmakademie), founded in 2003, and the
European Film Academy
The European Film Academy is an initiative of a group of European filmmakers who came together in Berlin on the occasion of the first presentation of the European Film Awards in November 1988.
The Academy—under the name of European Cinema Soc ...
, founded in 1988.
Media
Berlin is home to many magazine, newspaper, book, and scientific/academic publishers and their associated service industries. In addition, around 20 news agencies, more than 90 regional daily newspapers and their websites, as well as the Berlin offices of more than 22 national publications such as
Der Spiegel
''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
, and
Die Zeit
''Die Zeit'' (, "The Time") is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles.
History
Th ...
reinforce the capital's position as Germany's epicenter for influential debate. Therefore, many international journalists, bloggers, and writers live and work in the city.
Berlin is the central location to several international and regional television and radio stations. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters in Berlin as well as the commercial broadcasters
MTV Europe
MTV Global (formerly as MTV Europe) is the international version of the American TV channel MTV, a 24-hour music and entertainment TV channel that began broadcasting on August 1, 1987, as part of the worldwide MTV network.
Initially, MTV serv ...
Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave" in English), abbreviated to DW, is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite television service cons ...
has its TV production unit in Berlin, and most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city including ZDF and RTL.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local
broadsheet
A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long vertical pages, typically of . Other common newspaper formats include the smaller Berliner and tabloid–compact formats.
Description
Many broadsheets measure roughly ...
s (''
Berliner Morgenpost
''Berliner Morgenpost'' is a German newspaper, based and mainly read in Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous c ...
'', ''
Berliner Zeitung
The ''Berliner Zeitung'' (, ''Berlin Newspaper'') is a daily newspaper based in Berlin, Germany. Founded in East Germany in 1945, it is the only East German paper to achieve national prominence since reunification. It is published by Berliner ...
'', ''
Der Tagesspiegel
''Der Tagesspiegel'' (meaning ''The Daily Mirror'') is a German daily newspaper. It has regional correspondent offices in Washington D.C. and Potsdam. It is the only major newspaper in the capital to have increased its circulation, now 148,000, ...
''), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as ''
Die Welt
''Die Welt'' ("The World") is a German national daily newspaper, published as a broadsheet by Axel Springer SE.
''Die Welt'' is the flagship newspaper of the Axel Springer publishing group. Its leading competitors are the '' Frankfurter ...
'', ''
Neues Deutschland
''Neues Deutschland'' (''nd''; en, New Germany, sometimes stylized in lowercase letters) is a left-wing German daily newspaper, headquartered in Berlin.
For 43 years it was the official party newspaper of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany ...
'', and ''
Die Tageszeitung
''Die Tageszeitung'' (, “The Daily Newspaper”), is counted as being one of modern Germany's most important newspapers and amongst the top seven. taz is stylized as ''die tageszeitung'' and commonly referred to as ''taz'', is a cooperative-own ...
''. The '' Exberliner'', a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical and
La Gazette de Berlin
''La Gazette de Berlin'' is the French-language newspaper published and circulated in Germany each month. Published by Régis Présent-Griot, the target audience are the 400,000 francophones in Germany. The first edition was issued on 1 June 2006. ...
a French-language newspaper.
Berlin is also the headquarter of major German-language publishing houses like
Walter de Gruyter
Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature.
History
The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...
,
Springer
Springer or springers may refer to:
Publishers
* Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag.
** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...
, the Ullstein Verlagsgruppe (publishing group), Suhrkamp, and Cornelsen are all based in Berlin. Each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Quality of life
According to Mercer, Berlin ranked number 13 in the Quality of living city ranking in 2019.
According to ''Monocle'', Berlin occupies the position of the 6th-most-livable city in the world.
Economist Intelligence Unit
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is the research and analysis division of the Economist Group, providing forecasting and advisory services through research and analysis, such as monthly country reports, five-year country economic forecasts, ...
ranks Berlin number 21 of all global cities. Berlin is number 8 at the
Global Power City Index
Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003
* ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007
* ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989
* ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015
* Bruno ...
.
In 2019, Berlin has the best future prospects of all cities in Germany, according to HWWI and
Berenberg Bank
Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. KG, commonly known as Berenberg Bank and also branded as simply Berenberg, is a multinational full-service investment bank based in Hamburg, Germany.
It was founded by the Flemish Berenberg family in 1590 () ...
. According to the 2019 study by Forschungsinstitut Prognos, Berlin was ranked number 92 of all 401 regions in Germany. It is also the 4th ranked region in former
East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In t ...
after
Jena
Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a po ...
,
Dresden
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...
and
Potsdam
Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of ...
.
Infrastructure
Transport
Roads
Berlin's transport infrastructure is highly complex, providing a diverse range of urban mobility. A total of 979 bridges cross of inner-city waterways. of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways (). In 2013, 1.344 million motor vehicles were registered in the city. With 377 cars per 1000 residents in 2013 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a Western global city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita. In 2012, around 7,600 mostly beige colored
taxicab
A taxi, also known as a taxicab or simply a cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choi ...
s were in service. Since 2011, a number of app based
e-car
An electric vehicle (EV) is a vehicle that uses one or more electric motors for propulsion. It can be powered by a collector system, with electricity from extravehicular sources, or it can be powered autonomously by a battery (sometimes ch ...
and
e-scooter
A motorized scooter is a stand-up scooter powered by either a small utility internal combustion engine or a small electric hub motor in its front and/or rear wheel. Classified as a form of micro-mobility, they are generally designed with a lar ...
sharing services have evolved.
Rail
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines of the provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain.
The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from ...
. The is the largest
grade-separated
In civil engineering (more specifically highway engineering), grade separation is a method of aligning a junction of two or more surface transport axes at different heights (grades) so that they will not disrupt the traffic flow on other tr ...
railway station in Europe. runs high speed
Intercity-Express
The Intercity Express (commonly known as ICE ()) is a system of high-speed trains predominantly running in Germany. It also serves some destinations in Austria, Denmark (ceased in 2017 but planned to resume in 2022), France, Belgium, Switzerl ...
trains to domestic destinations like ,
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...
,
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...
, , and others. It also runs an airport express rail service, as well as trains to several international destinations like
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, Prague, ,
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...
,
Wrocław
Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, r ...
,
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...
and
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...
.
Water transport
Berlin is connected to the
Elbe
The Elbe (; cs, Labe ; nds, Ilv or ''Elv''; Upper and dsb, Łobjo) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Re ...
and
Oder
The Oder ( , ; Czech, Lower Sorbian and ; ) is a river in Central Europe. It is Poland's second-longest river in total length and third-longest within its borders after the Vistula and Warta. The Oder rises in the Czech Republic and flows ...
rivers via the
Spree
Spree may refer to:
Geography
* Spree (river), river in Germany
Film and television
* '' The Spree'', a 1998 American television film directed by Tommy Lee Wallace
* ''Spree'' (film), a 2020 American film starring Joe Keery
* "Spree" (''Numbers ...
and the
Havel
The Havel () is a river in northeastern Germany, flowing through the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt. It is a right tributary of the Elbe and long. However, the direct distance from its source to its mo ...
rivers. There are no frequent passenger connections to and from Berlin by water, but some of the freight is transported via waterways. Berlin's largest harbour, the Westhafen, is located in the district of
Moabit
Moabit () is an inner city locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2016, around 77,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial and working-class neighbourhood ...
. It is a transhipment and storage site for inland shipping with a growing importance.
Intercity buses
Similarly to other German cities, there is an increasing quantity of intercity bus services. The city has more than 10 stations that run buses to destinations throughout Germany and Europe, being the biggest station.
Public transport
The (BVG) and the (DB) manage several extensive urban public transport systems.
Travelers can access all modes of transport with a single ticket.
Public transport in Berlin has a long and complicated history because of the 20th-century division of the city, where movement between the two halves was not served. Since
1989
File:1989 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Cypress Street Viaduct, Cypress structure collapses as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing motorists below; The proposal document for the World Wide Web is submitted; The Exxo ...
, the transport network has been developed extensively; however, it still contains early 20th century traits, such as the U1.
Airports
Berlin is served by one commercial international airport:
Berlin Brandenburg Airport
Berlin Brandenburg Airport ''Willy Brandt'' (german: Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg "Willy Brandt", , ) is an international airport in Schönefeld, just south of the German capital Berlin in the state of Brandenburg. Named after the former ...
(BER), located just outside Berlin's south-eastern border, in the state of Brandenburg. It began construction in 2006, with the intention of replacing Airport (TXL) and Airport (SXF) as the single commercial airport of Berlin. Previously set to open in 2012, after extensive delays and cost overruns, it opened for commercial operations in October 2020. The planned initial capacity of around 27 million passengers per year is to be further developed to bring the terminal capacity to approximately 55 million per year by 2040.
Before the opening of the BER in Brandenburg, Berlin was served by Tegel Airport and Schönefeld Airport. Tegel Airport was within the city limits, and Schönefeld Airport was located at the same site as the BER. Both airports together handled 29.5 million passengers in 2015. In 2014, 67 airlines served 163 destinations in 50 countries from Berlin. Airport was a focus city for
Lufthansa
Deutsche Lufthansa AG (), commonly shortened to Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Germany. When combined with its subsidiaries, it is the second- largest airline in Europe in terms of passengers carried. Lufthansa is one of the five founding ...
and
Eurowings
Eurowings GmbH is a German low-cost carrier headquartered in Düsseldorf and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group. Founded in 1996, it serves a network of domestic and European destinations and formerly also operated some long-hau ...
while Schönefeld served as an important destination for airlines like ,
easyJet
EasyJet plc (styled as easyJet) is a British multinational low-cost airline group headquartered at London Luton Airport. It operates domestic and international scheduled services on 927 routes in more than 34 countries via its affiliate air ...
and
Ryanair
Ryanair is an Irish ultra low-cost carrier founded in 1984. It is headquartered in Swords, Dublin, Ireland and has its primary operational bases at Dublin and London Stansted airports. It forms the largest part of the Ryanair Holdings famil ...
. Until 2008, Berlin was also served by the smaller
Tempelhof Airport
Berlin Tempelhof Airport (german: Flughafen Berlin-Tempelhof) was one of the first airports in Berlin, Germany. Situated in the south-central Berlin borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg, the airport ceased operating in 2008 amid controversy, leav ...
, which functioned as a city airport, with a convenient location near the city center, allowing for quick transit times between the central business district and the airport. The airport grounds have since been turned into a city park.
Cycling
Berlin is well known for its highly developed bicycle lane system. It is estimated Berlin has 710 bicycles per 1000 residents. Around 500,000 daily bike riders accounted for 13% of total traffic in 2010. Cyclists have access to of bicycle paths including approximately of mandatory bicycle paths, of off-road bicycle routes, of bicycle lanes on roads, of shared bus lanes which are also open to cyclists, of combined pedestrian/bike paths and of marked bicycle lanes on roadside pavements (or sidewalks). Riders are allowed to carry their bicycles on , S-Bahn and U-Bahn trains, on trams, and on night buses if a bike ticket is purchased.
Rohrpost (pneumatic postal network)
From 1865 until 1976, Berlin had an extensive pneumatic postal network, which at its peak in 1940, totaled 400 kilometers in length. After 1949 the system was split into two separated networks. The West Berlin system in operation and open for public use until 1963, and for government use until 1972. The East Berlin system which inherited the ''Hauptelegraphenamt'', the central hub of the system, was in operation until 1976.
Energy
Berlin's two largest energy provider for private households are the Swedish firm
Vattenfall
Vattenfall is a Swedish multinational power company owned by the Swedish State. Beyond Sweden, the company generates power in Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
The company's name is Swedish for "waterfall", an ...
and the Berlin-based company GASAG. Both offer electric power and natural gas supply. Some of the city's electric energy is imported from nearby power plants in southern
Brandenburg
Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 squ ...
.
the five largest power plants measured by capacity are the Heizkraftwerk Reuter West, the Heizkraftwerk Lichterfelde, the Heizkraftwerk Mitte, the Heizkraftwerk Wilmersdorf, and the Heizkraftwerk Charlottenburg. All of these
power station
A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid.
Many ...
s generate
electricity
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describe ...
and useful heat at the same time to facilitate buffering during load peaks.
In 1993 the power grid connections in the Berlin-Brandenburg capital region were renewed. In most of the inner districts of Berlin power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban
Autobahn
The (; German plural ) is the federal controlled-access highway system in Germany. The official German term is (abbreviated ''BAB''), which translates as 'federal motorway'. The literal meaning of the word is 'Federal Auto(mobile) Track' ...
, use overhead lines. The
Berlin 380-kV electric line
The Berlin 380 kV electric line is a 38.3-km double-circuit high- voltage electric three-phase power line in Berlin. An unusual system for a municipality, it was installed by the West Berlin Bewag utility company during the division of the ...
is the backbone of the city's energy grid.
Health
Berlin has a long history of discoveries in medicine and innovations in medical technology. The modern history of medicine has been significantly influenced by scientists from Berlin.
Rudolf Virchow
Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow (; or ; 13 October 18215 September 1902) was a German physician, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, writer, editor, and politician. He is known as "the father of modern pathology" and as the founder ...
was the founder of cellular pathology, while
Robert Koch
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( , ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera (though the bacteri ...
developed vaccines for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis.
The
Charité
The Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Charité – Berlin University of Medicine) is one of Europe's largest university hospitals, affiliated with Humboldt University and Free University Berlin. With numerous Collaborative Research C ...
complex (Universitätsklinik Charité) is the largest
university hospital
A university hospital is an institution which combines the services of a hospital with the education of medical students and with medical research. These hospitals are typically affiliated with a medical school or university. The following i ...
in Europe, tracing back its origins to the year 1710. More than half of all German Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine, including
Emil von Behring
Emil von Behring (; Emil Adolf von Behring), born Emil Adolf Behring (15 March 1854 – 31 March 1917), was a German physiologist who received the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first one awarded in that field, for his discover ...
, Robert Koch and
Paul Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich (; 14 March 1854 – 20 August 1915) was a Nobel Prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure ...
, have worked at the Charité. The Charité is spread over four campuses and comprises around 3,000 beds, 15,500 staff, 8,000 students, and more than 60 operating theaters, and it has a turnover of two billion euros annually. The
Charité
The Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Charité – Berlin University of Medicine) is one of Europe's largest university hospitals, affiliated with Humboldt University and Free University Berlin. With numerous Collaborative Research C ...
is a joint institution of the
Freie Universität Berlin
The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...
and the
Humboldt University of Berlin
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...
, including a wide range of institutes and specialized medical centers.
Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine, and the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics. The scientific research at these institutions is complemented by many research departments of companies such as Siemens and Bayer. The
World Health Summit
The World Health Summit is an international conference that has been held in Berlin every October since 2009. It has developed into one of the world's leading global health conferences. It was held for the first time on the occasion of the 300th an ...
and several international health-related conventions are held annually in Berlin.
Telecommunication
Since 2017, the
digital television
Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advanc ...
standard in Berlin and Germany is
DVB-T2
DVB-T2 is an abbreviation for "Digital Video Broadcasting – Second Generation Terrestrial"; it is the extension of the television standard DVB-T, issued by the consortium DVB, devised for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial telev ...
digital audio
Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical samples in a continuous sequence. For example, in CD audio, sa ...
,
digital video
Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...
and other data in an
MPEG transport stream
MPEG transport stream (MPEG-TS, MTS) or simply transport stream (TS) is a standard digital container format for transmission and storage of audio, video, and Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) data. It is used in broadcast systems ...
.
Berlin has installed several hundred free public
Wireless LAN
A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network
A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes.
Wireless networking is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and bus ...
sites across the capital since 2016. The wireless networks are concentrated mostly in central districts; 650 hotspots (325 indoor and 325 outdoor access points) are installed. Deutsche Bahn is planning to introduce Wi-Fi services in long-distance and regional trains in 2017.
The
UMTS
The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the Inte ...
(3G) and LTE (4G) networks of the three major cellular operators
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Public limited company, plc () is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Telephone company, telecommunications company. Its registered office and Headquarters, global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It ...
,
T-Mobile
T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic (T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland (T-Mobile Polska), the United States (T-Mobile ...
fiber optic
An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...
transmission
Transmission may refer to:
Medicine, science and technology
* Power transmission
** Electric power transmission
** Propulsion transmission, technology allowing controlled application of power
*** Automatic transmission
*** Manual transmission
*** ...
. Future applications for broadband networks are developed as well.
Education and research
, Berlin had 878 schools, teaching 340,658 students in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a 6-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students continue to the (a comprehensive school) or (college preparatory school). Berlin has a special bilingual school program in the , in which children are taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and continuing in high school.
The
Französisches Gymnasium Berlin
The Französisches Gymnasium (french: Lycée français de Berlin) is a long-existing francophone gymnasium in Berlin, Germany. Traditionally, it is widely regarded as an elite high school. It is also the oldest public school in Berlin. Its creati ...
, which was founded in 1689 to teach the children of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual German–American public school in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of diplomats and the English-speaking expatriate community. 82 teach
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and 8 teach
Classical Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
.
Higher education
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in Germany and Europe. Historically, 67 Nobel Prize winners are affiliated with the Berlin-based universities.
The city has four public research universities and more than 30 private, professional, and technical colleges ''(Hochschulen)'', offering a wide range of disciplines. A record number of 175,651 students were enrolled in the winter term of 2015/16. Among them around 18% have an international background.
The three largest universities combined have approximately 103,000 enrolled students. There are the
Freie Universität Berlin
The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...
''(Free University of Berlin, FU Berlin)'' with about 33,000 students, the
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of ...
''(HU Berlin)'' with 35,000 students, and the
Technische Universität Berlin
The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...
''(TU Berlin)'' with 35,000 students. The
Charité
The Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Charité – Berlin University of Medicine) is one of Europe's largest university hospitals, affiliated with Humboldt University and Free University Berlin. With numerous Collaborative Research C ...
Medical School has around 8,000 students. The FU, the HU, the TU, and the Charité make up the
Berlin University Alliance
The Berlin University Alliance is a consortium of three universities and one hospital in Berlin: the Free University of Berlin, the Humboldt University of Berlin, the Technical University of Berlin, and the Charité – Berlin University of Med ...
, which has received funding from the Excellence Strategy program of the German government. The
Universität der Künste
The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK; also known in English as the Berlin University of the Arts), situated in Berlin, Germany, is the largest art school in Europe. It is a public art and design school, and one of the four research universiti ...
''(UdK)'' has about 4,000 students and
ESMT Berlin
The European School of Management and Technology, also known as ESMT Berlin, is a private non-profit business school based in Berlin, Germany. The business school was founded in 2002 by 25 global companies and institutions including McKinsey & C ...
is only one of four business schools in Germany with
triple accreditation
Triple is used in several contexts to mean "threefold" or a " treble":
Sports
* Triple (baseball), a three-base hit
* A basketball three-point field goal
* A figure skating jump with three rotations
* In bowling terms, three strikes in a row
* In ...
. The Hertie School, a private public policy school located in Mitte, has more than 900 students and doctoral students. The
Berlin School of Economics and Law
The Berlin School of Economics and Law (German: ''Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht''), abbreviated as BSEL, is a public institution of higher education and research founded on 1 April 2009 through the merger of the Berlin School of Economi ...
The city has a high density of internationally renowned research institutions, such as the
Fraunhofer Society
The Fraunhofer Society (german: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V., lit=Fraunhofer Society for the Advancement of Applied Research) is a German research organization with 76institutes spread throughout Germany ...
, the
Leibniz Association
The Leibniz Association (German: ''Leibniz-Gemeinschaft'' or ''Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz'') is a union of German non-university research institutes from various disciplines.
As of 2020, 96 non-university research insti ...
, the
Helmholtz Association
The Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (german: Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren) is the largest scientific organisation in Germany. It is a union of 18 scientific-technical and biological-medical research centers. ...
, and the
Max Planck Society
The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (german: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. ...
, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. In 2012, around 65,000 professional scientists were working in
research and development
Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...
in the city.
Berlin is one of the knowledge and innovation communities (KIC) of the
European Institute of Innovation and Technology
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) is an independent body of the European Union with juridical personality, established in 2008 intended to strengthen Europe's ability to innovate. The EIT is an integral part of Horizon ...
(EIT). The KIC is based at the Center for Entrepreneurship at TU Berlin and has a focus in the development of IT industries. It partners with major multinational companies such as
Siemens
Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad.
The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', ''E ...
,
Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom AG (; short form often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a German telecommunications company that is headquartered in Bonn and is the largest telecommunications provider in Europe by revenue. Deutsche Telekom was ...
, and
SAP
Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant.
Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separa ...
.
One of Europe's successful research, business and technology clusters is based at WISTA in Berlin-Adlershof, with more than 1,000 affiliated firms, university departments and scientific institutions.
In addition to the university-affiliated libraries, the
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
This is a list of the state libraries (german: Landesbibliothek) for each of the Länder of the Federal Republic of Germany. These libraries hold the right for legal deposit for the publications in their respective state.
Landesbibliothek
S ...
is a major research library. Its two main locations are on Potsdamer Straße and on
Unter den Linden
Unter den Linden (, "under the linden trees") is a boulevard in the central Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany. Running from the City Palace to Brandenburg Gate, it is named after the linden (lime in England and Ireland, not rela ...
. There are also 86 public libraries in the city.
ResearchGate
ResearchGate is a European commercial social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. According to a 2014 study by ''Nature'' and a 2016 article in ''Times Higher Education'' ...
, a global social networking site for scientists, is based in Berlin.
Culture
Berlin is known for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the metropolis led to a trendsetting atmosphere. An innovative music, dance and art scene has developed in the 21st century.
Young people, international artists and entrepreneurs continued to settle in the city and made Berlin a popular entertainment center in the world.
The expanding cultural performance of the city was underscored by the relocation of the
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as just Universal Music) is a Dutch– American multinational music corporation under Dutch law. UMG's corporate headquarters are located in Hilversum, Netherlands and its ...
who decided to move their headquarters to the banks of the River Spree. In 2005, Berlin was named "City of Design" by
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...
and has been part of the
Creative Cities Network
The UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) is a project of UNESCO launched in 2004 to promote cooperation among cities which recognized creativity as a major factor in their urban development.M,
One, Two, Three
''One, Two, Three'' is a 1961 American political comedy film directed by Billy Wilder and written by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond. It is based on the 1929 Hungarian one-act play ''Egy, kettő, három'' by Ferenc Molnár, with a "plot borrowed par ...
,
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or d ...
,
Christiane F.
Christiane Vera Felscherinow (born 20 May 1962) is a German actress and musician who is best known for her contribution to the 1978 autobiographical book ''Christiane F.'' (original title: ), and the film and television miniseries based on the ...
,
Possession
Possession may refer to:
Law
* Dependent territory, an area of land over which another country exercises sovereignty, but which does not have the full right of participation in that country's governance
* Drug possession, a crime
* Ownership
* ...
,
Octopussy
''Octopussy'' is a 1983 spy film and the thirteenth in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sixth to star Roger Moore as the MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by John Glen and the screenplay was written by G ...
,
Wings of Desire
''Wings of Desire'' (, ; ) is a 1987 romantic fantasy film written by Wim Wenders, Peter Handke and Richard Reitinger, and directed by Wenders. The film is about invisible, immortal angels who populate Berlin and listen to the thoughts of its hu ...
,
Run Lola Run
''Run Lola Run'' (german: Lola rennt}, lit. "Lola Runs") is a 1998 German experimental thriller film written and directed by Tom Tykwer. The story follows a woman named Lola (Franka Potente) who needs to obtain 100,000 Deutschmarks in twenty min ...
Good Bye, Lenin!
''Good Bye Lenin!'' is a 2003 German tragicomedy film, directed by Wolfgang Becker. The cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Sass, Chulpan Khamatova, and Maria Simon. The story follows a family in East Germany (GDR); the mother (Sass) is dedica ...
,
The Lives of Others
''The Lives of Others'' (german: link=no, Das Leben der Anderen, ) is a 2006 German drama film written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck marking his feature film directorial debut. The plot is about the monitoring of East Berlin ...
,
Inglourious Basterds
''Inglourious Basterds'' is a 2009 war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger and Mélanie Laurent. The film tells an alter ...
Unknown
Unknown or The Unknown may refer to:
Film
* The Unknown (1915 comedy film), ''The Unknown'' (1915 comedy film), a silent boxing film
* The Unknown (1915 drama film), ''The Unknown'' (1915 drama film)
* The Unknown (1927 film), ''The Unknown'' (1 ...
Berlin is home to 138 museums and more than 400 art galleries.
The ensemble on the
Museum Island
The Museum Island (german: Museumsinsel) is a museum complex on the northern part of the Spree Island in the historic heart of Berlin. It is one of the most visited sights of Germany's capital and one of the most important museum sites in Europ ...
is a UNESCO
World Heritage Site
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for h ...
and is in the northern part of the Spree Island between the Spree and the Kupfergraben. As early as 1841 it was designated a "district dedicated to art and antiquities" by a royal decree. Subsequently, the
Altes Museum
The Altes Museum (English: ''Old Museum'') is a listed building on the Museum Island in the Mitte (locality), historic centre of Berlin. Built from 1825 to 1830 by order of King Frederick William III of Prussia according to plans by Karl Friedrich ...
was built in the Lustgarten. The
Neues Museum
The Neues Museum (English: ''New Museum'') is a listed building on the Museum Island in the historic centre of Berlin. Built from 1843 to 1855 by order of King Frederick William IV of Prussia in Neoclassical and Renaissance Revival styles, it ...
Alte Nationalgalerie
The Alte Nationalgalerie ( ''Old National Gallery'') is a listed building on the Museum Island in the Mitte (locality), historic centre of Berlin, Germany. The gallery was built from 1862 to 1876 by the order of King Frederick William IV of Prussi ...
,
Pergamon Museum
The Pergamon Museum (; ) is a listed building on the Museum Island in the historic centre of Berlin. It was built from 1910 to 1930 by order of German Emperor Wilhelm II according to plans by Alfred Messel and Ludwig Hoffmann in Stripped Class ...
, and
Bode Museum
The Bode-Museum (English: ''Bode Museum''), formerly called the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum (''Emperor Frederick Museum''), is a listed building on the Museum Island in the historic centre of Berlin. It was built from 1898 to 1904 by order of Germa ...
were built there.
Apart from the Museum Island, there are many additional museums in the city. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the 13th to the 18th centuries, while the
Neue Nationalgalerie
The Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) at the Kulturforum is a museum for modern art in Berlin, with its main focus on the early 20th century. It is part of the National Gallery of the Berlin State Museums. The museum building and its s ...
(New National Gallery, built by
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...
) specializes in 20th-century European painting. The
Hamburger Bahnhof
Hamburger Bahnhof is the former terminus of the Berlin–Hamburg Railway in Berlin, Germany, on Invalidenstrasse in the Moabit district opposite the Charité hospital. Today it serves as a contemporary art museum, the , part of the Berlin Nati ...
, in
Moabit
Moabit () is an inner city locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2016, around 77,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial and working-class neighbourhood ...
, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. The expanded
Deutsches Historisches Museum
The German Historical Museum (german: Deutsches Historisches Museum), known by the acronym DHM, is a museum in Berlin, Germany devoted to German history. It describes itself as a place of "enlightenment and understanding of the shared history o ...
reopened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history spanning more than a millennium. The
Bauhaus Archive
The Bauhaus Archive (german: Bauhaus-Archiv) is a state archive and Museum of Design located in Berlin. It collects art pieces, items, documents and literature which relate to the Bauhaus School (1919–1933), and puts them on public display. ...
is a museum of 20th-century design from the famous
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...
school.
Museum Berggruen
The Berggruen Museum (also known as the Berggruen Collection) is a collection of modern art classics in Berlin, which the collector and dealer Heinz Berggruen, in a "gesture of reconciliation", gave to his native city. The most notable artists o ...
houses the collection of noted 20th century collector
Heinz Berggruen
Heinz Berggruen (6 January 1914 – 23 February 2007) was a German art dealer and collector who sold 165 works of art to the German federal government to form the core of the Berggruen Museum in Berlin, Germany.
Biography
Berggruen was born in ...
, and features an extensive assortment of works by
Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
,
Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...
Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, Drafter, draftsman and Printmaking, printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo, ...
, among others. The Kupferstichkabinett Berlin (Museum of Prints and Drawings) is part of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (Berlin State Museums) and the Kulturforum at Potsdamer Platz in the Tiergarten district of Berlin's Mitte district. It is the largest museum of the graphic arts in Germany and at the same time one of the four most important collections of its kind in the world. The collection includes
Friedrich Gilly
Friedrich David Gilly (16 February 1772 – 3 August 1800) was a German architect and the son of the architect David Gilly. His works are influenced by revolutionary architecture (''Revolutionsarchitektur''). Born in Altdamm, Pomerania, (today ...
's design for the monument to Frederick II of Prussia.
The
Jewish Museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area.
List of Jewish museums
Notable Jewish museums include:
*Albania
** Solomon Museum, Berat
*Australia
** Jewish Mu ...
has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. The
German Museum of Technology
(German Museum of Technology) in Berlin, Germany is a museum of science and technology, and exhibits a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The museum's main emphasis originally was on rail transport, but today it also features e ...
in
Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg () is a district of Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte. During the Cold War era, it was one of the poorest areas of West Berlin, but since German reunification in 1990 it h ...
has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The ''
Museum für Naturkunde
The Natural History Museum (german: Museum für Naturkunde) is a natural history museum located in Berlin, Germany. It exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history and in such domain it is one of three major muse ...
'' (Berlin's
natural history museum
A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...
Berlin Hauptbahnhof
Berlin Hauptbahnhof () (English: Berlin Central Station) is the main railway station in Berlin, Germany. It came into full operation two days after a ceremonial opening on 26 May 2006. It is located on the site of the historic Lehrter Bahnhof, ...
. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a ''
Giraffatitan
''Giraffatitan'' (name meaning "titanic giraffe") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived during the late Jurassic Period (geology), Period (Kimmeridgian–Tithonian stages) in what is now Lindi Region, Tanzania. It was originally named as an ...
'' skeleton). A well-preserved specimen of ''
Tyrannosaurus rex
''Tyrannosaurus'' is a genus of large theropod dinosaur. The species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' (''rex'' meaning "king" in Latin), often called ''T. rex'' or colloquially ''T-Rex'', is one of the best represented theropods. ''Tyrannosaurus'' live ...
'' and the early bird ''
Archaeopteryx
''Archaeopteryx'' (; ), sometimes referred to by its German name, "" ( ''Primeval Bird''), is a genus of bird-like dinosaurs. The name derives from the ancient Greek (''archaīos''), meaning "ancient", and (''ptéryx''), meaning "feather" ...
'' are at display as well.
In Dahlem, there are several museums of world art and culture, such as the
Museum of Asian Art
The Museum of Asian Art (german: Museum für Asiatische Kunst) is a part of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin since 2020. Before its relocation it was sited in the neighborhood of the borough of , Berlin, Germany. It is one of the Berlin State Museums ...
Allied Museum
The Allied Museum (german: AlliiertenMuseum) is a museum in Berlin. It documents the political history and the military commitments and roles of the Western Allies ( US, France and Britain) in Germany – particularly Berlin – between 1945 a ...
. The Brücke Museum features one of the largest collection of works by artist of the early 20th-century expressionist movement. In
Lichtenberg
Lichtenberg () is the eleventh borough of Berlin, Germany. In Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it absorbed the former borough of Hohenschönhausen.
Overview
The district contains the Tierpark Berlin in Friedrichsfelde, the larger of Berlin's ...
Stasi Museum
The Stasi Museum (also known in German as the ''Forschungs- und Gedenkstätte Normannenstraße'') is a research and memorial centre concerning the political system of the former East Germany. It is located in the Lichtenberg locality of Berli ...
. The site of
Checkpoint Charlie
Checkpoint Charlie (or "Checkpoint C") was the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991), as named by the Western Allies.
East German leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and maneu ...
, one of the most renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved. A private museum venture exhibits a comprehensive documentation of detailed plans and strategies devised by people who tried to flee from the East.
The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum claimed to be the largest erotic museum in the world until it closed in 2014.
The cityscape of Berlin displays large quantities of urban
street art
Street art is visual art created in public locations for public visibility. It has been associated with the terms "independent art", "post-graffiti", "neo-graffiti" and guerrilla art.
Street art has evolved from the early forms of defiant graff ...
. It has become a significant part of the city's cultural heritage and has its roots in the graffiti scene of
Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg () is a district of Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte. During the Cold War era, it was one of the poorest areas of West Berlin, but since German reunification in 1990 it h ...
of the 1980s. The
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...
itself has become one of the largest open-air canvasses in the world. The leftover stretch along the Spree river in
Friedrichshain
Friedrichshain () is a quarter (''Ortsteil'') of the borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany. From its creation in 1920 until 2001, it was a freestanding city borough. Formerly part of East Berlin, it is adjacent to Mitte, Prenzl ...
remains as the
East Side Gallery
The East Side Gallery (german: East-Side-Gallery) memorial in Berlin-Friedrichshain is a permanent open-air gallery on the longest surviving section of the Berlin Wall in Mühlenstraße between the Berlin Ostbahnhof and the Oberbaumbrücke alo ...
. Berlin today is consistently rated as an important world city for street art culture.
Berlin has galleries which are quite rich in contemporary art. Located in Mitte, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, KOW, Sprüth Magers; Kreuzberg there are a few galleries as well such as Blain Southern,
Esther Schipper
Esther Schipper (born 1963) is a German art dealer and gallerist.
Early life
Schipper is the daughter of Dutch sinologist Kristofer Schipper. She was born in Taiwan and lived there until the age of seven. She later grew up in Paris.Tim Ackermann ...
, Future Gallery, König Gallerie.
Nightlife and festivals
Berlin's nightlife has been celebrated as one of the most diverse and vibrant of its kind. In the 1970s and 80s the
SO36
The SO36 () club is a music club on Oranienstraße near Heinrichplatz in the area of Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany.
It takes its name from the historic postcode of that area, SO36, in which the SO stands for Südost (South East). The Kreuzberg dis ...
in
Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg () is a district of Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte. During the Cold War era, it was one of the poorest areas of West Berlin, but since German reunification in 1990 it h ...
was a center for punk music and culture. The ''SOUND'' and the ''Dschungel'' gained notoriety. Throughout the 1990s, people in their 20s from all over the world, particularly those in Western Europe, Western and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene a premier nightlife venue. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many historic buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were illegally occupied and re-built by young squatters and became a fertile ground for underground and counterculture gatherings. The central boroughs are home to many nightclubs, including the Watergate, Tresor (club), Tresor and Berghain. The KitKatClub and several other locations are known for their sexually uninhibited parties.
Clubs are not required to close at a fixed time during the weekends, and many parties last well into the morning or even all weekend. The ''Weekend Club'' near
Alexanderplatz
() ( en, Alexander Square) is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I, which also denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from in the no ...
features a roof terrace that allows partying at night. Several venues have become a popular stage for the Neo-Burlesque scene.
Berlin has a long history of gay culture, and is an important Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, birthplace of the LGBT rights movement. Same-sex bars and dance halls operated freely as early as the 1880s, and the first gay magazine, ''Der Eigene'', started in 1896. By the 1920s, gays and lesbians had an unprecedented visibility. Today, in addition to a positive atmosphere in the wider club scene, the city again has a huge number of queer clubs and festivals. The most famous and largest are Berlin Pride, the Christopher Street Day, the Lesbian and Gay City Festival in Berlin-Schöneberg, the Kreuzberg Pride and Hustlaball.
The annual Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) with around 500,000 admissions is considered to be the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. The Karneval der Kulturen (''Carnival of Cultures''), a multi-ethnic street parade, is celebrated every Pentecost weekend. Berlin is also well known for the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which includes the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin, and Young Euro Classic, the largest international festival of youth orchestras in the world. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress. The annual Berlin Festival focuses on indie rock, electronic music and synthpop and is part of the International Berlin Music Week. Every year Berlin hosts one of the largest New Year's Eve celebrations in the world, attended by well over a million people. The focal point is the Brandenburg Gate, where midnight fireworks are centered, but various private fireworks displays take place throughout the entire city. Partygoers in Germany often toast the New Year with a glass of Sekt, sparkling wine.
Performing arts
Berlin is home to 44 theaters and stages. The Deutsches Theater (Berlin), Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849–50 and has operated almost continuously since then. The Volksbühne at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz was built in 1913–14, though the company had been founded in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 and moved to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm in 1981. With a seating capacity of 1,895 and a stage floor of , the Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin Mitte is the largest show palace in Europe.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on
Unter den Linden
Unter den Linden (, "under the linden trees") is a boulevard in the central Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany. Running from the City Palace to Brandenburg Gate, it is named after the linden (lime in England and Ireland, not rela ...
opened in 1742 and is the oldest of the three. Its musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is also at Unter den Linden. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg.
The city's main venue for musical theater performances are the Theater am Potsdamer Platz and Theater des Westens (built in 1895). Contemporary dance can be seen at the ''Radialsystem V''. The Tempodrom is host to concerts and circus-inspired entertainment. It also houses a multi-sensory spa experience. The Admiralspalast in Mitte has a vibrant program of variety and music events.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; it is housed in the
Berliner Philharmonie
The Berliner Philharmonie () is a concert hall in Berlin, Germany, and home to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
The Philharmonie lies on the south edge of the city's Tiergarten and just west of the former Berlin Wall. The Philharmonie is o ...
near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Simon Rattle was its principal conductor from 1999 to 2018, a position now held by Kirill Petrenko. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin. Ivan Fischer is its principal conductor. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. The ''Kookaburra'' and the ''Quatsch Comedy Club'' are known for satire and comedy shows. In 2018, the ''The New York Times, New York Times'' described Berlin as "arguably the world capital of underground electronic music".
Cuisine
The German cuisine, cuisine and culinary offerings of Berlin vary greatly. 23 restaurants in Berlin have been awarded one or more Michelin Guide#Stars, Michelin stars in the Michelin Guide of 2021, which ranks the city at the top for the number of restaurants having this distinction in Germany. Berlin is well known for its offerings of vegetarian and Veganism, vegan cuisine and is home to an innovative entrepreneurial food scene promoting cosmopolitan flavors, local and sustainable ingredients, pop-up street food markets, supper clubs, as well as food festivals, such as Berlin Food Week.
Many local foods originated from north German culinary traditions and include rustic and hearty dishes with pork, goose, fish, peas, beans, cucumbers, or potatoes. Typical Berliner fare include popular street food like the ''Currywurst'' (which gained popularity with postwar construction workers rebuilding the city), ''Frikadeller, Buletten'' and the ''Berliner (doughnut), Berliner'' donut, known in Berlin as . German bakeries offering a variety of breads and pastries are widespread. One of Europe's largest delicatessen markets is found at the
KaDeWe
The Kaufhaus des Westens (), abbreviated to KaDeWe, is a department store in Berlin, Germany. With over of retail space and more than 380,000 articles available, it is the second-largest department store in Europe after Harrods in London. It att ...
, and among the world's largest chocolate stores is ''Fassbender & Rausch''.
Berlin is also home to a diverse gastronomy scene reflecting the immigrant history of the city. Turkish and Arab immigrants brought their culinary traditions to the city, such as the lahmajoun and falafel, which have become common fast food staples. The modern fast-food version of the doner kebab sandwich which Kadir Nurman, evolved in Berlin in the 1970s, has since become a favorite dish in Germany and elsewhere in the world. Asian cuisine like Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Korean, and Japanese restaurants, as well as Spanish tapas bars, Italian, and Greek cuisine, can be found in many parts of the city.
Recreation
Berlin Zoological Garden, Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844. It is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It was the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut (polar bear), Knut. The city's other zoo, Tierpark Berlin, Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, was founded in 1955.
Berlin-Dahlem Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum, Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species, it is one of the largest and most diverse collections of botanical life in the world. Other gardens in the city include the Britzer Garten, and the Erholungspark Marzahn, Gärten der Welt (Gardens of the World) in Marzahn.
The Tiergarten (park), Tiergarten park in Mitte, with landscape design by Peter Joseph Lenné, is one of Berlin's largest and most popular parks. In Kreuzberg, the Viktoriapark provides a viewing point over the southern part of inner-city Berlin. Treptower Park, beside the Spree in Treptow, features a large Soviet War Memorial (Treptower Park), Soviet War Memorial. The Volkspark in
Friedrichshain
Friedrichshain () is a quarter (''Ortsteil'') of the borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany. From its creation in 1920 until 2001, it was a freestanding city borough. Formerly part of East Berlin, it is adjacent to Mitte, Prenzl ...
, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city, with monuments, a summer outdoor cinema and several sports areas. Tempelhofer Feld, the site of the former Berlin Tempelhof Airport, city airport, is the world's largest inner-city open space.
Potsdam
Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of ...
is on the southwestern periphery of Berlin. The city was a residence of the
Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an e ...
n kings and the German Emperor, German Kaiser, until 1918. The area around Potsdam in particular Sanssouci is known for a series of interconnected lakes and cultural landmarks. The
Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin
Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin (german: Schlösser und Gärten von Potsdam und Berlin) are a group of palace complexes and extended landscape gardens located in the Havelland region around Potsdam and the German capital of Berlin. The te ...
are the largest
World Heritage Site
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for h ...
in Germany.
Berlin is also well known for its numerous cafés, street musicians, beach bars along the Spree River, flea markets, boutique shops and pop up stores, which are a source for recreation and leisure.
Sports
Berlin has established a high-profile as a host city of major international sporting events. The city hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup final. The IAAF World Championships in Athletics was held in the Olympiastadion (Berlin), Olympiastadion in 2009. The city hosted the Basketball Euroleague Final Four in 2009 Euroleague Final Four, 2009 and 2016 Euroleague Final Four, 2016. and was one of the hosts of the FIBA EuroBasket 2015. In 2015 Berlin became the venue for the 2015 UEFA Champions League Final, UEFA Champions League Final.
Berlin will host the 2023 Special Olympics World Summer Games. This will be the first time Germany has ever hosted the Special Olympics World Games.
The annual
Berlin Marathon
The Berlin Marathon (german: Berlin-Marathon, ) is a marathon event held annually on the streets of Berlin, Germany on the last weekend of September. Held annually since 1974, the event includes multiple races over the marathon distance of , i ...
a course that holds the most top-10 world record runs and the Internationales Stadionfest, ISTAF are well-established athletic events in the city. The Mellowpark in Köpenick is one of the biggest skate and BMX parks in Europe. A Fan Fest at Brandenburg Gate, which attracts several hundred-thousand spectators, has become popular during international football competitions, like the UEFA European Championship.
In 2013 around 600,000 Berliners were registered in one of the more than 2,300 sport and fitness clubs. The city of Berlin operates more than 60 public indoor and outdoor swimming pools. Berlin is the largest Olympic training center in Germany. About 500 top athletes (15% of all German top athletes) are based there. Forty-seven elite athletes participated in the 2012 Summer Olympics. Berliners would achieve seven gold, twelve silver and three bronze medals.
Several professional clubs representing the most important spectator team sports in Germany have their base in Berlin. The oldest and most popular first division team based in Berlin is the football club Hertha BSC. The team represented Berlin as a founding member of the Bundesliga in 1963. Other professional team sport clubs include:
See also
* List of fiction set in Berlin
* List of honorary citizens of Berlin
* List of people from Berlin
* List of songs about Berlin
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
*
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* Andreas Daum, Daum, Andreas. ''Kennedy in Berlin''. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, .
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External links
berlin.de – official website
* – detailed historical city maps of pre-1916 Berlin
{{Authority control
Berlin,
German state capitals
Capitals in Europe
City-states
Members of the Hanseatic League
Populated places established in the 13th century
Turkish communities outside Turkey
1230s establishments in the Holy Roman Empire
1237 establishments in Europe
States of Germany