Talk:History of Berlin

What does " reigned over a brilliant court. " even mean? Sound like opinion rather than fact. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.4.24.127 (talk) 18:10, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Untitled

Starting in the 6th century Slavic peoples from the east settled in the vacated area between the Elbe and Oder rivers. Oh please! This is just not the way anything like this happens ever in human history anywhere, unless plague has emptied an area first. Heat, cold, drought, lack of food drive nomads. each group is driven by the pressure from behind.Wetman 19:46, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

A more correct and detailed listing of all the archeological findings proving earlier settlements and cultures can be found in the german articles de:Berlin and de:Geschichte Berlins. They do not by the way mention the name of Berolina. This is IMHO only the latin name used in the earliest existing documents. I very much doubt that slavic people at that time used latin names for their settlements.

-- Ravn 23:23, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It was the contrary, the settlement got its latin name after the Slavic name. Halibutt 06:44, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)

In the text of this article you can read the statement Berlin became, under the rule of the philosopher on the throne, a center of the Enlightenment, the city of Immanuel Kant and Moses Mendelssohn. In fact, to my knowledge, Immanuel Kant spent most of his life in Koenigsberg. Maybe that statement could be rephrased to clarify its meaning and solve the apparent contradiction. pmoresch. 19:49, 18 Dec 2005.

Reading Immanuel Kant, it seems Kant's only connection to Berlin was that he came in second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy competition. I'm removing him from that sentence. Angr (talk) 22:27, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

Is no one watching this article? I can't believe this piece of vandalism went unnoticed for three days! Arrgh! Angr (talk • contribs) 22:18, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

repeating itself about "exciting and interesting"

"1920s Berlin was a very exciting and interesting city." I don't think we need to have this sentence in the article twice? Which one to remove? Thanks! Evilbu 12:29, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Berolina -Berlin Bär -Berlin name

(Due to constant disruptive removal info entered here:)

Latin documents show Berolina as well as it is still today the 'other' name of Berlin

Berliner Stadtwappen is the Berlin Bär (English: bear) at least since used on a sigilum seal in 1280 and used continuously till today.

• Bero = bear in Old High German, Modern German Bär
• Bera = bear in Angle Saxon
• Bere = bear in Middle English
• bher-os = bear, beaver, brown dam on a river in Indo-European

For more information on the Bär (bear) on city arms of Berlin and Bern, see:

Heraldry of Berne

Labbas 15 December 2006

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What's disruptive is not the removal of this irrelevant information, but its constant addition. For the umpteenth time, the word Berlin is not derived from the Germanic word for "bear". All reliable sources agree the name is of uncertain, probably Slavic, origin. The association with bears is folk etymology on the part of Germanic speakers who arrived on the scene later. —Angr 07:15, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

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You and anyones VERY ONESIDED POV, taking all documents, facts, info out, surpressing them, and o n l y make it look like the name is (probably) only Slavic origin is not acceptable. The documents, language connections, the use of the bear = Old High German bero' , the research pointing to a wildlife gathering place at the Furt all show continous use and connection to the bear and the Berolina and/or Berlin name. All reliable sources DO NOT agree with your version.

Labbas 14 December 2006

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We have presented several published sources indicating the most plausible etymology as being of Slavic origin. You haven't presented a single source connecting the Germanic word for "bear" with the name "Berlin". Original research has no place at Wikipedia. —Angr 19:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

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Berlin Bär - Bear statement in question:

The name Berlin, which is pronounced /bə(r)ˈlɪn/ in English and /bɛɐˈliːn/ (help·info) in German, is of uncertain origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".[13]

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One only has to look at the foundation of Berne, a city founded in the same era and also in the Holy Roman Empire at that time, which is named after the German name for bear, to realize the oddness of the previous exclusive statement insisted on at wikipedia.

Verona was also previously known as Bern, so was Bonn.

Labbas 14 December 2006

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disappearing Slavic population

The timeline passively says that the German leaders made no distiction between the two very distinct populations (Germans and Slavs), and that they happily intermarried - sounds like wishful thinking on the part of the poster. This is especially problematic since there is much scholarly debate on whether or not the overwhelming majority of the native Slavs were exterminated, routed, or died out due to disease, leaving almost no Slavic population except in the distant countryside. Thus, that line needs some more citation and at least discussion on this question. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.0.207.191 (talk) 14:20, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Volkshalle

What means "250 m high, seven times higher than St. Peter's Basilica in Rome" for the Volkshalle? The St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is 138 m high, so seven times higher would mean about 1000 m, not 250 m! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.47.240.87 (talk) 03:32, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

When did Berlin became the royal resident?

According to this entry, Berlin became the royal resident right after the building of the Stadschloss was conpleted, in 1451. according to the Berlin.de site (here) it was in 1486. could someone help me? Johnb999 (talk) 18:02, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Draft of new article (to 1848)

This article is of course crap, and has been ever since it was created. Some years ago when I was active at Wikipedia under other name, I started writing a replacement article, but I only got to 1848 before I decided I'd had enough of Wikipedia's strange blend of anarchy and dictatorship and stopped editing. However, I see this article hasn't improved any, so I thought I'd dump my draft here in case anyone is interested in improving the article. It isn't referenced, but anyone who knows Berlin history could do that. Of course it's far too well written for Wikipedia standards, but I'm sure the usual flock of Wikipedia autodidacts will quickly dumb it down and insert the necessary bad grammar and irrelevant comments which are Wikipedia's hallmarks. Alles gut. Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 23:39, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

History of Berlin

The first recorded date in the history of Berlin is 1237, when the town is first mentioned in a title deed. Compared to other European capitals such as Athens, Rome, Paris or London, therefore, Berlin is a young city. Although the marshy area around the junctions of the Spree, Havel and Dahme rivers had been inhabited since the Bronze Age, the settlement at Berlin was founded by the Slavs, probably in the ninth century. (The oldest town in the area is actually Spandau, now a Berlin suburb, which dates from the eighth century.) “Berlin” is a word of Slavic origin, meaning a swamp.

Mediaeval Berlin

The original Slavic town of Berlin was on the eastern bank of the Spree, approximately where the Nikolaiviertel now stands (although the pseudo-mediaeval buildings there are postwar facsimiles). The first German settlers probably reached the area in the 11th or 12th centuries. They founded a second town, called Cölln, on the island in the Spree now known as the Spreeinsel or Museum Island. In the 12th century the area came under German rule as part of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, founded by Albert the Bear in 1157. It was under the Margraves of Brandenburg (who ruled from the town of Brandenburg an der Havel), that Berlin and Cölln received their first town charters in the 13th century. As German settlement increased, the Slavic character of Berlin gradually faded and the two settlements became closely linked as the German town of Berlin-Cölln, although they were not formally merged until 1709. Albert the Bear also bequeathed to Berlin the emblem of the bear, which has appeared on its coat of arms ever since.

The oldest surviving buildings in Berlin date from the 13th century: the Marienkirche near Alexanderplatz and the Nikolaikirche in the Nikolaiviertel. The various monastic orders were established by the 14th century. Klosterstrasse in the Nikolaiviertel was the site of a Franciscan monastery (cloister). Brüderstrasse in Cölln recalls the site of the house of the Dominican brothers, while the suburb of Tempelhof was the site of the house (hof) of the Knights Templar. Berlin’s commanding location at the junction of several rivers made it an important trading centre, and by the 15th century it had outgrown Brandenburg to become the largest urban centre in the Margraviate and an important source of revenue for the Margraves.

A sure sign that Berlin was becoming a commercial centre was the Margrave’s approval in 1295 for Jews to settle there – Jüdenstrasse, next to the present Rotes Rathaus, dates from about 1300, and there is also a Jüdenstrasse in Spandau. In 1307 Berlin-Cölln acquired its first city wall and its first Rathaus (town hall). In 1391 Berlin-Cölln became a self-governing city within the Hanseatic League, and thus an ally of Hamburg, Lübeck and other leading trade centres. This gave the citizens some protection against the constant attempts of the Margraves to increase their taxes and reduce their autonomy.

Capital of Brandenburg

In 1415, however, the Margraviate was awarded by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund to Friedrich von Hohenzollern, a south German nobleman who took the title Prince-elector (Kurfürst), meaning that he was one of the princes who elected the Emperor. The Berliners at first welcomed the new prestige that Hohenzollern rule brought, but in 1442, when Friedrich II (“Irontooth”) moved his capital to Berlin and demolished much of Cölln to build a princely palace, they were less pleased. In 1447 a rebellion (the “Unwillen”) broke out, which Friedrich suppressed by force. The Hohenzollerns revoked Berlin’s commercial privileges and withdrew it from the Hanseatic League, changing it from a commercial town to an administrative centre, which it has been ever since, and a garrison town, which it remained until 1990. Berlin thus remained a relative backwater of European life from the 14th to the 18th centuries. In 1400 it had only 8,000 inhabitants, of whom 500 were soldiers from outside Berlin. In 1600 it still had only 16,000 people. The Renaissance left Brandenburg largely untouched: the cultural capital of eastern Germany was Leipzig, and the first university in the region was founded, in 1506, at Frankfurt an der Oder, not Berlin.

In 1539 the Protestant Reformation came to Brandenburg, when Joachim II converted to Lutheranism and enriched himself by confiscating the lands of the Catholic Church. But there were none of the revolutionary upheavals that marked the Reformation in other parts of Germany, and the Hohenzellerns adhered to the most conservative possible version of Lutheranism until 1613, when the Elector Johann Sigismund converted to Calvinism.

In 1628 Berlin was drawn into the wider European world when the Thirty Years War engulfed it, despite the best efforts of Hohenzollerns to remain neutral. The city was successively occupied by the Catholic Bohemians (in the service of the Emperor) and the Swedish Protestants, but avoided the massacres that befell other cities (see Sack of Magdeburg) by surrendering promptly on both occasions. Berlin was nevertheless ruined financially, first by a fine of 300,000 gold thalers levied by the Imperial army, and then by the rapacity of the Swedish garrison. The marauding armies also brought plague with them, causing a flight from the city and the collapse of trade. By 1648 the population of Berlin had fallen to only 6,000. In 1640, when the young Friedrich Wilhelm succeeded his father as Elector, Berlin was in such an unhealthy state that he made his capital at Potsdam, west of the city, beginning a tradition that his successors would develop further.

Friedrich Wilhelm (reigned 1640-88), known as the Great Elector (Grosser Kurfürst), is generally regarded as the founder of modern Berlin. He had studied at Leiden University and was impressed by Dutch civic planning and prosperity. He fostered the growth of trade through a system of state monopolies, and encouraged the growth of Berlin by welcoming 25,000 French Protestant refugees (Huguenots) as settlers – at one point a fifth of the city’s population was French, as testified by Französische Strasse (French Street) and the Französischer Dom (French Cathedral). Protestant immigrants also came from the Netherlands and Poland, and the renewed growth of the city also prompted fresh Jewish immigration, although the Hohenzollerns were increasingly unfriendly to the Jews, whom they no longer needed as money-lenders. Less notably, but just as importantly, Friedrich Wilhelm introduced the potato to Brandenburg, ending the region’s chronic state of famine due to its poor soil.

Friedrich Wilhelm was the first Hohenzollern with real military talent, and is regarded as the father of the Prussian army. His victory at the Battle of Fehrbellin in 1675 finally saw off the Swedish threat to northern Germany. He spared the routed Swedish soldiery on condition they joined his army, and by 1688 he had built up a professionally trained standing army of 30,000 men. All Berliners were required by law to billet soldiers in their homes, and soldiers usually accounted for a fifth of the city’s population. Brandenburg’s new military status was recognised in 1701, when the Emperor Leopold I, in exchange for badly needed military support, allowed Friedrich Wilhelm’s son and successor, the Elector Friedrich III, to style himself King Friedrich I. In 1816 the Hohenzollerns had inherited the Duchy of Prussia, which lay in Poland, outside the Holy Roman Empire, and Friedrich was thus given the title “King in Prussia” (from 1772 “King of Prussia”). Thus began the process whereby the Berliners were to become Prussians, although in the 18th century the expression had none of the connotations it was later to acquire.

The expanding city

The rapid recovery in Berlin’s population led to a program of planned urban expansion. In 1662 Friedrich Wilhelm founded a new town called Friedrichswerder, on the west bank of the Spree (its walls are still marked by Oberwallstrasse and Niederwallstrasse). This was followed in 1670 by Dorotheenstadt, a residential district west of the town given to and named for his second wife, Sophie Dorothea of Holstein-Glücksburg. The southern boundary of Dorotheenstadt was an avenue lined with lime trees (linden), running from the Elector’s palace to the gate on the road to Brandenburg, named Unter den Linden (under the lime trees). Beyond the Brandenburg gate lay the Tiergarten (animal park), the Elector’s hunting ground. From there the Kurfürstendamm (Elector’s embankment) led south-west to the princely residence at Potsdam. To the south of the old town was Neukölln (New Cölln), which was colonised by Protestants from Bohemia (hence Böhmische Strasse, Neukölln). In 1688 Sophie Dorothea, a shrewd businesswoman, subdivided and sold off a new development south of Unter den Linden, known as Friedrichstadt after her stepson, the Elector Friedrich. The two principal streets in Friedrichstadt were Friedrichstrasse (after Friedrich) and Husarenstrasse, renamed Wilhelmstrasse in 1740 after Friedrich’s son, Friedrich Wilhelm I. In 1709 the towns of Berlin, Cölln, Friedrichswerder, Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichstadt were combined into one city, Berlin. Nevertheless by 1713 the city still had fewer than 75,000 residents, far fewer than London (550,000 in 1700), Paris (515,000) or Rome (100,000).

Under Friedrich I and his highly cultivated wife Sophia Charlotte of Hanover (sister of King George I of Great Britain), Berlin finally began to acquire the trappings of a sophisticated European capital, which at this time meant copying the Paris (and Versailles) of Louis XIV. Sophia Charlotte invited artists, architects and philosophers from all over Europe to Berlin. The Academy of Arts was founded in 1696 by the architect Andreas Schlüter, and the Academy of Science in 1700 by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Like Sophie Dorothea, Sophia Charlotte was immortalised in Berlin’s geography by the new suburb of Charlottenburg (originally Lietzow, renamed in her honour on her death in 1705), and by its showpiece, Charlottenburg Palace, designed in its original form by Arnold Nering, but greatly expanded by architects such as Eosander von Göthe. During this period also the first of a series of large baroque and neoclassical buildings began to rise along Unter den Linden. The first was the Zeughaus (armoury), begin in 1695. Other royal monuments followed. These developments caused a shift to the west in the city’s centre of gravity, leaving old Berlin on the east bank of the Spree as a backwater.

The elevation of the Electors of Brandenburg to the dignity of Kings of course required a new royal palace. Friedrich I engaged Schlüter to rebuild the old palace on a much larger scale, in the Protestant baroque style. In 1706, Schlüter was replaced by von Göthe, who submitted plans for an even grander palace. Friedrich Wilhelm I, who became king in 1713, was interested mainly in building up Prussia as a military power, and as a result, Göthe’s plan was only partly implemented. Nevertheless, the exterior of the Palace had come close to its final form by the mid 18th century, although the dome was a 19th century addition. The Palace as completed was an immense, dark, fortress-like building, and was seen by many Berliners as designed to overawe and intimidate them. A more popular project of this period was Gendarmenmarkt in Friedrichstadt, where two baroque churches were built: the French Cathedral (Französischer Dom) built for the Huguenot community between 1701 and 1705, with tower and porticos designed by Carl von Gontard added in 1785, and the German Cathedral (Deutscher Dom), designed by Martin Grünberg and built in 1708 by Giovanni Simonetti, with a domed tower by Carl von Gontard added in 1785.

Capital of Prussia

Under Friedrich Wilhelm I (reigned 1713-40), Berlin’s growth continued, mainly due to the King’s obsessive determination to make Prussia a great military power. To provide a bigger population base for recruitment, he encouraged immigration from all over Protestant Germany, as well as France and Switzerland. He introduced universal primary education so that his soldiers could read and write. In 1720 he built the city’s first major hospital and medical school, the Charité, now the largest teaching hospital in Europe. The city became mainly a garrison and an armoury. Friedrich Wilhelm’s government heavily subsidised arms manufacturers in the capital, laying the foundations of an industry that was to be a major employer in Berlin down to 1945. Wealthy citizens were ordered to build new houses in Friedrichstadt so that more soldiers could be billeted there. By 1734 the walls and moats laboriously built around the old city had become an obstruction, so Friedrich Wilhelm had them torn down. A new customs wall (the Zollmauer) was built further out, punctuated by ornate gates. Inside the gates were parade grounds for Friedrich Wilhelm’s soldiers: the Karree at the Brandenburg gate (now Pariserplatz), the Oktagon at the Potsdam gate (now Leipzigerplatz), the Wilhelmplatz on Wilhelmstrasse (abolished in the 1980s) and several others.

Friedrich Wilhelm was succeeded by his son Friedrich II (reigned 1740-86, known as Friedrich der Grosse or Frederick the Great). Friedrich had grown up hating his father and his military obsessions, but paradoxically he was to use his father’s army to far greater effect than Friedrich Wilhelm had ever done, immediately provoking a war with Austria and seizing Silesia, then fighting a prolonged war (the Seven Years War with Austria and her allies. In 1772 he acquired a large slice of western Poland at the First Partition of Poland. But he regarded the arts and sciences as his real vocation, and he devoted large amounts of time and money to planning and building in both Berlin, his official capital, and Potsdam, where he actually lived. His chief architect was Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, who oversaw Prussia’s transition from the baroque to the neoclassical.

Friedrich’s most ambitious project in Berlin was the Forum Fredericianum (Frederician Forum), modelled on the Roman Forum, a precinct of neoclassical buildings on Unter den Linden devoted to the arts and sciences. The project included the Berlin State Opera (begun in 1741), the Royal Library (today the State Library Berlin), Prince Henry’s Palace (now the part of the campus of Humboldt University), and Berlin’s Catholic cathedral, St. Hedwig’s, begun in 1747. This latter was a controversial project in a heavily Protestant city, and was a gesture to Prussia’s new Catholic subjects in Silesia (St Hedwig is the patron saint of Silesia.) Friedrich also built a National Theatre on Gendarmenmarkt, and rebuilt Berlin’s Protestant cathedral, the Berliner Dom – but both these buildings have since been replaced.

The reign of the great Friedrich was however far from a golden age for Berliners. Thousands were conscripted and killed on distant battlefields, and the incursions of foreign armies cut off the city’s food supplies several times. In 1757 Berlin was besieged by the Austrians and had to pay 200,000 thalers ransom to get them to depart, and in 1760 the city was occupied by the Russians, who demanded a huge ransom of 1.5 million thalers (but did not loot the city as their descendants did in 1945). Even when the wars ended in 1763, Friedrich retained an army of 150,000 men, or 5% of the whole population of Prussia. The army was sustained by the high taxes paid by Berliners. From Friedrich’s reign also dates the domination over Berlin and Prussia generally of the Junker (landowner) class. Friedrich decreed that only aristocrats could be army officers, and since the army was by far the most powerful and prestigious element of Prussian society, this caused great resentment among the Berlin professional and business class. Berlin’s reputation as a hotbed of political radicalism dates from, and was caused by, this alienation of the city from the power structure of the Prussian state.

The Napoleonic era

Friedrich’s successor, his nephew Friedrich Wilhelm II, was a weak and self-indulgent king. This suited Berlin, and during his reign (1786-97) the city continued to grow and prosper. During this period such innovations as street lighting, street signs and a regular postal service arrived. Friedrich Wilhelm commissioned new and more elaborate gates to be installed at the entrances to the city. The most magnificent of these (because it led from Unter den Linden to the Tiergarten) was the Brandenburg Gate, built by Carl Gotthard Langhans between 1788 to 1791 and topped by Johann Gottfried Schadow’s iconic sculpture, the Quadriga. The gate has become the universally recognised symbol of the city. From the point of view of Berliners, however, Frederick William’s greatest achievement was probably to keep Prussia out of the wars which had broken out following the French Revolution in 1788.

The Junkers and officer class did not share this view, and they persuaded Frederick William’s son and successor, Friedrich Wilhelm III, that allowing the revolutionary upstart Napoleon to rampage across Europe was a reflection on Prussia’s honour. Prussia formed an alliance with Russia, which was symbolised by Tsar Alexander I’s state visit in 1805 (a square on the eastern edge of the city was named Alexanderplatz in his honour). Emboldened by this alliance, Friedrich Wilhelm issued an ultimatum to Napoleon to evacuate Germany. The result was Prussia’s total defeat at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in October 1806. On 27 October Napoleon entered Berlin through the Brandenburg Gate, to the rapturous cheers of the Berliners, who almost uniformly supported the French Revolution and despised the Prussian-Russian alliance. But the French soon alienated the city by their arrogance and by Napoleon’s looting. The turning point was the removal of the Quadriga from the Brandenburg Gate to the Louvre. Now that the public mood had swung against the French, Friedrich Wilhelm was held in contempt for his weak surrender to the French at the Peace of Tilsit, by which Prussia lost most of its territory. One consequence of this was that Prussia lost most of its universities, leading to the establishment of Berlin University on Unter den Linden in 1810.

Prussia was now officially a French ally, but when Napoleon again occupied Berlin in 1812, on his way to invade Russia, his troops were jeered, and sometimes stoned, in the streets, and large sections of the Prussian army and administration refused to support the royal collaboration with the French. The King stayed away from his capital and vacillated. Eventually the army, led by General Yorck von Wartenburg, refused to collaborate any further and switched sides, dragging the King along with them. Prussia officially changed sides in December 1812, and Yorck led the Prussian army into Berlin to scenes of wild enthusiasm. The Berliners were less enthusiastic about the arrival of a huge Russian army, but the new allies were generally well behaved. The King was forced to agree to convene a Prussian Parliament and to allow the raising of a popular army, the Landwehr, to help liberate Germany from the French – 6,000 Berliners signed up in a few days. The new German armies won a series of victories against the French, culminating in the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813. The Oktagon was renamed Leipziger Platz in honour of this victory In March 1814 the Prussian army entered Paris along with the other allied armies. In celebration, the parade ground in front of the Brandenburg Gate was named Pariserplatz.

The age of Schinkel

The high hopes of the Berlin liberals who had rushed to take part in the wars against Napoleon were not realised at the Congress of Vienna that determined the shape of postwar Europe in 1815. Germany was not united, but Prussia, as an Allied power, had all its territories restored to it (except most of Poland, which was handed over to Russia), and gained extensive new ones, most importantly Westphalia and the Rhineland, including what were soon to become the Ruhr and Saar industrial regions. Berlin thus became the capital of a major European power for the first time. Friedrich Wilhelm III, despite his less than heroic behaviour during the Napoleonic wars, kept his throne, and soon retracted his promises about a constitution and a free parliament. Prussia in fact became the most oppressive state in Germany, with rigid press censorship, close supervision of the universities and an efficient secret police to keep dissidents in line. The Berliners chafed at this situation but were powerless in the face of a military garrison of 25,000 troops in the city.

Despite political disappointments, however, the decades after the Napoleonic wars were something of a golden age for Berlin. As the capital of a major power, the city grew rapidly in population and wealth. A new class of civil servants was created to administer the far-flung Prussian realm, and this class required schoolteachers for its children and servants for its town houses, drawing employees of all kinds into the city. By 1845 Berlin had 400,000 people. The war had provided a major impetus to Berlin’s manufacturing industry, based on armanents but rapidly expanding into other fields. Berlin’s deficiency as an industrial centre was that it had no reliable coal supply, but with the Ruhr and Saar coming under Prussian control this could be remedied. Coal was brought at first by canal, but from 1838 the German railways developed with great rapidity. Soon coal-driven steam-engines were the driving force of Berlin’s industries, and the city’s industrial working class grew rapidly. New working-class districts like Wedding, Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg were developed, and the characteristic Berlin housing pattern, of large five-storey apartment blocks built around courtyards, known as Mietskasernen (“rental barracks”), became established. The railways, gas-lighting, the telegraph and piped water began to transform the quality of urban life, although the city also had some fearful slums and saw periodic outbreaks of disease throughout the 19th century.

At the cultural level, the period between 1815 and 1848 is remembered as the age of Schinkel. Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) was a native Brandenburger, trained in draftsmanship, who was appointed royal building master in 1815. Friedrich Wilhelm commissioned him to resume the development of Unter den Linden as a grand royal boulevard. His first major building was the Neue Wache (new guardhouse), a gem of restrained classicism, which has served since 1919 as Germany’s main war memorial. This was followed by a new Berliner Dom (sadly demolished in 1895), several churches (one of which, the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche, is now the Schinkel Museum), a new bridge near the royal palace, the Schlossbrücke (castle bridge), a new national theatre, the Schauspielhaus on the Gendamenmarkt, and finally his greatest triumph, the massive museum facing the Lustgarten, now known as the Altes Museum (Old Museum), with its towering colonnade of Ionic columns. Most of his buildings survive, though blackened and battered by war. One which did not survive was his Bauakademie (building academy), which was destroyed in World War II, but is now about to be reconstructed. Schinkel's work set a tone of monumental classicism that dominated Berlin's public architecture until the mid 20th century, when it was discredited after being taken to excess during the Third Reich.

Although the strict Prussian censorship prevented Berlin becoming a centre of German literature, and although German painters continued to prefer the more refined atmosphere of Dresden, Berlin did become a major centre of music and theatre during this period, with names like Carl Maria von Weber, Carl Friedrich Zelter, Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer becoming prominent. As well as designing Berlin's new theatre, Schinkel did many designs for theatre and opera. Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer were of Jewish descent (Mendelssohn a Christian convert), and this was indicative of the prominent role that Jews had come to play in the city's cultural life, as well as its commercial life, even before the Prussian decree of Jewish Emancipation in 1867 (an earlier emancipation decree in 1812 had been revoked in 1815). This was already arousing resentment in some quarters, although cultural anti-Semitism was not to become a real force in Germany until the later 19th century. Berlin's Jews celebrated their new wealth and prominence by building the ornate New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse, opened in 1866. {{Reflist}}

Need technical help

I added a terrific U.S. Air Force film made in July 1945 showing the destruction of downtown Berlin. I brought it over from the German edition of Wikipedia, there article on Berlin. The problem is that it is too big for the screen – can anyone help resize it?? Rjensen (talk) 17:29, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

First World War

The statement 'In the Reichstag, the vote for credits was unanimous, with all the Socialists joining in...' is untrue. Please see the entry for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Liebknecht under 'political career' it clearly states that 'On 2 December 1914 he was the only member of the Reichstag to vote against further loans, the supporters of which included 110 of his own Party members.'

These two articles are in conflict.

Norrette — Preceding unsigned comment added by LRC Techie (talk • contribs) 13:46, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Timeline of Berlin

What is missing from the recently created city timeline article? Please add relevant content. Contributions welcome. Thank you. -- M2545 (talk) 15:33, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Contradicting 2 articles about who built The boulevard "Unter den Linden"?

here it says that it was built in the year 1647, yet, in another Wikipedia article titled "Unter den Linden", it states that "Unter den Linden, which sits at the heart of the historic section of Berlin, developed from a bridle path laid out by Elector John George of Brandenburg in the 16th century". So, which is the correct one?