1.
Landwehr Canal
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The Landwehr Canal, or Landwehrkanal in German, is a 10. 7-kilometre long canal parallel to the Spree river in Berlin, Germany, built between 1845 and 1850 according to plans by Peter Joseph Lenné. It connects the upper part of the Spree at the Osthafen in Friedrichshain with its part in Charlottenburg, flowing through Kreuzberg. Lenné designed a canal with sloped walls, a width of 20 m at the surface. In the course of two enlargements, it reached a breadth of 22 m and a depth of 2 m, today the waterway is mainly used by tourist boats and pleasure craft. The Landwehr Canal leaves the Spree River in the Osthafen in Friedrichshain and it immediately descends through the Schleusenufer and heads in a straight line south west to its junction with the Neukölln Ship Canal, which provides a connection to the Teltow Canal. Although this has since been filled and partially converted to a public garden, further west in Kreuzberg, the canal is paralleled for about 1 kilometre by the U1 line of the Berlin U-Bahn, which runs here as an elevated railway. Shortly after that, the elevated U2 line crosses the canal, after entering Tiergarten, the canal flows between the Großer Tiergarten Park and the Berlin Zoological Garden. Here the canal passes through the Unterschleuse and is bridged by the Berlin Stadtbahn and this historic elevated railway carries S-Bahn, Regional-Express and InterCity trains. The Landwehr Canal rejoins the Spree River in Charlottenburg, immediately opposite the entrance to the Charlottenburg Canal at a waterways crossroad known as Spreekreuz. After Rosa Luxemburg was murdered on January 15,1919, her body was dumped into the Landwehr Canal, in 1920 Anna Anastasia Anderson attempted suicide by jumping into the water. In 1932 initial construction of the Shell-Haus overlooking the canal was completed, on 27 April 1945 the Russian Army was closing in on the German Armys final defensive stronghold in the Tiergarten district of Berlin. On 8 June 1962 a party of fourteen East German refugees commandeered the river steamer Friedrich Wolff, erected steel plates around the wheelhouse and sailed from the Spree into the Landwehr Canal. An East German patrol boat intercepted them and opened fire, but West German police returned fire and all landed safely on the canal bank, in the West
2.
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
3.
Kreuzberg
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Kreuzberg, a part of the combined Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte since 2001, is one of the best-known areas of Berlin. The borough is known for its large percentage of immigrants and descendants of immigrants. As of 2006,31. 6% of Kreuzbergs inhabitants did not have German citizenship, the counterculture tradition of Kreuzberg led to a plurality of votes for the Green Party, which is unique among all Berlin boroughs. The local MP Hans-Christian Ströbele is the only Green politician directly elected to the federal Bundestag parliament, Kreuzberg is bounded by the river Spree in the east. The Landwehrkanal flows through Kreuzberg from east to west, with the Paul-Lincke-Ufer running alongside it, other characteristics are the old U-Bahn line of the present-day U1, the Görlitzer Park in SO36 and the Viktoriapark on the slope of the Kreuzberg hill in SW61. Kreuzberg is divided into 2 zones, Östliches Kreuzberg, Westliches Kreuzberg, in contrast to many other areas of Berlin, which were villages before their integration into Berlin, Kreuzberg has a rather short history. It was formed on 1 October 1920 by the Greater Berlin Act providing for the incorporation of suburbs, on 27 September 1921 the borough assembly of Hallesches Tor decided to rename the borough after the homonymous hill. Kreuzberg, literally meaning cross hill, is the point of highest elevation in the Kreuzberg locality, the hill is traditionally a place for weekend trips. It received its name from the 1821 Prussian National Monument for the Liberation Wars by Karl Friedrich Schinkel within the Viktoriapark, except for its northernmost part, the quarter Friedrichstadt, todays Kreuzberg was a very rural place until well into the 19th century. This changed when, in the 1860s, industrialization caused Berlin to grow rapidly and this called for extensive housing – much of which was built exploiting the dire needs of the poor, with widespread land speculation. Many of Kreuzbergs buildings originate from that time and they were built on the streets laid out in the Hobrecht-Plan in an area that came to be known architecturally as the Wilhelmine Ring. Far into the 20th century, Kreuzberg was the most populous of Berlins boroughs even in numbers, with more than 400,000 people, although it was. As a result, with more than 60,000 people per square kilometer, in addition to housing, Kreuzberg was also one center of Berlins industry. Both of these quarters were almost entirely destroyed by air raids during World War II. In remembrance of the old tradition, the Axel Springer press company erected its German headquarters at Kochstraße again, after World War II, Kreuzbergs housing rents were regulated by law which made investments unattractive. As a result, housing was of low quality, but cheap, starting in the late 1960s, increasing numbers of students, artists, and immigrants began moving to Kreuzberg. Enclosed by the Berlin Wall on three sides, the area famous for its alternative lifestyle and its squatters, especially the SO36 part of Kreuzberg. Starting in 1987, there have been violent riots in SO36 on Labour day, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kreuzberg suddenly found itself in the middle of the city again
4.
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
5.
Science museum
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A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery. Modern trends in museology have broadened the range of subject matter, many if not most modern science museums — which increasingly refer to themselves as science centers or discovery centers — also emphasize technology, and are therefore also technology museums. The mission statements of science centers and modern museums vary, but they are united in being places that make science accessible and they are an integral and dynamic part of the learning environment, promoting exploration from the first Eureka. As early as the Renaissance, many aristocrats collected curiosities for display to their family, universities and particularly medical schools also maintained study collections of specimens for their students. Scientists and collectors displayed their finds in private cabinets of curiosities, such collections were the predecessors of modern natural history museums. The first purpose-built museum covering natural philosophy and open to the public from 1683 was the original Ashmolean museum in Oxford, the first dedicated science museum was the Museo de Ciencias Naturales, in Madrid, Spain. Opened in 1752, it almost disappeared during the Franco regime, the Utrecht University Museum, among others, still displays an extensive collection of 18th-century animal and human rarities in its original setting. Another line in the genealogy of science museums came during the Industrial Revolution, for example, the Great Exhibition in The Crystal Palace eventually gave rise to Londons Science Museum. In America, various Natural History Societies established collections in the early 19th century, notable was the early New England Museum of Natural History, which opened in Boston in 1864. The Academy of Science of Saint Louis was founded in 1856 as the first scientific organization west of the Mississippi, the modern interactive science museum appears to have been pioneered by Munich’s Deutsches Museum in the early 20th century. This museum had moving exhibits where visitors were encouraged to push buttons, the concept was taken to the US by Julius Rosenwald, chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Company, who visited the Deutsches Museum with his young son in 1911. He was so-captivated by the experience that he decided to build a museum in his home town. Chicagos Museum of Science and Industry opened in phases between 1933 and 1940, in 1959 the Museum of Science and Natural History was formally created by the Academy of Science of Saint Louis, featuring many interactive science and history exhibits. In August 1969, Frank Oppenheimer dedicated his new Exploratorium in San Francisco almost completely to interactive science exhibits, the Exploratorium published the details of their own exhibits in Cookbooks that served as an inspiration to many other museums around the world. Opened in September 1969, the Ontario Science Centre continued the trend of featuring interactive exhibits rather than static displays, in 1973, the first Omnimax theater opened as the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center in San Diegos Balboa Park, the tilted-dome Space Theater doubled as a planetarium. The Science Center was an Exploratorium-style museum included as a part of the complex
6.
Technology museum
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A technology museum is a museum devoted to applied science and technological developments. Many museums are both a museum and a technology museum. Further technology museums in Germany include the Deutsche Technikmuseum in Berlin-Kreuzberg, the Technoseum in Mannheim, the Technik Museum Speyer, the most prestigious of its kind in Austria is the Technische Museum in Vienna. Many other independent museums, such as museums, cover certain technical genres, processes or industries, for example mining, chemistry, metrology, musical instruments. This article is based upon a translation of the German language version as at November 2013
7.
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
8.
Museum
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Most large museums are located in major cities throughout the world and more local ones exist in smaller cities, towns and even the countryside. Museums have varying aims, ranging from serving researchers and specialists to serving the general public, the goal of serving researchers is increasingly shifting to serving the general public. There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums, the city with the largest number of museums is Mexico City with over 128 museums. According to The World Museum Community, there are more than 55,000 museums in 202 countries, the English museum comes from the Latin word, and is pluralized as museums. The first museum/library is considered to be the one of Plato in Athens, however, Pausanias gives another place called Museum, namely a small hill in Classical Athens opposite to the Akropolis. The hill was called Mouseion after Mousaious, a man who used to sing on the hill, the purpose of modern museums is to collect, preserve, interpret, and display items of artistic, cultural, or scientific significance for the education of the public. The purpose can also depend on ones point of view, to a family looking for entertainment on a Sunday afternoon, a trip to a local history museum or large city art museum could be a fun, and enlightening way to spend the day. To city leaders, a healthy museum community can be seen as a gauge of the health of a city. To a museum professional, a museum might be seen as a way to educate the public about the museums mission, Museums are, above all, storehouses of knowledge. In 1829, James Smithsons bequest, that would fund the Smithsonian Institution, stated he wanted to establish an institution for the increase, Museums of natural history in the late 19th century exemplified the Victorian desire for consumption and for order. Gathering all examples of classification of a field of knowledge for research. As American colleges grew in the 19th century, they developed their own natural history collections for the use of their students, while many large museums, such as the Smithsonian Institution, are still respected as research centers, research is no longer a main purpose of most museums. While there is a debate about the purposes of interpretation of a museums collection, there has been a consistent mission to protect. Much care, expertise, and expense is invested in efforts to retard decomposition in aging documents, artifacts, artworks. All museums display objects that are important to a culture, as historian Steven Conn writes, To see the thing itself, with ones own eyes and in a public place, surrounded by other people having some version of the same experience can be enchanting. Museum purposes vary from institution to institution, some favor education over conservation, or vice versa. For example, in the 1970s, the Canada Science and Technology Museum favored education over preservation of their objects and they displayed objects as well as their functions. One exhibit featured a printing press that a staff member used for visitors to create museum memorabilia
9.
Hamburger Bahnhof
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Hamburger Bahnhof is the former terminus of the Berlin–Hamburg Railway in Berlin, Germany, on Invalidenstrasse in the Moabit district opposite the Charité hospital. Today it serves as an art museum, the Museum für Gegenwart, part of the Berlin National Gallery. The station was built to Friedrich Neuhauss plans in 1846/47 as the point of the Berlin–Hamburg Railway. It is the only surviving building in Berlin from the late neoclassical period. The building has not been used as a station since 1884, the term royal was dropped with the end of the Prussian monarchy in 1918. The museum attracted crowds and was extended with additional wings to the left and right of the main building in 1909–11. Hit by Allied bombing in 1944, the museum was closed, however, the Reichsbahns East German management had no interest in reopening a museum now located in West Berlin, but only in the exhibits, which the Western Allies did not allow to be brought to the East. In 1984 the Reichsbahn transferred both the building and the collection into Western hands, in 1987, the empty halls were used for temporary exhibitions. In the mid-1980s the Berlin entrepreneur Erich Marx offered his collection of contemporary art to the city. The Berlin Senate decided in 1987 to establish a museum of art in the former railway station. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation agreed to operate the museum as part of the National Gallery, a competition for the renovation of the station was announced by the Senate in 1989, and was won by the architect Josef Paul Kleihues. Between 1990 and 1996, Kleihues refurbished the building, and in November 1996 the museum was opened with an exhibition of works by Sigmar Polke, the Museum für Gegenwart exhibits modern and contemporary art. Permanent loans from the Marx collection, including works by such as Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Robert Rauschenberg. An emphasis of the Nationalgalerie collection is art on video and film, between 2004 and 2010, the Museum für Gegenwart exhibited parts of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, whose main focus is on the late 20th century. Due to its connection with the Flick family, the display gave rise to protests in 2004, Berlin State Museums Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation List of museums in Berlin Official website
10.
Berlin Anhalter Bahnhof
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The Anhalter Bahnhof is a former railway terminus in Berlin, Germany, approximately 600 metres southeast of Potsdamer Platz. The stations name lives on in the Berlin S-Bahn station of the same name, opened in October 1939 as part of the North-South S-Bahn link. The Anhalter Bahnhof was the Berlin terminus of a line begun on 15 April 1839, opened on 1 July 1841 as far as Jüterbog, passing through the historical state of Anhalt, it became known as the Anhalt line and this in turn gave the Berlin terminus its name. It quickly developed into a network that carried train services to and from Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, and so the Anhalter Gate was created in 1839-40, and bore a strong resemblance to architect Karl Friedrich Schinkels Potsdam Gate up the road. A new thoroughfare, Anhalter Straße, led from the gate into the city, the Anhalter Gate was one of four extra ones provided in the years after the customs walls original erection, increasing the total number of gates around the city from 14 to 18. The customs wall eventually became redundant and was demolished in 1866-67, in 1872, architect Franz Heinrich Schwechten designed the vast new station that would also be the biggest in Germany and at the time the biggest in Continental Europe, though it was later surpassed. A temporary station was opened in 1874, the old one was demolished in 1875, on 15 June 1880, the new terminus was opened by Kaiser Wilhelm I and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The new façade was 101 m across and embellished with zinc sculptures titled Day and Night by Ludwig Brunow, emil Hundrieser was responsible for a sculpture on the very top of the façade called The International Traffic. Inside the building was a lavish and spacious booking hall with waiting rooms. A separate entrance and reception area were provided for visiting royalty, behind all this, the huge iron and glass train-shed roof by writer and engineer Heinrich Seidel measured 171 m long by 62 m wide, and rose to 34 m in height along its centre line. The Anhalter Güterbahnhof, also opened, south of the Landwehr Canal on the date as the passenger station. Initially the rebuilt terminus was still handling train services mainly to and from Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main and Munich, however, two years later it inherited a whole new range of services with the closure of the Dresdner Bahnhof. This terminus had opened on 17 June 1875, with trains to Dresden, Prague and Vienna, the Anhalter Bahnhof was more than capable of handling these services as well, and so on 15 October 1882 they were switched, and the Dresdner Bahnhof closed. By 1930, trains left its six platforms every three to five minutes, carrying an average of 44,000 people daily. Though still less busy than the Potsdamer Bahnhof up the road, the Anhalter Bahnhof was superior in its sheer scale, there were even five underground shops down there. Begun in 1934, it was opened in two phases, the suburban lines to Zossen and Licherfelde-Ost via Papestraße and Priesterweg were connected to the tunnel on November 6,1939, making the new North-South transversal line complete. This underground station was placed at the west side of the overground station. At Anhalter Bahnhof S-Bahn station a direct route to the mainline terminus above was provided from 19 December 1940
