Berlin
Berlin is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3,748,148 inhabitants make it the second most populous city proper of the European Union after London; the city is one of Germany's 16 federal states. It is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, contiguous with its capital, Potsdam; the two cities are at the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg capital region, which is, with about six million inhabitants and an area of more than 30,000 km², Germany's third-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr and Rhine-Main regions. Berlin straddles the banks of the River Spree, which flows into the River Havel in the western borough of Spandau. Among the city's main topographical features are the many lakes in the western and southeastern boroughs formed by the Spree and Dahme rivers. Due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. About one-third of the city's area is composed of forests, gardens, rivers and lakes; the city lies in the Central German dialect area, the Berlin dialect being a variant of the Lusatian-New Marchian dialects.
First documented in the 13th century and situated at the crossing of two important historic trade routes, Berlin became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the Kingdom of Prussia, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich. Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II and its subsequent occupation by the victorious countries, the city was divided. East Berlin was declared capital of East Germany. Following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all of Germany. Berlin is a world city of culture, politics and science, its economy is based on high-tech firms and the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail traffic and has a complex public transportation network; the metropolis is a popular tourist destination. Significant industries include IT, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology and electronics.
Berlin is home to world-renowned universities, orchestras and entertainment venues, is host to many sporting events. Its Zoological Garden is one of the most popular worldwide. With the world's oldest large-scale movie studio complex, Berlin is an popular location for international film productions; the city is well known for its festivals, diverse architecture, contemporary arts and a high quality of living. Since the 2000s Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene. Berlin lies in northeastern Germany, east of the River Saale, that once constituted, together with the River Elbe, the eastern border of the Frankish Realm. While the Frankish Realm was inhabited by Germanic tribes like the Franks and the Saxons, the regions east of the border rivers were inhabited by Slavic tribes; this is why most of the villages in northeastern Germany bear Slavic-derived names. Typical Germanised place name suffixes of Slavic origin are -ow, -itz, -vitz, -witz, -itzsch and -in, prefixes are Windisch and Wendisch.
The name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of today's Berlin, may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl-. 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. Of Berlin's twelve boroughs, five bear a Slavic-derived name: Pankow, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Marzahn-Hellersdorf, Treptow-Köpenick and Spandau. Of its ninety-six neighborhoods, twenty-two bear a Slavic-derived name: Altglienicke, Alt-Treptow, Buch, Gatow, Kladow, Köpenick, Lankwitz, Lübars, Marzahn, Prenzlauer Berg, Schmöckwitz, Stadtrandsiedlung Malchow, Steglitz and Zehlendorf; the neighborhood of Moabit bears a French-derived name, Französisch Buchholz is named after the Huguenots. The earliest evidence of settlements in the area of today's Berlin are a wooden beam dated from 1192, remnants of a house foundation dated to 1174, found in excavations 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 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, Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. 1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, profited from the staple 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, their internal administrations still being separated. In 1415, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. During the 15th century, his successors established Berlin-Cölln as capital of the margraviate, subsequent members of the Hohenzol
Tempelhof
Tempelhof is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg. It is the location of the former Tempelhof Airport, one of the earliest commercial airports in the world, it shows as a blank spot on maps of Berlin. Attempts are being made to save the still-existing buildings; the Tempelhof locality is located in the south-central part of the city. Before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform, the area of Tempelhof, together with the localities of Mariendorf and Lichtenrade, constituted a borough of its own called Tempelhof; these localities grew from historic villages on the Teltow plateau founded in the early 13th century in the course of the German Ostsiedlung. Tempelhove was first mentioned in a 1247 deed issued at the Walkenried Abbey as a Komturhof of the Knights Templar whose leadership and many fellow knights had been expelled from the Kingdom of Jerusalem on its downfall in 1291; the centre of the settlement, consisting of the church and the original estate, was fortified and completely surrounded by water.
The Templars were joined by fifteen families of landless farmers' sons from the Rhine, who could not inherit any estate from their parents because of over-fragmentation of those estates. Legates of the Templars offered them the protection of Tempelhove's stronghold. After Pope Clement V abolished the Order of the Temple in 1312, the knights of Saint John, backed by Margrave Waldemar of Brandenburg, took over the villages of Tempelhof and Marienfelde. In 1435, they sold their estates to the city of Berlin. In the early nineteenth century, Tempelhof was still a village outside Berlin proper and was the site of country excursions for the citizens of Berlin; the northern parts of Tempelhof were incorporated as Berlin's Tempelhofer Vorstadt in 1861 and in 1920 became part of the Kreuzberg borough. Today, the former commandry is a chain of parks, called Bosepark, Kleiner Park, Alter Park, Franckepark; some of them still have ponds that were part of the artificial moat surrounding the village's center.
One, the Krummer Pfuhl, located in the Franckepark, after being turned into public swimming baths in the nineteenth century, has dried out and is now an enclosed deer park. The original church, built from glacial boulders, was destroyed in the Second World War and was replaced with one built of ashlar or dressed stone with a timber-frame tower; the Tempelhof Studios were established in 1912 and functioned as film and television studios. Charleston, South Carolina, United States Nahariya, Israel London Borough of Barnet, United Kingdom Amstelveen, Netherlands Manny Marc, DJ and rapper Klaus Wowereit, SPD-politician, 1984-1995 Council Chairman of Tempelhof, 2001-2014 Governing Mayor of Berlin Michael Müller, SPD politician, from 1989 to 1996 member of the Borough Council Tempelhof, since 2014 mayor, succeeding Klaus Wowereit Marta Hillers, German journalist, lived until after the war in an apartment in the Manfred-von-Richthofen-Straße 13, she has recorded her experiences during the capture of the city and the subsequent occupation of the Red Army in diaries, that were published in Germany in 1959 under the German title: Eine Frau in Berlin.
In 2008 a film was made with Nina Hoss as leading lady under the German title: Anonyma eine Frau in Berlin Rauenberg Tempelhof Airport Media related to Tempelhof at Wikimedia Commons Tempelhof travel guide from Wikivoyage
Tempelhof-Schöneberg
Tempelhof-Schöneberg is the seventh borough of Berlin, formed in 2001 by merging the former boroughs of Tempelhof and Schöneberg. Situated in the south of the city it shares borders with the boroughs of Mitte and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in the north, Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Steglitz-Zehlendorf in the west as well as Neukölln in the east; as of 2010, the borough had a population of 335,060, of whom about 105,000 were of non-German origin. The largest ethnic minorities were Turks constituting 7% of the population. Tempelhof-Schöneberg consists of six localities as from north to south: Schöneberg Friedenau Tempelhof Mariendorf Marienfelde Lichtenrade At the 2016 elections for the parliament of the borough the following parties were elected: SPD 15 Alliance'90/The Greens 13 CDU 12 Alternative for Germany 6 The Left 5 Free Democratic Party 4 Tempelhof-Schöneberg is twinned with: Ahlen, Germany since 1964 Amstelveen, Netherlands since 1957 Bad Kreuznach, Germany since 1964 Charenton-le-Pont, France London Borough of Barnet, England Koszalin, Poland since 1995 Levallois-Perret, France Mezitli, Turkey Nahariya, Israel since 1970 Paderborn since 1962 Penzberg, Germany since 1964 Teltow-Fläming, Germany since 1991 Werra-Meißner-Kreis, Germany since 1957 Wuppertal, Germany since 1964 Wikimedia Deutschland has its offices in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
Berlin-Tempelhof – Schöneberg Official homepage Official homepage of Berlin
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf is the fourth borough of Berlin, formed in an administrative reform with effect from 1 January 2001, by merging the former boroughs of Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf. Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf covers the western city centre of Berlin and the adjacent affluent suburbs, it borders on the Mitte borough in the east, on Tempelhof-Schöneberg in the southeast, Steglitz-Zehlendorf in the south, Spandau in the west and on Reinickendorf in the north. The district includes the inner city localities of Charlottenburg and Halensee. After World War II and the city's division by the Berlin Wall, the area around Kurfürstendamm and Bahnhof Zoo was the centre of former West Berlin, with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church as its landmark; the Berlin Institute of Technology, the Berlin University of the Arts, the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, the Deutsche Oper Berlin as well as Charlottenburg Palace and the Olympic Stadium are located in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. As of 2012, the borough had a population of 326,354, of whom about 110,000 were of non-German origin.
The largest ethnic minorities were Turks at 4%. Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf is divided into seven localities: The localities of Schmargendorf and Grunewald were part of the former Wilmersdorf borough until 2001. By resolution of 30 September 2004, the localities of Westend and Charlottenburg-Nord were created on the territory of the former Charlottenburg borough, like Halensee on the territory of the former Wilmersdorf borough. Current allocation of seats in the borough's parliamentary body as of the 2016 Berlin state election: Social Democratic Party of Germany 15 Christian Democratic Union 13 Alliance'90/The Greens 12 Free Democratic Party 6 Alternative for Germany 5 The Left 4 The borough Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf of Berlin is twinned with: Twin towns of the former Charlottenburg borough Twin towns of the former Wilmersdorf borough The borough's economy depends on retail trade in the City West area along Kurfürstendamm and Tauentzienstraße, with supra-local importance; the Berliner Börse is housed in the Ludwig-Erhard-Haus designed by Nicholas Grimshaw at Fasanenstraße 85 in Berlin-Charlottenburg near Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten The Royal Porcelain Factory in Berlin is situated in Charlottenburg, near Berlin-Tiergarten Station The Messe Berlin is situated in Berlin-Westend Air Berlin had its headquarters in Building 2 of the Airport Bureau Center in Charlottenburg-Nord.
As of 2006 Air Berlin employed 1,200 employees at its headquarters. Germania has its headquarters in Charlottenburg-Nord. Universität der Künste Technische Universität Berlin Comenius-Schule, a primary school, is in Wilmersdorf. Halensee-Grundschule, a primary school, is in Halensee. Jüdische Traditionsschule, traditionell Jewish primary and secondary school in Westend Heinz-Galinski-Schule Charlottenburg, Jewish primary school Svenska Skolan Berlin, Swedish School Berlin Nelson-Mandela-School, International School Goethe-Gymnasium, one of the most popular secondary schools in Berlin Peter-Ustinov-Schule, located between Messe Nord and Wilmersdorfer Straße; the Japanische Ergänzungsschule in Berlin e. V. A weekend Japanese supplementary school, is held at Halensee-Grundschule. Zentrale Schule für Japanisch Berlin e. V. Another weekend Japanese supplementary school, is held at the Comenius-Schule - Established April 1997. Berlin portal Berlin Charlottenburg – Wilmersdorf Berlin Spandau – Charlottenburg North Official homepage of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf Official homepage of Berlin
Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg is an affluent locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a town in 1705 and named after late Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Prussia, it is best known for Charlottenburg Palace, the largest surviving royal palace in Berlin, the adjacent museums. Charlottenburg was an independent city to the west of Berlin until 1920 when it was incorporated into "Groß-Berlin" and transformed into a borough. In the course of Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was merged with the former borough of Wilmersdorf becoming a part of a new borough called Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. In 2004, the new borough's districts were rearranged, dividing the former borough of Charlottenburg into the localities of Charlottenburg proper and Charlottenburg-Nord. Charlottenburg is located in Berlin's inner city, west of the Großer Tiergarten park, 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.
The Straße des 17. Juni road, former Charlottenburger Chaussee, which runs eastwards from Charlottenburg Gate through the Tiergarten park to Brandenburg Gate, connects Charlottenburg with the historic centre of Berlin-Mitte. In the north and west, the Berlin Ringbahn and the Bundesautobahn 100 mark the border with the Charlottenburg-Nord and Westend suburbs. Adjacent in the south is the territory of Wilmersdorf. Charlottenburg borders on the district of Halensee in the southwest, as well as on Moabit and Tiergarten in the east and on Schöneberg in the southeast. Archaeological findings in the area date back to the Neolithic era. Within the Margraviate of Brandenburg, on the land occupied by present-day Charlottenburg, there were three settlements in the late Middle Ages: the farmsteads Lietzow south of the Spree and Casow beyond the river, as well as a further settlement called Glienicke. Although these names are of Slavic origin, the settlements are to have had a mixed Slavic and German population.
Lietzow was first documented in 1239, when the Ascanian margraves John I and Otto III of Brandenburg founded the Benedictine Sankt Marien nunnery in nearby Spandau. The nuns were enfeoffed with the Casow estates. From old field names, it is believed that a third medieval settlement on Charlottenburg territory, arose in the area of the present day streets Kantstraße, Fasanenstraße, Kurfürstendamm and Uhlandstraße at the former Gliniker Lake. Unlike Casow and Glienicke, the Lietzow area has been populated continuously and its development is well documented. In the course of the Protestant Reformation, Elector Joachim II Hector of Brandenburg confiscated the monastic estates in 1542 and had the nunnery dissolved in 1558. For more than four hundred years, members of the Berendt family were mayors and thus had to pay lower taxes. A village church was first documented in 1541. Ecclesiastically, Lietzow came under the Wilmersdorf parish, the priests reached it from there by the so-called Priesterweg, on the line of the streets now called Leibnizstraße, Konstanzer Straße and Brandenburgische Straße.
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 summer 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 Lützenburg castle was extended into a stately building with a cour d'honneur; the Swedish master builder Johann Friedrich Eosander supervised this work. Sophie Charlotte died in February 1705; the king served as the town's mayor until the historic village of Lietzow was incorporated into Charlottenburg in 1720. Frederick's successor as king, Frederick William I of Prussia stayed at the palace, which depressed the small town of Charlottenburg. Frederick William tried to revoke the town's privileges. With the coronation of his successor Frederick II inl 1740 the town's significance increased, as regular celebrations again took place at the palace.
Between 1740 and 1747 Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff built the eastern New Wing as Frederick's residence. Frederick II preferred the palace of Sanssouci, which he had designed himself; when Frederick II died in 1786, his nephew Frederick William II succeeded him, Charlottenburg became the favourite royal residence, remained so for his son and successor Frederick William III. After the defeat of the Prussian army at Jena in 1806, the French occupied Berlin. Napoleon took over the palace. Charlottenburg became part of the new Prussian Province of Brandenburg in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars. In the late 18th century, Charlottenburg's development did not depend only on the crown; the town became a recreational area for the expanding city of Berlin. Its first true inn opened in the 1770s, in the street called Berliner Straße, many other inns and beer gardens were to follow, popular for weekend parties especially. Berliners seeking leisure and entertainment came by boat, by carriage and by horse-drawn trams, above a
Germany
Germany the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north and the Czech Republic to the east and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to the west. Germany includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,386 square kilometres, has a temperate seasonal climate. With 83 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous state of Europe after Russia, the most populous state lying in Europe, as well as the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is a decentralized country, its capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while Frankfurt serves as its financial capital and has the country's busiest airport. Germany's largest urban area is the Ruhr, with its main centres of Essen; the country's other major cities are Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Bremen and Nuremberg. 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. After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation was formed in 1815; the German revolutions of 1848–49 resulted in the Frankfurt Parliament establishing major democratic rights. 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 revolution of 1918–19, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic; the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to the establishment of a dictatorship, the annexation of Austria, World War II, the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, Austria was re-established as an independent country and two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American and French occupation zones, East Germany, formed from the Soviet occupation zone.
Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990. Today, the sovereign state of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic led by a chancellor, it is a great power with a strong economy. As a global leader in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the world's third-largest exporter and importer of goods; as a developed country with a high standard of living, it upholds a social security and universal health care system, environmental protection, a tuition-free university education. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the European Union in 1993, 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 G7, the G20, the OECD. Known for its rich cultural history, Germany has been continuously the home of influential and successful artists, musicians, film people, entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors.
Germany has a large number of World Heritage sites and is among the top tourism destinations 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; the German term Deutschland diutisciu land is derived from deutsch, descended from Old High German diutisc "popular" used to distinguish the language of the common people from Latin and its Romance descendants. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz "popular", derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- "people", from which the word Teutons originates; 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 coal mine in Schöningen between 1994 and 1998 where eight 380,000-year-old wooden javelins of 1.82 to 2.25 m length were unearthed. The Neander Valley was the location where the first non-modern human fossil was discovered.
The Neanderthal 1 fossils are known to be 40,000 years old. Evidence of modern humans dated, has been found in caves in the Swabian Jura near Ulm; the finds included 42,000-year-old bird bone and mammoth ivory flutes which are the oldest musical instruments found, the 40,000-year-old Ice Age Lion Man, the oldest uncontested figurative art discovered, the 35,000-year-old Venus of Hohle Fels, the oldest uncontested human figurative art discovered. The Nebra sky disk is a bronze artefact created during the European Bronze Age attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, it is part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme. The Germanic tribes are thought to date from the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From southern Scandinavia and north Germany, they expanded south and west from the 1st century BC, coming into contact with the Celtic tribes of Gaul as well
Grunewald
Grunewald is a locality within the Berlin borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Famous for the homonymous forest, until 2001 administrative reform it was part of the former district of Wilmersdorf; the locality is situated in the western side of the city and is separated from Spandau by the river Havel. It borders with the localities of Westend, Schmargendorf, Gatow, Nikolassee and Dahlem; the Grunewald forest is 10 km away from Berlin-Mitte. The name derives from the Grunewald hunting lodge of 1543, the oldest preserved castle in Berlin, which is, however located on the grounds of the adjacent Dahlem locality, it was erected in an Early Renaissance style by order of Elector Joachim II Hector of Brandenburg and named Zum Gruenen Wald, the umlaut spelt with a following <e> instead of a diacritic as depicted above the main entrance. A corduroy road leading from the Berlin Stadtschloss to the lodge was laid out, which would be known as the Kurfürstendamm boulevard; the neighbourhood developed out of a so-called "mansion colony" at the western end of the Kurfürstendamm.
Promoted by Otto von Bismarck the upper class of Berlin from 1880 on discovered Grunewald as an attractive site for living, incorporated into Greater Berlin in 1920. Today, the social structure of Grunewald is still influenced by these origins; the Rot-Weiss Tennis Club, home of the WTA Tour German Open, has been located in the district since 1897. On June 24, 1922 Foreign Minister of Germany Walther Rathenau was assassinated by ultra-nationalist radicals of the Organisation Consul in a curve of the main street called Koenigsallee. A memorial stone marks the scene of the crime. Since 1981 the Grunewald district is the home of the Institute for Berlin, it houses the embassies of Afghanistan, Qatar, Laos, North Macedonia, Poland and Turkey. Within the Grunewald forest is the artificial Teufelsberg hill, once a listening station of the US National Security Agency. At the shore of the Havel the Grunewaldturm, built by Franz Heinrich Schwechten in 1898, offers panoramic views of the Havelland region.
Between October 1941 and February 1945 more than 50,000 Jews were deported by German Nazis to extermination camps from the Grunewald freight railway station and murdered. Nowadays, memorials from the district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and the Deutsche Bahn commemorate this dark spot in Grunewald's history; the area is accessible by the Berlin-Grunewald station. Grunewald has access to the Berlin S-Bahn network at the Berlin-Grunewald station; the forest of Grunewald, located in the quarter but in Nikolassee, in a minor percentage in Dahlem and Westend is, with 3,000 ha, the greatest green area in the city of Berlin. Grunewald Railway Station Holocaust Memorial "Track 17" at Grunewald station Media related to Grunewald at Wikimedia Commons
Lankwitz (help·info) is a German locality (Ortsteil) within the borough (Bezirk) of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin. Until 2001 it was part of the former borough of Steglitz.
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg
Lichtenberg
Marzahn-Hellersdorf
Mitte
Neukölln
Pankow
Reinickendorf
Spandau
Steglitz-Zehlendorf
Tempelhof-Schöneberg
Treptow-Köpenick