1.
Berlin
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Berlin is the capital and the largest city of Germany as well as one of its constituent 16 states. With a population of approximately 3.5 million, Berlin is the second most populous city proper, due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one-third of the area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers. Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world, following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all-Germany. Berlin is a city of culture, politics, media. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations. Berlin serves as a hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination, significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics. Modern Berlin is home to world renowned universities, orchestras, museums and its urban setting has made it a sought-after location for international film productions. The city is known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts. Since 2000 Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene, the name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of todays Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl-. All German place names ending on -ow, -itz and -in, since the Ber- at the beginning sounds like the German word Bär, a bear appears in the coat of arms of the city. It is therefore a canting arm, 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 join Berlin until 1920, the central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document,1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, and profited from the right on the two important trade routes Via Imperii and from Bruges to Novgorod. In 1307, they formed an alliance with a common external policy, in 1415 Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. In 1443 Frederick II Irontooth started the construction of a new palace in the twin city Berlin-Cölln
2.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
3.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
4.
Heinrich Seeling
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Heinrich Seeling was a German architect. He was born the son of a bricklayer in the Thuringian town of Zeulenroda, after studies in Vienna and Italy, Seeling began his career working as an assistant in the studios of Hugo Licht, Hermann Ende and Wilhelm Böckmann in Berlin. In 1882/83 he unsuccessfully competed with Paul Wallot in an architectural contest to erect the new Reichstag building, nevertheless he soon acquired renown as an architect of numerous lavish theatre buildings throughout Germany, starting with the construction of the Stadttheater Halle in 1886. He also designed two Protestant churches and several residential and commercial buildings in Bromberg in the Prussian Province of Posen, since 1896 Seeling was a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts
5.
Fritz Bornemann
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Fritz Bornemann was a German architect. Bornemann studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin, after graduating in 1936, he was Assistant Scenic Designer at the Berlin Municipal Opera and, starting in 1945, Construction Supervisor with the city of Berlin. Since 1950 he became an independent architect active in Berlin, the designs for the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Freie Volksbühne and the Museumszentrum Berlin-Dahlem were drawn up by him. He also designed the headquarters of the Commerzbank Berlin and he designed the German Pavilion for the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka. Later there appeared, amongst others, the extension of the Rathaus of Berlin-Wedding, less well-known is his work in multimedia. He designed some exhibitions, amongst them Atom and Farmer Smith, the Osaka Pavilion was his crowning achievement in this field. Bornemann’s architecture was and is a subject of violent controversial opinions over the trends of the 1950s and 1960s. The critics speak of cold or austere architecture and belittle his buildings with expressions like elegance in exposed-aggregate concrete and his adherents see in his work a model for modern architecture, and especially for modern theatre architecture. For more than 16 years Fritz Bornemann was Chairman of the Bund Deutscher Architekten, der deutsche Beitrag auf der Expo70 in Osaka
6.
Opera
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Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. In traditional opera, singers do two types of singing, recitative, a style and arias, a more melodic style. Opera incorporates many of the elements of theatre, such as acting, scenery. The performance is given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his operas in the 1760s. The first third of the 19th century saw the point of the bel canto style, with Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti. It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Auber and Meyerbeer, the mid-to-late 19th century was a golden age of opera, led and dominated by Richard Wagner in Germany and Giuseppe Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through the era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Giacomo Puccini. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, the 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism, Neoclassicism, and Minimalism. With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso, since the invention of radio and television, operas were also performed on these mediums. Beginning in 2006, a number of opera houses began to present live high-definition video transmissions of their performances in cinemas all over the world. In 2009, an opera company offered a download of a complete performance. The words of an opera are known as the libretto, some composers, notably Wagner, have written their own libretti, others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e. g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte. Vocal duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action, in some forms of opera, such as singspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, the terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in detail below. Over the 18th century, arias were accompanied by the orchestra. Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagners example, though some, the changing role of the orchestra in opera is described in more detail below
7.
Charlottenburg
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Charlottenburg is an affluent locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Charlottenburg was an independent city to the west of Berlin until 1920 when it was incorporated into Groß-Berlin, in the course of Berlins 2001 administrative reform it was merged with the former borough of Wilmersdorf becoming a part of a new borough called Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Later, in 2004, the new districts were rearranged, dividing the former borough of Charlottenburg into the localities of Charlottenburg proper, Westend. Charlottenburg is located in Berlins inner city, west of the Großer Tiergarten park and its historic core, the former village green of Alt Lietzow, is situated on the southern shore of the Spree River running through the Berlin glacial valley. In the north and west, the Berlin Ringbahn and the Bundesautobahn 100 mark the border with the Charlottenburg-Nord, adjacent in the south is the territory of Wilmersdorf. Charlottenburg also borders on the district of Halensee in the southwest, as well as on Moabit, Hansaviertel and Tiergarten in the east, archaeological findings in the area date back to the Neolithic era. Although these names are of Slavic origin, the settlements are likely to have had a mixed Slavic, Lietzow is first documented in a 1239 deed. In 1315, Lietzow and Casow became the property of the Sankt Marien nunnery in nearby Spandau, as a result, the Lietzow farmstead probably was expanded to a village. In the course of the Protestant Reformation, Elector Joachim II Hector of Brandenburg confiscated the estates, while the Lietzow area has been populated continuously, Casow and Glienicke were abandoned. From old field names it is believed that Glienicke lay in the area of the present day streets Kantstraße, Fasanenstraße, Kurfürstendamm, the development of Lietzow is well documented. For more than four hundred years, members of the Berendt family were mayors, in 1695, Sophia Charlotte of Hanover received Lietzow from her husband, Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg, in exchange for her estates in Caputh and Langerwisch near Potsdam. Frederick had a residence built there for Sophie Charlotte by the architect Johann Arnold Nering between 1695 and 1699. After he had crowned himself Frederick I, King in Prussia, the Swedish master builder Johann Friedrich Eosander supervised this work. The king served as the mayor until the historic village of Lietzow was incorporated into Charlottenburg in 1720. Fredericks successor as king, Frederick William I of Prussia, rarely stayed at the palace, Frederick William even tried to revoke the towns privileges. With the coronation of his successor Frederick II inl 1740 the towns significance increased, between 1740 and 1747 Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff built the eastern New Wing as Fredericks residence. Later, Frederick II preferred the palace of Sanssouci, which he had designed himself. After the defeat of the Prussian army at Jena in 1806, napoleon took over the palace, while his troops made a camp nearby
8.
Opera house
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An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building. While some venues are constructed specifically for operas, other houses are part of larger performing arts centers. In contrast, there was no house in London when Henry Purcell was composing. Early United States opera houses served a variety of functions in towns and cities, hosting community dances, fairs, plays, with the rise of bourgeois and capitalist social forms in the 19th century, European culture moved away from its patronage system to a publicly supported system. In the 2000s, most opera and theatre companies raise funds from a combination of government and institutional grants, ticket sales, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples introduces the plant horseshoe, the oldest in the world, a model for the Italian theater. On this model were built following theaters of Italy and Europe, among others, the theater of the Palace of Caserta. Given the popularity of opera in 18th and 19th century Europe, opera houses are large, with generally more than 1,000 seats. Modern opera houses of the century such as New Yorks Metropolitan Opera. Many operas are better suited to being presented in smaller theatres, in a traditional opera house, the auditorium is U-shaped, with the length of the sides determining the audience capacity. Around this are tiers of balconies, and often, nearer to the stage, are boxes and this is especially true of Wagners Bayreuth Festspielhaus where the pit is almost completely covered. The size of an opera orchestra varies, but for some operas, oratorios and other works, it may be large, for some romantic period works. Similarly, an opera may have a large cast of characters, chorus, dancers, therefore, a major opera house will have extensive dressing room facilities. Opera houses often have on-premises set and costume building shops and facilities for storage of costumes, make-up, masks, and stage properties, major opera houses throughout the world often have highly mechanized stages, with large stage elevators permitting heavy sets to be changed rapidly. At the Metropolitan Opera, for instance, sets are changed during the action, as the audience watches. This occurs in the Mets productions of such as Aida. Much the same happened in the remodeling of Milans La Scala opera house between 2002 and 2004, since the 1990s, however, many opera houses have begun using a subtle form of sound reinforcement called acoustic enhancement. Often, operas are presented in their languages, which may be different from the first language of the audience. For example, a Wagnerian opera presented in London may be in German, therefore, since the 1980s modern opera houses have assisted the audience by providing translated supertitles, projections of the words above or near to the stage
9.
Staatsoper Unter den Linden
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The Berlin State Opera is a German opera company based in Berlin. Its permanent home is the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, commonly referred to as Lindenoper, in the central Mitte district, originally the Hofoper from 1742, it was named Königliches Opernhaus in 1844, and Staatsoper Unter den Linden in 1918. From 1949 to 1990 it housed the opera of East Germany. Since 2004, the State Opera company belongs to the Berlin Opera Foundation, like the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Komische Oper Berlin, the Berlin State Ballet, king Frederick II of Prussia shortly after his accession to the throne commissioned the original building on the site. Construction work began in July 1741 with what was designed by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff to be the first part of a Forum Fredericianum on present-day Bebelplatz. Although not entirely completed, the Court Opera was inaugurated with a performance of Carl Heinrich Grauns Cesare e Cleopatra on December 7,1742. This event marked the beginning of the successful, 250-year co-operation between the Staatsoper and the Staatskapelle Berlin, the orchestra, whose roots trace back to the 16th century. In 1821, the Berlin Opera—hosted at the Schauspielhaus Berlin—gave the premiere of Webers Der Freischütz, in 1842, Wilhelm Taubert instituted the tradition of regular symphonic concerts. In the same year, Giacomo Meyerbeer succeeded Gaspare Spontini as General Music Director, Felix Mendelssohn also conducted symphonic concerts for a year. On August 18,1843 the Linden Opera was destroyed by fire, in 1849, Otto Nicolais Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor was premiered at the Royal Opera House, conducted by the composer himself. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century and they included Felix von Weingartner, Karl Muck, Richard Strauss, and Leo Blech. After the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, the Opera was renamed Staatsoper unter den Linden, in the 1920s, Kurt Adler, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Erich Kleiber, Otto Klemperer, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Bruno Walter occupied the conductors post. In 1925, Alban Bergs Wozzeck, was given its premiere in a production conducted by Erich Kleiber in the composers presence, after having undergone an extensive renovation, the Linden Opera reopened on 28 April 1928 with a new production of Die Zauberflöte. The cast included Delia Reinhardt, Richard Tauber, Friedrich Schorr and Leo Schützendorf, in the same year, the famous Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin and Serge Diaghilevs Ballets Russes with conductor Ernest Ansermet were guest performers. In 1930 Erich Kleiber conducted the premiere of Darius Milhauds Christophe Colomb, however, in 1934, when symphonic pieces from Alban Bergs Lulu were performed by Kleiber, the National Socialists provoked a scandal and the conductor was forced into exile. After Hitlers Nazi takeover, members of Jewish origin were dismissed from the ensemble, many German musicians associated with the opera went into exile, including the conductors Kurt Adler, Otto Klemperer and Fritz Busch. During the Third Reich, Robert Heger, Herbert von Karajan,1938, Werner Egk conducted the first night of his opera Peer Gynt on November 24. Herbert von Karajan´s interpretation of Mozart´s Die Zauberflöte was performed on December 18, Karajan continued as Generalmusikdirektor, the principal musical director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden between 1941 and 1945
