Founding of Berlin

Berlin’s history began with the two villages of Berlin and Cölln, both of which were granted commercial property rights in the 13th century. The originally Slavic Berlin was located on the eastern bank of the River Spree at the site of the Nikolaiviertel neighborhood today. In the 1000-1100s, German settlers came to the area, and on an island in Spree opposite Berlin they founded Cölln.

In the 1100s, the area came under the field county Brandenburg, founded in 1157 by Albrecht I Bjørnen, and from him comes the bear, which today can be seen in Berlin’s city arms and countless places as one of the capital’s landmarks.

Throughout the 13th century, the German continued to dominate, while Berlin’s Slavic influence gradually disappeared, thus the two cities acted as a unified city, although they were not officially merged officially in 1709. From the 13th century, the year 1237 was considered the city’s total founding.

 

The city grows

Trade rose in the Baltic Sea region, where the importance of the Hanse Association increased over the centuries, and this resulted in significant growth in Berlin in the figure.

However, a major fire raged in 1380, and in addition to buildings, most of the city’s written history also perished. However, Berlin grew out of the fire, and by the end of the century the double city of Berlin-Cölln had about 8,000 inhabitants.

 

Hohenzollern dynasty

In 1415, Friedrich I became the leader of the field county of Brandenburg, and it became important for Berlin’s leadership and development over the following five hundred years.

Friedrich was of the genus Hohenzollern, whose name comes from the Zollern area and the hometown of Hohenzollern in the present southern German state of Württemberg. As a field tomb in Brandenburg, he and the many successors of the genus who ruled until the fall of the monarchy in 1918 gained control of Berlin.

The successor Friedrich II came after Friedrich I’s death in 1440, and the dynasty’s titles were, through generations, cure princes before they became Prussian kings to eventually be German emperors.

In the years 1443-1451, the first city castle in Berlin was built, and when the Hohenzollern family moved their residence from Brandenburg to Berlin, it led to new growth with everything that came with a court and the status of a residence city.

In the short term, however, there were also negative aspects of the new status. The people objected to the construction of the centrally located castle, but did not win this minor revolt and instead were granted certain political and economic privileges. As the chief residence of Berlin, Berlin could no longer be a free city and member of the Hanseatic League, which changed the nature of the trade.

 

16th century Berlin

In 1530, Elector Joachim I chose to lay out the large area, now the green oasis Tiergarten, as a royal hunting area. The decision of public access in the 17th century and the conversion to park in 1740 meant that Berlin has such a colossal park almost in the middle of the city.

The Reformation washed over Europe in the 16th century, when both Berlin and the city’s princes became Lutheran in 1539. The following year, Joachim II carried out the Protestant Reformation in the state of Brandenburg; Here ecclesiastical properties and values ​​were secularized, giving regents the means to establish the Kurfürstendamm splendor.

The plague hit Berlin in the 16th century, and it killed a significant portion of the population. About 4,000 became victims of the disease during its breed in 1576. At the end of the century, 12,000 lived in Berlin-Cölln.

 

Friedrich Wilhelm the Great

Thirty Years War in the period 1618-1648 brought downturns for Berlin. The population dropped significantly and about one third of the houses in the city are believed to be destroyed. After the war, however, Berlin was quickly rebuilt and expanded; not least because of Friedrich Wilhelm nicknamed the Great Kurfürst’s visions of a strengthened Prussia. He ruled 1640-1688, and it created stability and great power for the Elector and the Brandenburg, which he set free from Polish supremacy, paving the way for the coming kingdom of Prussia.

Part of the wealth was created through growth, which included, among other things, persecuted Jews and Huguenots invited to the city. Under Friedrich Wilhelm, the city reached a population of 20,000. The street Unter den Linden was built this time; just like the suburbs of Friedrichswerder and Dorotheenstadt.

Friedrich Wilhelm’s son became the ruler of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia in 1688, and in 1701 he became the first Prussian king named Friedrich I. He made Berlin the capital of the new kingdom.

 

The capital Berlin

The time with, among other things, the king’s daughter-in-law, Sophie Charlotte, at the head led to a great cultural and scientific flourishing, where diligently built. An example is the castle in Charlottenburg, which was started by Friedrich I. Together with major contemporary construction projects, Berlin became a major international city, with the population increasing to 55,000 in 1709. It was precisely this year that the cities of Berlin and Cölln were laid officially together and formed Berlin.

The importance of Prussia increased in Europe, and with the growth of the country grew Berlin, which was the center of art and culture of Prussia, and it was here also that the country’s army was formed and built. The army’s importance later also became the basis for much of the city’s industrialization, with the king providing economic benefits for the development and production of weapons in the city. This commitment made the city technologically strong for the future.

As a Protestant country and king, he also allowed greater immigration by Protestants from not least other German states and Switzerland.

 

Frederick the Great

In 1740 King Frederick II, Frederick the Great, came to the throne, and he reigned for 46 years. Frederick the Great supported the thinking, and among the well-known philosophers from Berlin at this time is Moses Mendelssohn.

It also turned into large buildings under Friedrich II; not least the grand plan of the Forum Fridericianum (today Bebelplatz), which was to be a new cultural center in the middle of the city with a new residence castle, opera and other performances that can still be seen today.

Several times during the boom in the 18th century, Berlin was besieged and invaded: in the Seven Years’ War against Austria in 1757 and by Russia in 1760.

With Frederick the Great’s successor, Friedrich Wilhelm II, came a period of stagnation. The new king was not a supporter of the Enlightenment era, and he introduced, among other things, censorship and various reprisals that slowed the city’s growth. He also built new city walls, so in several ways the time was a step back for Berlin.

 

Napoleon and 19th century

Berlin were conquered under Napoleon and occupied in the years 1806-1813. However, the city’s development both during and after the invasion, and Berlin became an ever-greater competitor to Vienna as the dominant city in the German-speaking area. Thus, Berlin’s population rose from 200,000 to 400,000 in the first half of the 19th century, making it one of Europe’s largest cities.

Berlin was the center of the bourgeoisie’s attempt at a democratic revolution against Friedrich Wilhelm IV in 1848. The attempt was thwarted, which led to some stagnation in the political life of the city in the years that followed.

However, economically and industrially, the city was rapidly developing. The railroad’s construction from around 1840 made Berlin even more central in commercial terms. Canals were created for the rivers Oder and the Rhine and on to the North Sea. In 1866, Berlin became the seat of the government of the North German Confederation, and after the German assembly in 1871 under Emperor Wilhelm I and Chancellor Bismarck, Berlin became the capital of the entire German Empire.

The city continued its tremendous growth. From a population of 200,000 in 1819 and 900,000 in 1871, it rose to 1.9 million inhabitants in 1900. Economically, things went well. In Berlin, bankers, industrialists and others gathered with an interest and opportunity to drive development.

For the citizens of the city great progress was also made for decades up to the year 1900. The worn sewers were modernized, and from 1896 the city’s first subway line was established; it opened in 1902.

 

Fall of the Monarchy and the Weimar Republic

With the unification of the many German states and thereby the formation of the German Empire in 1871, the king had become emperor.

Up to the start of World War I in 1914, Berlin was an industrial giant, but the war put an abrupt halt to the city’s economic development. Germany had become involved in the war, many thought would end with a swift victory. However, it turned into a four-year war in which both acts of war and the British blockade of the country made daily life difficult.

After the defeat in 1918, the genus Hohenzollern had to abdicate, and in the Reichstag it was decided to establish the Weimar Republic.

The situation of the Weimar Republic was not easy. Internationally, Germany had been subjected to enormous war damage reparations with the end of World War I, and these were some years when both Communists and later Nazis formed parties and sought armed or political power.

For Berlin’s city government, the situation was also quite different in 1920, because this year several suburbs and the cities around the capital became administratively part of Berlin, which eventually gained about four million inhabitants.

From 1924, however, the situation improved with, among other things, American aid, a possible healthier economic policy and the fact that Berlin was one of Europe’s absolute industrial centers. It became Europe’s largest industrial city, and also flourished the culture where people such as architect Walter Gropius, physicist Albert Einstein and author Bertolt Brecht worked here.

By 1922, many railways to cities around Berlin had been electrified and assembled to Berlin’s S-Bahn, and in 1926 the Tempelhof airport was opened. Berlin was seriously active and developing in the 1920s.

However, unemployment was high, and the international economic depression also hit Berlin and Germany, where militia under the control of the Nazis and Communists struck the streets.

 

Adolf Hitler rises to power

After the 1933 election, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of the Nazis after the Nazi election victory. Reichstag burned that year, and after Hindenburg’s death, Hitler became the chancellor and leader, which put a great mark on Berlin as well as Germany and large parts of the world.

Throughout the 1930s, Berlin’s economy developed tremendously. In 1936, the city hosted the Olympic Games, which became an outlet with impressive buildings and vivid images that went around the world.

One of the big plans for Berlin was colossal construction through much of downtown. It was Albert Speer’s design for what was to make Berlin the World Capital Germania / Welthauptstadt Germania. Some parts of the plans were built, but in many ways World War II put an end to the development of the city.

Throughout World War II, Berlin was the center of Germany’s political and military leadership, making it a natural target for the Allies at the time the war turned.

In the last year of the war, Berlin was subjected to massive bombings, and after fierce fighting in the streets of Berlin in May 1945, the Soviet Red Army with Marshal Shukov in the lead occupied the shattered German capital.

 

The divided city and Hauptstadt der DDR

In August 1945, Potsdam hosted the conference, which sealed the fate of Germany and Europe as divided areas of interest. Berlin was divided into two zones, the Soviet and the Western, which again formally consisted of a British, a French and an American zone.

In June 1948, the Western Allies introduced separate city government in its total zone, and a West German currency was introduced. The Soviet Union initiated a physical blockade of the borough, which created the famous Air Bridge with supplies. However, all West Berliners were offered food and shopping in East Berlin. The air bridge lasted from June 26, 1948 to May 11, 1949.

In 1949, Berlin became a new capital, this time in the new state of the GDR, while West Berlin gained regional control in the Federal Republic of West Germany.

After the death of the Soviet Union leader Josef Stalin in 1953, forces in Moscow tried to reunite Germany through the removal of DDR’s Walter Ulbricht. The plan failed, and it ended with a general strike in the GDR on June 17, and since the East German police could not stifle the strike that brought with it the desire for more democracy, the Soviet military had to be used to reintroduce the order in the GDR, which in several decades afterwards was communist.

In August 1961, the 47-kilometer-long Berlin Wall was erected as a physical part of the city. The wall stood with only a few transitions, including Checkpoint Charlie, until 1989-1990, when the German reunion was implemented. The wall was erected to ensure that the rising flight of East Germans to the West could stop, and with the wall came both isolation of West Berlin and an East Berlin, which as capital had to ensure surveillance of the wall and the border, where over the years there were many escape attempts.

In East Berlin, however, much else was built than the Berlin Wall. Thus, the city center was built over the decades with the GDR as a capital with Palast der Republik as both the center of the people and the government, the Fernsehturm as the city’s mighty TV tower, huge residential areas with commercial buildings and the Soviet-inspired splendor buildings along the present Karl-Marx-Allee.

 

Reunification in new unified capital

With Germany’s reunification on October 3, 1990, Berlin again became the capital of all of Germany, and a massive construction was initiated. It included all the government buildings and public institutions to be established, the infrastructure to integrate two cities into one, and not least the area around the old traffic center around Potsdamer Platz, which became Europe’s largest building site these years.

The overall city ensured that the population increased again. The peak in numbers remains during World War II, when the city in 1942 housed nearly 4.5 million people. Today, Berlin’s population is just over 3.5 million.