User:SHB2000/Berlin

History

The beginnings

The area was most likely first settled by Slavs before German-speaking immigrants arrived in the 11th and 12th centuries. The earliest evidence of settlements in the area of what is now Berlin are a wooden rod dating from approximately 1192 and remains of wooden houses dated to 1174 which were found in a 2012 excavation in Berlin Mitte. The first written records of towns in the area of present-day Berlin date from the late 12th century. Spandau is first mentioned in 1197 and Köpenick in 1209, although these areas did not become part of Berlin until 1920 (see below). The nucleus of Berlin were two towns: Berlin (now known as the Nikolaiviertel close to Alexanderplatz), which began as a Slavic town, and Cölln, which was Germanic in origin, which included what has today become the Museum Island. While the etymology of "Berlin" is not fully clear (the bear in the coat of arms is due to an understandable wrong assumption medieval German speakers made) it is likely linked to a Slavic word for swamp. So yes, Germany's capital was literally built in a swamp. The year 1237 (first mention of Cölln in official records) is what was used as the basis for the 750 year celebrations in 1987 and it'll likely be used as the reference point for future anniversaries.

The area became known as Berlin-Cölln and was a residence for the electors of Brandenburg but it remained a relatively small trading post. Roughly half of Berlin's inhabitants perished as a result of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). The war - which also devastated other Hohenzollern domains - led to a signature Hohenzollern policy of allowing and even encouraging religious refugees to immigrate to the area. The policy was first promulgated by "great elector" Frederic William (Friedrich Wilhelm, reigned 1640-1688) who also consolidated the trend of ruling Prussians to be called Friedrich, Wilhelm or both, which lasted all the way to the last German Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was forced to abdicate in 1918.

Berlin became the capital of Prussia in 1701 but Potsdam remained a symbol for Hohenzollern rule into Weimar times. In 1710 several independent towns were merged into Berlin, helping to give it the polycentric layout that endures to this day. The Prussian leaders of the 18th century were known for their "enlightened despotism" and an amount of religious toleration far beyond that found in other parts of Europe at the time. Those policies benefited all of Brandenburg/Prussia but they had their strongest impact on Berlin.

Kaiserreich and Weimar Republic

The German Empire (Deutsches Reich) was formed in 1871 under Prussian dominance and Berlin became the capital of this newly-united Germany, quickly growing both due to its administrative status and its role as a centre of industry. By 1877 Berlin had more than one million inhabitants, and by 1900 the city had a population of 1.9 million.

Even though the revolution that deposed the Kaiser had broken out among discontent sailors in Kiel, who didn't want to die in one last futile (but glorious in the minds of the admirals) attempt to turn the tide of the lost war in a sea battle, it was in Berlin that many of the most decisive events of the German November Revolution took place. Philipp Scheidemann - a Social Democrat - declared a republic from a window of the Reichstag on 9 November 1918. Just hours later, communist Karl Liebknecht declared a "free socialist republic" leading Social Democrats and Communists, already at odds in 1914 over the question of whether to support World War I, to fundamentally split. Berlin became one of the centres of fighting and chaos. The Social Democrats allied with demobilised soldiers forming right-wing Freikorps and the old elites to quash the rebellion. Liebknecht and his colleague Rosa Luxemburg were murdered by the Freikorps, and their bodies were dumped into the Landwehrkanal. The sense of betrayal many Communists felt would remain as a stain on the Social Democratic Party throughout the Weimar Republic period. It endures to this day as an example for Social Democrats cozying up with the centre-right and right in the eyes of some radical leftists.

In 1920, the last of the annexations of towns surrounding Berlin created the administrative borders it has today, then known as "Groß-Berlin", or Greater Berlin. The Weimar era was probably the high point in both the importance of Berlin and its reputation in the world. The city grew - in part thanks to the aforementioned annexations - to 4 million people (a number it is inching back towards with roughly 3.8 million in 2019) and was one of the most populous and influential in the world, only exceeded in population by New York City and London. In area, Groß-Berlin was the second biggest city in the world behind only Los Angeles, and the area encompassed by the city is roughly equivalent to that of Rügen. Almost all politicians, intellectuals, artists, scientists and other public figures known during the Weimar Republic lived and worked in Berlin. Media set in the Weimar Republic is almost always set at least partly in Berlin and it was here that the theaters, cabarets and cinemas brought German culture to a frenetic flourishing that was suddenly and violently ended with the Nazi takeover. Potsdamer Platz (site of one of the first traffic lights in the world) was considered one of the places in Europe with the densest traffic. The rapidly developing S-Bahn (electrified in that era) and U-Bahn mass transit systems were seen as models for the world with few equals. Tempelhof Airport (then without its iconic terminal building which was built by the Nazis) was seen as one of the best airports in Europe, and its connection to the U-Bahn showed the way for all major airports to come. Berlin was also a bustling multicultural place with people from all over the world contributing to its cultural and economic output. Rampant inequality, however, meant that not everybody participated in the boom. The economic crisis of 1929 and the subsequent austerity measures hit the poorest disproportionately hard. Housing was scarce in the city, and apartment blocks intended to remedy this were built. Six groups of these buildings have been declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites under the name "Berlin Modernism Housing Estates".

Nazi era and World War II

The takeover of Germany by the Nazis in 1933 meant a break for the culture of Berlin. Many of the intellectuals and artists who had been drawn to the liberal and progressive metropolis had to flee, were imprisoned by the Nazis or otherwise silenced. The vibrant gay scene which had existed more or less openly despite laws banning male homosexuality still being on the books was brutally suppressed by the Nazis. While Goebbels had operated a Nazi propaganda outlet from Berlin in the 1920s and there were street brawls involving Nazis in Berlin as well, until 1933 Berlin felt a world apart from the rising Nazi threat emerging from more rural areas and it thus seemed almost as a foreign invasion when the Nazis took power and asserted their brutal regime in Berlin like the rest of Germany. The Nazis wanted to redesign Berlin into "World Capital Germania", but thankfully the war put an end to those plans. The Nazi buildings that remain were built before the war and are not always associated with them, such as the Olympic Stadium (built for the 1936 games) and the terminal building for Tempelhof Airport. Berlin was hit hard and repeatedly by aerial bombardment during World War II. Unlike Hamburg or Dresden, there was no single big bombardment and no major fire, but rather a series of bombardments that levelled a lot of the city. In the last months of the war, Berlin was at the heart of one of the bloodiest battles of the war as several Soviet generals raced one another to get to Berlin first because Stalin believed the Americans and British intended to conquer Berlin as well. The Nazis did not give a second thought about human lives either, and in the last weeks very old and very young men were pressed into service in an entirely futile attempt to halt the Soviet advance. A "whispered joke" making the rounds at the time among Germans said the war would be over when the Volkssturm (old men and teenagers - Hitler's last "soldiers" of any kind) would take the S-Bahn to the front. The iconic photo of a Soviet soldier raising the red flag on the Reichstag dates to that era, and graffiti made by Soviet soldiers in 1945 can still be found in the Reichstag Building. Some foreign tourists like to ask where the Führerbunker is, but like other potential "shrines to Nazism" it was levelled by the Allies and is now the site of a parking lot. The Topographie des Terrors ("Topography of Terror") in central Berlin is an open-air exhibit that gives backgrounds on the sites of various Nazi offices in Berlin and which atrocities were directed from where.

Cold War and partition

Berlin was divided into four sectors in accordance with the agreements of Yalta and Potsdam (the latter chosen mostly because it was the place closest to Berlin with rooms undamaged enough to be used for a conference). While the initial plan was to jointly administer Berlin and Germany, the façade broke down in Berlin first with the Soviet blockade of the Western sectors, and then with the Berlin airlift wherein West Berlin was supplied by the western allies through the air making use of Tempelhof Airport, RAF Gatow, and what would later become Tegel Airport.

The airlift, including the dropping of small packets of candy on makeshift parachutes, endeared people in West Berlin to the Western allies, and eventually forced the Soviets to end the blockade. Despite the name "raisin bomber", the single most common good by net tonnage was coal. Due to being cut off from Soviet-occupied electricity lines, the planes also flew in an entire power plant and subsequently the fuel for it, but most coal was used to heat private homes. West Berlin later became a part of West Germany in fact if not in name: it sent non-voting delegates to the Bundestag who were nominated by the Berlin parliament rather than elected by the people; similarly all federal laws had to be approved by the Berlin legislature, which usually happened without any real vote or discussion. Crucially, Berlin was "demilitarised" and thus people in West Berlin could not legally serve in the Bundeswehr, no matter whether they were born in Berlin or elsewhere, and moving to Berlin thus became a very popular way to avoid the draft. Berlin remained the last open crossing in the increasingly militarised and airtight "inner-German" border. On 13 August 1961, the East German (GDR) leadership closed the border just weeks after East German leader Walter Ulbricht said in a press conference "Niemand hat die Absicht eine Mauer zu errichten" (nobody has the intention of building a wall). The border was fortified more and more in the ensuing years with several walls. The most iconic wall made of concrete was soon covered in graffiti on its western side which was still in East Berlin, but neither the East German nor the West German authorities were willing or able to police it.

While there was an effort in the west to preserve historic buildings which had survived Allied bombardment, the GDR intentionally tore down buildings that might have been salvageable. The Stadtschloss was seen as a remnant of feudalism and was replaced with the Palast der Republik which housed the GDR Parliament and was used as a popular event venue. It was torn down after 1990 due to its political associations and asbestos content. A new Stadtschloss at the same site, housing the Humboldt forum opened in 2020. It has attracted controversy as the rebuilding of a feudal monument on the site of east Germany's most notable representative building is seen as a dubious political statement and furthermore due to the questionable way in which many of the exhibits were acquired during the colonial era.

While Berlin had taken two big hits with the war and partition, the era of Berlin partition also led to a unique development, especially in the Western half. West Berlin held a special status because it never legally belonged to the Federal Republic of Germany, even though it "voluntarily" applied most West German laws. A prohibition on joining the military made it a place for many students and radicals or people who wanted to avoid the draft to go. The student revolts of 1967/68 mostly took place here. It was here that young Benno Ohnesorg was shot during a protest against the Shah of Iran in 1967. This galvanised a movement against continued presence of Nazi elites, the Vietnam War and several - perceived or real - birth defects of the young German Federal Republic. This movement, retroactively called die 68er (the 68ers), had several hotspots in Germany, but it was most prominent in Berlin. Its leader, Rudi Dutschke, an East German emigrant from Brandenburg, was shot in Berlin in 1968. He survived the shooting, but died of a seizure caused by the wounds in 1979. In this era, Kreuzberg, a part of which (known as "Kreuzberg 36" due to its postal code) was surrounded by the wall on three sides, became a hotbed of leftist activism. There were frequent clashes with police, which have been occasionally repeated since reunification. During partition, artists like David Bowie came to Berlin for inspiration. A stop at landmarks symbolic of the division became a mainstay of foreign state visits to the city. Ronald Reagan famously stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate, made inaccessible by the Wall, when he said "Mister Gorbachev open this gate; Mister Gorbachev tear down this wall."

People fed up with the situation in East Germany - and encouraged by Gorbachev's policy of glasnost and perestroika - took to the streets in increasing numbers in 1989. There was a large demonstration at Alexanderplatz in October 1989. On 9 November 1989, Günter Schabowski read aloud a new decree regarding an opening of the border during the first-ever live GDR press conference. On the subsequent question of when it would enter in force, he replied "sofort, unverzüglich" (i.e. immediately). While the people who had drafted the new decree had not intended for immediate entry into force, Schabowski being only the press secretary had been kept out of the loop regarding that crucial detail. This slip-up led to people flocking to the border post in the belief the Wall had fallen. The overwhelmed guards had no choice but to open the border, and this day became known as the "fall of the Berlin Wall". The Wall was torn down in the ensuing days and weeks. Events began moving fast, and after elections resulted in a clear pro-unification majority, East Germany joined West Germany on 3 October 1990, just days ahead of what would have been the 41st anniversary of the GDR. Berlin became the capital of reunified Germany and most government institutions moved there in 1998. This coincided with the end of the chancellorship of Helmut Kohl who had been in office in 1989 and governed Germany longer than any other commoner.

History since reunification

Despite its almost total lack of industry (what survived the war either left West Berlin or was nationalised in East Berlin and mostly went bankrupt during 1989/90), Berlin is a major draw for immigrants, particularly the young and well-educated. Unlike virtually all major capitals, Berlin is slightly less well-off than the national average, and thus has had comparatively affordable rents and costs of living during the postwar era, albeit with a steep upward trend catching up to its peers by the 2020s. This has combined to make Berlin one of the centres of the startup phenomenon. The "rent question" has come to dominate Berlin politics in the 2020s with a Berlin-based rent control law struck down by the Constitutional Court on the grounds that a state government didn't have that authority (only the federal government does) and a plebiscite in the works that would expropriate big private real estate companies which had bought up a lot of Berlin housing stock cheaply in the neoliberal 2000s.

Strained municipal finances have plagued Berlin since the end of the war, though increasingly so since reunification. Unlike Paris or London, Berlin's status as capital does not mean it automatically benefits from large infusions of national funds to build projects. During partition, both sides viewed their respective parts of Berlin as a propaganda tool to show off to the enemy, so both were subsidised to the extent their respective regimes' coffers allowed, with money flowing in for housing, consumer goods and infrastructure improvements. But following reunification, subsidies that had been granted as a matter of course were increasingly questioned. Then, in 2001, a major banking scandal rocked Berlin and the billions of euros in losses were absorbed by the empty state treasury.

The strained state finances of Berlin led to some questionable cost-cutting measures in the 2000s (then called "Sparen bis es quietscht" roughly translated "cost-cutting until the pips squeak"). The inability of everyday Berliners to get an appointment for stuff like registering their new address has become a source of much self-deprecating Berlin humour in the 2010s and 2020s. The ripple effects of an overextended Berlin civil service can also be felt in the inability of the 2016-2021 Berlin government to expand the tram network due to the long planning and approval process caused in part by insufficient manpower in the civil service.

While the Wall is now fallen longer than it ever stood, and some scars of partition took only weeks or months to mend, there are still visible signs of where the border once was. Some are seemingly innocuous like the lack of trams in the old West or the colour of street lights, but some are kept in place on purpose to remind locals and visitors alike of that phase of history. After reunification, there was an iconoclasm of all things GDR. While many things (particularly the monuments to the Soviet soldiers) were kept, the most notable victim of a drive to tear down all relics of Communist government was the Palast der Republik. It was torn down in part because of asbestos contamination, but also to restore the former Prussian Stadtschloss, which had been torn down to make way for the GDR reorganisation of the city.