Frankfurt (Oder)
Frankfurt is a town in Brandenburg, located on the west side of the Oder River, on the Germany-Poland border, about 80 kilometres east of Berlin. Until the end of Second World War, the city of Słubice, was a part of Frankfurt; until 1990 Frankfurt an der Oder was part of East Germany. At the end of the 1980s, it reached a population peak with more than 87,000 inhabitants; the number dropped below 70,000 in 2002 and was just above 60,000 in 2010. The city's recorded history began in the 13th century as a Polish settlement. Throughout its history it was part of Poland, the Bohemian Crown and Germany, including East Germany; the official name Frankfurt and the older Frankfurt an der Oder are used to distinguish it from the larger city of Frankfurt am Main. Prior to 1249, a settlement named; the Piast duke Henry the Bearded granted Zliwitz staple rights in 1225. In 1226 construction of the St. Nicolaus Church began. In 1249 the settlement became part of the Margraviate of Brandenburg; the town of Frankfurt received its charter in 1253 at the Brandendamm.
The early settlers lived on the western banks of the Oder. In the late Middle Ages, the town dominated the river trade between Szczecin. In years 1373-1415 along with Brandenburg it was part of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown. In 1430, Frankfurt joined the Hanseatic League. In April 1631, during the Thirty Years' War, Frankfurt was the site of the Battle of Frankfurt an der Oder between the Swedish Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. After a two-day siege, Swedish forces, supported by Scottish auxiliaries, stormed the town and detroyed lots of buildings, eg. the Georgen Hospital. The result was a Swedish victory; the city was occupied by the Russian Imperial Army during the Seven Years' War, in August 1759, in the prelude to the battle of Kunersdorf. With the dissolution of the Margraviate of Brandenburg during the Napoleonic Wars, Frankfurt became part of the Province of Brandenburg in 1815. In the 19th century, Frankfurt played an important role in trade. Centrally positioned in the Kingdom of Prussia between Berlin and Posen, on the river Oder with its heavy traffic, the town housed the second-largest annual trade fair of the German Reich, surpassed only by that in Leipzig.
There was no fighting for the town in 1945 during World War II though the town was declared a fortress in an attempt to block the Red Army's route to Berlin. The nearly empty town was burned down; the postwar German-Polish border ran along the Oder, separating the Dammvorstadt on the eastern bank - which became the Polish town of Słubice - from the rest of Frankfurt. While part of communist East Germany, Frankfurt was administered within Bezirk Frankfurt, it became part of the reconstituted state of Brandenburg with German reunification in 1990. Today, Słubice have friendly relations and run several common projects and facilities. Poland joined the European Union on 1 May 2004, implemented the Schengen Agreement on 21 December 2007 leading to the removal of permanent border controls. In the post-communist era, Frankfurt has suffered from low economic growth, its population has fallen from around 87,000 at the time of German reunification in 1990. 1. FC Frankfurt is the town's local football team.
In March 2008, the Jewish community of Frankfurt celebrated its first Torah dedication since the Holocaust. The procession of the new Torah scroll began from the spot where the town's Frankfurter Synagogue stood prior to World War II, 500 meters from Germany's current border with Poland. Celebrants marched with the scroll into the town's Chabad-Lubavitch centre, where they danced with the Torah, donated by members of the Chabad-Lubavitch community in Berlin; the city was known in Polish as Słubice. The Margraviate of Brandenburg's first university was Frankfurt's Alma Mater Viadrina, founded in 1506 by Joachim I Nestor, Elector of Brandenburg. An early chancellor, Bishop Georg von Blumenthal, was a notable opponent of the Protestant Reformation, as he remained a Catholic. Frankfurt trained the noted archbishop Albert of Brandenburg around 1510, who became a vocal opponent of the Reformation; the university attracted many Polish students. It was closed in 1811, its assets divided between two new universities founded under King Frederick William III: Frederick William University of Berlin, presently Humboldt University.
The university was refounded in 1991 with a European emphasis as the Viadrina European University, in close cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. The Frankfurt Bahnhof is a station served by the Berlin-Warszawa Express and has regular regional connections to Magdeburg and Cottbus. Within the city, there is a network of five tram lines. Frankfurt, being located on the border to Poland, plays a special role in connection with German–Polish relations and European integration; the European University Viadrina has one of its buildings in Poland, in the neighbouring town of Słubice. The university has a number of projects and initiatives dedicated to bringing Poland and Germany together, offers its students pro bono Polish courses. Another project that contributes to German–Polish integration in Frankfurt is the Fforst House, a German-Poli
Boroughs and neighborhoods of Berlin
Berlin is both a city and one of Germany’s federal states. Since a 2001 administrative reform, it has been made up of twelve boroughs or districts, each with its own local government, though all boroughs are subject to Berlin’s city and state government; each borough is governed by a council with a borough mayor. The borough council is elected by the borough assembly; the borough governments' power is limited, subordinate to the Berlin Senate. The borough mayors form a council of mayors; each borough is made up of several recognized subdistricts or neighborhoods. These neighborhoods have a historical identity as former independent cities, villages, or rural municipalities that were united in 1920 as part of the Greater Berlin Act, forming the basis for the present-day city and state; the neighborhoods do not have their own governmental bodies, but are recognized by the city and the boroughs for planning and statistical purposes. Berliners identify more with the neighborhood where they live than with the borough that governs them.
The neighborhoods are further subdivided into statistical tracts, which are used for planning and statistical purposes. The statistical tracts correspond but not with neighbourhoods recognized by residents; when Greater Berlin was established in 1920, the city was organized into twenty boroughs, most of which were named after their largest component neighborhood a former city or municipality. By 2000, Berlin comprised twenty-three boroughs, as three new boroughs had been created in East Berlin. Today Berlin is divided into twelve boroughs, reduced from twenty-three boroughs before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform. An administrative reform in 2001 merged the existing boroughs into the current 12 boroughs, as listed below; the borough government is part of the two-stage administration of the Berlin city-state, whereby the Senate and its affiliated agencies and municipal enterprises form the first stage of the so-called Hauptverwaltung. On second position, the boroughs enjoy a certain grade of autonomy—though in no way comparable to the German Landkreise districts or independent cities, nor to the local government of a common municipality as a legal entity, as according to the Berlin Constitution the legal status of the city as a German state itself is that of a unified municipality.
The power of the borough governments is limited and their performance of assigned tasks is subject to a regulatory supervision by the Senate. The twelve self-governing boroughs have constitutional status and are themselves subdivided into two administrative bodies: each is governed by the borough assembly and a full-time borough council, consisting of four councilors and headed by a borough mayor; the BVV assembly is directly elected by the borough's population and therefore acts as a borough parliament, though it is part of the executive. It elects the members of the borough council, checks its daily administration and is able to make applications and recommendations; the twelve borough mayors meet in the Council of Mayors, led by the city's Governing Mayor. The localities have no local government bodies, the administrative duties of the former locality representative, the Ortsvorsteher, were taken over by the borough mayors. All the coats of arms of Berliner boroughs have some common points: The shield has a Spanish form and the coronet is represented by a mural crown: 3 towers in red bricks with the coat of arms of Berlin in the middle.
Most of the coats of arms of current boroughs have changed some elements in their field: Some of them have created a "fusion" of themes of the merged Bezirke. Only the unchanged boroughs of Neukölln and Spandau haven't changed their field; the coat of arms of Pankow was created with a new design in 2008, having been the only district without an emblem for 7 years. As of 2012, the twelve boroughs are made up of a total of 96 recognized localities. All of them are further subdivided into several other zones; the largest Ortsteil is Köpenick, the smallest one is Hansaviertel. The most populated is Neukölln, the least populated is Malchow. Mitte Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Pankow Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf Spandau Steglitz-Zehlendorf Tempelhof-Schöneberg Neukölln Treptow-Köpenick Marzahn-Hellersdorf Lichtenberg Codes 1105 and 1108 are not assigned Reinickendorf Politics of Berlin Berlin Police Boroughs of Berlin – Wikipedia book Media related to Boroughs of Berlin at Wikimedia Commons Media related to Localities of Berlin at Wikimedia Commons
Frederick the Great
Frederick II ruled the Kingdom of Prussia from 1740 until 1786, the longest reign of any Hohenzollern king. His most significant accomplishments during his reign included his military victories, his reorganization of Prussian armies, his patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment and his final success against great odds in the Seven Years' War. Frederick was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled King in Prussia and declared himself King of Prussia after achieving sovereignty over most Prussian lands in 1772. Prussia had increased its territories and became a leading military power in Europe under his rule, he became known as Frederick the Great and was nicknamed Der Alte Fritz by the Prussian people and the rest of Germany. In his youth, Frederick was more interested in philosophy than the art of war. Nonetheless, upon ascending to the Prussian throne he attacked Austria and claimed Silesia during the Silesian Wars, winning military acclaim for himself and Prussia. Toward the end of his reign, Frederick physically connected most of his realm by acquiring Polish territories in the First Partition of Poland.
He was an influential military theorist whose analysis emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy, tactics and logistics. Considering himself "the first servant of the state", Frederick was a proponent of enlightened absolutism, he modernized the Prussian bureaucracy and civil service and pursued religious policies throughout his realm that ranged from tolerance to segregation. He reformed the judicial system and made it possible for men not of noble status to become judges and senior bureaucrats. Frederick encouraged immigrants of various nationalities and faiths to come to Prussia, although he enacted oppressive measures against Polish Catholic subjects in West Prussia. Frederick supported arts and philosophers he favored as well as allowing complete freedom of the press and literature. Frederick is buried at Sanssouci in Potsdam; because he died childless, Frederick was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick William II, son of his brother, Augustus William.
Nearly all 19th-century German historians made Frederick into a romantic model of a glorified warrior, praising his leadership, administrative efficiency, devotion to duty and success in building up Prussia to a great power in Europe. Historian Leopold von Ranke was unstinting in his praise of Frederick's "heroic life, inspired by great ideas, filled with feats of arms... immortalized by the raising of the Prussian state to the rank of a power". Johann Gustav Droysen was more extolling. Frederick remained an admired historical figure through the German Empire's defeat in World War I; the Nazis glorified him as a great German leader pre-figuring Adolf Hitler, who idolized him. Associations with him became far less favorable after the fall of the Nazis due to his status as one of their symbols. However, by the 21st century a re-evaluation of his legacy as a great general and enlightened monarch returned opinion of him to favour. Frederick, the son of Frederick William I and his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, was born in Berlin on 24 January 1712.
He was baptised with only one name and was not given any other names. The birth of Frederick was welcomed by his grandfather, Frederick I, with more than usual pleasure, as his two previous grandsons had both died in infancy. With the death of his father in 1713, Frederick William became King in Prussia, thus making young Frederick the crown prince; the new king wished for his daughters to be educated not as royalty, but as simple folk. He had been educated by a Frenchwoman, Madame de Montbail, who became Madame de Rocoulle, he wished that she educate his children. Frederick William I, popularly dubbed as the Soldier-King, had created a large and powerful army led by his famous "Potsdam Giants" managed his treasury finances and developed a strong, centralized government. However, he possessed a violent temper and ruled Brandenburg-Prussia with absolute authority; as Frederick grew, his preference for music and French culture clashed with his father's militarism, resulting in Frederick William beating and humiliating him.
In contrast, Frederick's mother Sophia was polite and learned. Her father, George Louis of Brunswick-Lüneburg, succeeded to the British throne as King George I in 1714. Frederick was brought up by Huguenot governesses and tutors and learned French and German simultaneously. In spite of his father's desire that his education be religious and pragmatic, the young Frederick, with the help of his tutor Jacques Duhan, procured for himself a three thousand volume secret library of poetry and Roman classics, French philosophy to supplement his official lessons. Although Frederick William I was raised a Calvinist, he feared. To avoid the possibility of Frederick being motivated by the same concerns, the king ordered that his heir not be taught about predestination. Although Frederick was irreligious, he to some extent appeared to adopt this tenet of Calvinism; some scholars have speculated. In the mid-1720s, a double marriage was proposed. Queen Sophia Dorothea attempted to arrange Frederick and his sister Wilhelmine with Amelia and Frederick, the children of her brother, King George II of Great Britain.
Fearing an alliance between Prussia and Great Britain, Field Marshal von Seckendorff, the Austrian ambassador in Berlin, bribed the Prussian Minister of War, Field Marshal von Grumbkow, the Prussian ambassador in Lon
Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II. Following the Vistula–Oder Offensive of January–February 1945, the Red Army had temporarily halted on a line 60 km east of Berlin. On 9 March, Germany established its defence plan for the city with Operation Clausewitz; the first defensive preparations at the outskirts of Berlin were made on 20 March, under the newly appointed commander of Army Group Vistula, General Gotthard Heinrici. When the Soviet offensive resumed on 16 April, two Soviet fronts attacked Berlin from the east and south, while a third overran German forces positioned north of Berlin. Before the main battle in Berlin commenced, the Red Army encircled the city after successful battles of the Seelow Heights and Halbe. On 20 April 1945, Hitler's birthday, the 1st Belorussian Front led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, advancing from the east and north, started shelling Berlin's city centre, while Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front broke through Army Group Centre and advanced towards the southern suburbs of Berlin.
On 23 April General Helmuth Weidling assumed command of the forces within Berlin. The garrison consisted of several depleted and disorganised Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS divisions, along with poorly trained Volkssturm and Hitler Youth members. Over the course of the next week, the Red Army took the entire city. Before the battle was over and several of his followers killed themselves; the city's garrison surrendered on 2 May but fighting continued to the north-west and south-west of the city until the end of the war in Europe on 8 May as some German units fought westward so that they could surrender to the Western Allies rather than to the Soviets. Starting on 12 January 1945, the Red Army began the Vistula–Oder Offensive across the Narew River. On the fourth day, the Red Army broke out and started moving west, up to 30 to 40 km per day, taking East Prussia and Poznań, drawing up on a line 60 km east of Berlin along the Oder River; the newly created Army Group Vistula, under the command of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, attempted a counter-attack, but this had failed by 24 February.
The Red Army drove on to Pomerania, clearing the right bank of the Oder River, thereby reaching into Silesia. In the south the Siege of Budapest raged. Three German divisions' attempts to relieve the encircled Hungarian capital city failed, Budapest fell to the Soviets on 13 February. Adolf Hitler insisted on a counter-attack to recapture the Drau-Danube triangle; the goal was to secure the oil region of Nagykanizsa and regain the Danube River for future operations, but the depleted German forces had been given an impossible task. By 16 March, the German Lake Balaton Offensive had failed, a counter-attack by the Red Army took back in 24 hours everything the Germans had taken ten days to gain. On 30 March, the Soviets entered Austria. Between June and September 1944, the Wehrmacht had lost more than a million men, it lacked the fuel and armaments needed to operate effectively. On 12 April 1945, who had earlier decided to remain in the city against the wishes of his advisers, heard the news that the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died.
This raised false hopes in the Führerbunker that there might yet be a falling out among the Allies and that Berlin would be saved at the last moment, as had happened once before when Berlin was threatened. No plans were made by the Western Allies to seize the city by a ground operation; the Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force, General Eisenhower lost interest in the race to Berlin and saw no further need to suffer casualties by attacking a city that would be in the Soviet sphere of influence after the war, envisioning excessive friendly fire if both armies attempted to occupy the city at once. The major Western Allied contribution to the battle was the bombing of Berlin during 1945. During 1945 the United States Army Air Forces launched large daytime raids on Berlin and for 36 nights in succession, scores of RAF Mosquitos bombed the German capital, ending on the night of 20/21 April 1945 just before the Soviets entered the city; the Soviet offensive into central Germany, what became East Germany, had two objectives.
Stalin did not believe the Western Allies would hand over territory occupied by them in the post-war Soviet zone, so he began the offensive on a broad front and moved to meet the Western Allies as far west as possible. But the overriding objective was to capture Berlin; the two goals were complementary because possession of the zone could not be won unless Berlin were taken. Another consideration was that Berlin itself held useful post-war strategic assets, including Adolf Hitler and the German atomic bomb programme. On 6 March, Hitler appointed Lieutenant General Helmuth Reymann commander of the Berlin Defence Area, replacing Lieutenant General Bruno Ritter von Hauenschild. On 20 March, General Gotthard Heinrici was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula replacing Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Heinrici was one of the best defensive tacticians in the German army, he started to lay defensive plans. Heinrici assessed that the main Soviet thrust would be made over the Oder River and along the main east-west Autobahn.
He decided not to try to defend the banks of the Oder with anything more than a light skirmishing screen. Instead, Heinrici arranged for engineers
Propaganda
Propaganda is information, not objective and is used to influence an audience and further an agenda by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information, presented. Propaganda is associated with material prepared by governments, but activist groups, religious organizations and the media can produce propaganda. In the twentieth century, the term propaganda has been associated with a manipulative approach, but propaganda was a neutral descriptive term. A wide range of materials and media are used for conveying propaganda messages, which changed as new technologies were invented, including paintings, posters, films, radio shows, TV shows, websites. More the digital age has given rise to new ways of disseminating propaganda, for example, through the use of bots and algorithms to create computational propaganda and spread fake or biased news using social media. In a 1929 literary debate with Edward Bernays, Everett Dean Martin argues that, "Propaganda is making puppets of us.
We are moved by hidden strings which the propagandist manipulates." Propaganda is a modern Latin word, the gerundive form of propagare, meaning to spread or to propagate, thus propaganda means that, to be propagated. This word derived from a new administrative body of the Catholic church created in 1622 as part of the Counter-Reformation, called the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, or informally Propaganda, its activity was aimed at "propagating" the Catholic faith in non-Catholic countries. From the 1790s, the term began being used to refer to propaganda in secular activities; the term began taking a pejorative or negative connotation in the mid-19th century, when it was used in the political sphere. Primitive forms of propaganda have been a human activity as far back as reliable recorded evidence exists; the Behistun Inscription detailing the rise of Darius I to the Persian throne is viewed by most historians as an early example of propaganda. Another striking example of propaganda during Ancient History is the last Roman civil wars during which Octavian and Mark Antony blame each other for obscure and degrading origins, cowardice and literary incompetence, luxury and other slanders.
This defamation took the form of uituperatio, decisive for shaping the Roman public opinion at this time. Propaganda during the Reformation, helped by the spread of the printing press throughout Europe, in particular within Germany, caused new ideas and doctrine to be made available to the public in ways that had never been seen before the 16th century. During the era of the American Revolution, the American colonies had a flourishing network of newspapers and printers who specialized in the topic on behalf of the Patriots; the first large-scale and organised propagation of government propaganda was occasioned by the outbreak of war in 1914. After the defeat of Germany in the First World War, military officials such as Erich Ludendorff suggested that British propaganda had been instrumental in their defeat. Adolf Hitler came to echo this view, believing that it had been a primary cause of the collapse of morale and the revolts in the German home front and Navy in 1918. In Mein Kampf Hitler expounded his theory of propaganda, which provided a powerful base for his rise to power in 1933.
Historian Robert Ensor explains. Most propaganda in Nazi Germany was produced by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels. World War II saw continued use of propaganda as a weapon of war, building on the experience of WWI, by Goebbels and the British Political Warfare Executive, as well as the United States Office of War Information. In the early 20th century, the invention of motion pictures gave propaganda-creators a powerful tool for advancing political and military interests when it came to reaching a broad segment of the population and creating consent or encouraging rejection of the real or imagined enemy. In the years following the October Revolution of 1917, the Soviet government sponsored the Russian film industry with the purpose of making propaganda films In WWII, Nazi filmmakers produced emotional films to create popular support for occupying the Sudetenland and attacking Poland; the 1930s and 1940s, which saw the rise of totalitarian states and the Second World War, are arguably the "Golden Age of Propaganda".
Leni Riefenstahl, a filmmaker working in Nazi Germany, created one of the best-known propaganda movies, Triumph of the Will. In the US, animation became popular for winning over youthful audiences and aiding the U. S. war effort, e.g. Der Fuehrer's Face, which ridicules Hitler and advocates the value of freedom. US war films in the early 1940s were designed to create a patriotic mindset and convince viewers that sacrifices needed to be made to defeat the Axis Powers. Polish filmmakers in Great Britain created anti-nazi color film Calling mr. Smith about current nazi crimes in occupied Europe and about lies of nazi propaganda; the West and the Soviet Union both used propaganda extensively during the Cold War. Both sides used film, and
Berlin Ostbahnhof
Berlin Ostbahnhof is a main line railway station in Berlin, Germany. It is located in the Friedrichshain quarter, now part of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough, has undergone several name changes in its history, it was known as Berlin Hauptbahnhof from 1987 to 1998, a name now applied to Berlin's new central station at the former Lehrter station. Alongside Berlin Zoologischer Garten station it was one of the city's two main stations; the station opened on 23 October 1842 as Frankfurter Bahnhof, the terminus of a 81 km railway line to Frankfurt via Fürstenwalde. In 1845 the independent Berlin–Frankfurt railway merged into the Niederschlesisch-Märkische-Eisenbahngesellschaft, aiming at the extension of the line from Frankfurt to Breslau. After the NME lines were taken over by the Prussian state in 1852, the station was renamed Schlesischer Bahnhof. In 1867 the Old Ostbahnhof, the terminus of the Prussian Eastern Railway line was opened, located north of the present Ostbahnhof station. In 1882 the Old Ostbahnhof was again abandoned and Schlesischer Bahnhof was rebuilt on the present site when construction began on the Berlin Stadtbahn, an elevated railway through the Berlin city center built to link the city's major stations.
The Stadtbahn was completed in 1886. The Ostbahnhof is one planned; as the terminus of both the Silesian and the Eastern Railway line, Schlesischer Bahnhof developed to Berlin's "Gate to the East". Until World War I, trains ran from the German capital via Königsberg to Saint Petersburg and to Moscow as well as to Vienna and Constantinople via Breslau and Kattowitz. During the Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire, numerous Jewish refugees arrived here to travel on to the emigration harbors in Hamburg and Bremerhaven; the station was damaged by strategic bombing in World War II and had to be rebuilt by the East German railway, the Deutsche Reichsbahn. In 1950 it was renamed Berlin Ostbahnhof, as upon the implementation of the Oder–Neisse line, the former Silesia province was now a part of Poland, its German population expelled. Memories of the German history of Silesia were repressed by the German Democratic Republic. Following the division of Germany, the station was, together with Berlin-Lichtenberg, one of two major railway stations in East Berlin.
The wall ran only 200 metres away from the station. Express trains ran from Ostbahnhof to Leipzig and Dresden; the station was again served by international trains like the Vindobona to Vienna. In 1987 the postwar building was demolished and the station began to be rebuilt as East Berlin's main station, grandly renamed Berlin Hauptbahnhof; the plan called for a large reception area for arriving Soviet bloc dignitaries. However, only part of the work was complete by the time of German reunification in 1990. A built staircase to the underground car park from this period in front of the station remains unfinished and fenced off. A constructed hotel was demolished in the early 1990s; the name Hauptbahnhof remained long after the division of Berlin ended, until 1998, when the station was re-renamed Berlin Ostbahnhof. One year work began to demolish the station and rebuild it once again, completed in 2002. Little remains of the 1980s structure except for an administrative block, some façade elements, parts of the platform structure.
The station has 9 platforms. 5 platforms are used for 4 for S-Bahn. 2 tracks are through tracks. The station is served by the following service: Intercity Express services Berlin - Brunswick - Göttingen - Kassel - Frankfurt - Mannheim - Freiburg - Basel - Interlaken/Zurich Intercity Express services Berlin - Brunswick - Göttingen - Kassel - Frankfurt Intercity Express services Berlin - Hanover - Göttingen - Kassel - Frankfurt - Stuttgart/Basel Intercity Express services Binz – Berlin – Hanover – Dortmund/Münster – Cologne/Aachen – Mainz – Mannheim – Stuttgart – Tübingen/Austria Intercity services Norddeich - Emden - Oldenburg - Bremen - Hanover - Brunswick - Magdeburg - Brandenburg - Berlin - Cottbus Intercity services Amsterdam - Amersfoort - Hengelo - Osnabrück - Hanover - Berlin Eurocity services Berlin - Frankfurt - Poznań - Warsaw / Gdynia Regional services IRE 1 Hamburg – Uelzen – Stendal – Berlin Regional services RE 1 Magdeburg – Brandenburg – Potsdam – Berlin – Erkner – Fürstenwalde – Frankfurt Regional services RE 2 Wismar – Schwerin – Wittenberge – Nauen – Berlin – Königs Wusterhausen – Lübben – Cottbus Regional services RE 7 Dessau – Bad Belzig – Michendorf – Berlin – Berlin-Schönefeld Airport – Wünsdorf-Waldstadt Local services RB 14 Nauen – Falkensee – Berlin – Berlin-Schönefeld Airport Berlin S-Bahn services S 3 Spandau - Westkreuz – Hauptbahnhof – Alexanderplatz – Ostbahnhof – Ostkreuz – Karlshorst – Köpenick – Erkner Berlin S-Bahn services S 5 Westkreuz – Hauptbahnhof – Alexanderplatz – Ostbahnhof – Ostkreuz – Lichtenberg – Strausberg Nord Berlin S-Bahn services S 7 Potsdam – Wannsee – Westkreuz – Hauptbahnhof – Alexanderplatz – Ostbahnhof – Ostkreu
Vehicle registration plate
A vehicle registration plate known as a number plate or a license plate, is a metal or plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle or trailer for official identification purposes. All countries require registration plates for road vehicles such as cars and motorcycles. Whether they are required for other vehicles, such as bicycles, boats, or tractors, may vary by jurisdiction; the registration identifier is a numeric or alphanumeric ID that uniquely identifies the vehicle owner within the issuing region's vehicle register. In some countries, the identifier is unique within the entire country, while in others it is unique within a state or province. Whether the identifier is associated with a vehicle or a person varies by issuing agency. There are electronic license plates. Most governments require a registration plate to be attached to both the front and rear of a vehicle, although certain jurisdictions or vehicle types, such as motorboats, require only one plate, attached to the rear of the vehicle.
National databases relate this number to other information describing the vehicle, such as the make, colour, year of manufacture, engine size, type of fuel used, mileage recorded, vehicle identification number, the name and address of the vehicle's registered owner or keeper. In the vast majority of jurisdictions, the government holds a monopoly on the manufacturing of vehicle registration plates for that jurisdiction. Either a government agency or a private company with express contractual authorization from the government makes plates as needed, which are mailed to, delivered to, or picked up by the vehicle owners. Thus, it is illegal for private citizens to make and affix their own plates, because such unauthorized private manufacturing is equivalent to forging an official document. Alternatively, the government will assign plate numbers, it is the vehicle owner's responsibility to find an approved private supplier to make a plate with that number. In some jurisdictions, plates will be permanently assigned to that particular vehicle for its lifetime.
If the vehicle is either destroyed or exported to a different country, the plate number is retired or reissued. China requires the re-registration of any vehicle that crosses its borders from another country, such as for overland tourist visits, regardless of the length of time it is due to remain there. Other jurisdictions follow a "plate-to-owner" policy, meaning that when a vehicle is sold the seller removes the current plate from the vehicle. Buyers must either obtain new plates or attach plates they hold, as well as register their vehicles under the buyer's name and plate number. A person who sells a car and purchases a new one can apply to have the old plates put onto the new car. One who sells a car and does not buy a new one may, depending on the local laws involved, have to turn the old plates in or destroy them, or may be permitted to keep them; some jurisdictions permit the registration of the vehicle with "personal" plates. In some jurisdictions, plates require periodic replacement associated with a design change of the plate itself.
Vehicle owners may or may not have the option to keep their original plate number, may have to pay a fee to exercise this option. Alternately, or additionally, vehicle owners have to replace a small decal on the plate or use a decal on the windshield to indicate the expiration date of the vehicle registration, periodic safety and/or emissions inspections or vehicle taxation. Other jurisdictions have replaced the decal requirement through the use of computerization: a central database maintains records of which plate numbers are associated with expired registrations, communicating with automated number plate readers to enable law-enforcement to identify expired registrations in the field. Plates are fixed directly to a vehicle or to a plate frame, fixed to the vehicle. Sometimes, the plate frames contain advertisements inserted by the vehicle service centre or the dealership from which the vehicle was purchased. Vehicle owners can purchase customized frames to replace the original frames. In some jurisdictions registration plate frames have design restrictions.
For example, many states, like Texas, allow plate frames but prohibit plate frames from covering the name of the state, district, Native American tribe or country that issued of license plate. Plates are designed to conform to standards with regard to being read by eye in day or at night, or by electronic equipment; some drivers purchase clear, smoke-colored or tinted covers that go over the registration plate to prevent electronic equipment from scanning the registration plate. Legality of these covers varies; some cameras incorporate filter systems that make such avoidance attempts unworkable with infra-red filters. Vehicles pulling trailers, such as caravans and semi-trailer trucks, are required to display a third registration plate on the rear of the trailer. An engineering study by the University of Illinois published in 1960 recommended that the state of Illinois adopt a numbering system and plate design "composed of combinations of characters which can be perceived and are legible at a distance of 125 feet under daylight conditions, are adapted to filing and administrative procedures".
It recommended that a standard plate size of 6 inches by 14 inches be adopte
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listen)) is a district of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough 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, Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg and Lichtenberg.
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Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg
Lichtenberg
Marzahn-Hellersdorf
Mitte
Neukölln
Pankow
Reinickendorf
Spandau
Steglitz-Zehlendorf
Tempelhof-Schöneberg
Treptow-Köpenick
