Berlin

History

In 1237, the fishing community of Colln was first registered as a town located on the south bank of the Spree River. After 1244, opposite this settlement on the north bank, lay the larger merchant town of Berlin. Following a century or more of separation, the administrations of these two towns merged in 1307 to fight against robber barons. These "noblemen" acted more like pirates, demanding huge tributes and terrorizing the populace, but without an army the citizens of Berlin could not fight back. By the year 1411, the town had asked the Holy Roman Emperor for protection, bringing in Fredrich von Hohenzollern, Burggraf of Nuremberg and his army. The Hohenzollerns ruled Berlin and most of Germany for centuries, conquering Prussia in 1640 and founding the German Reich in 1871. Traditionally the capital city and royal residence of the Hohenzollerns, Friedrich Wilhelm chose Berlin as his seat of power in the newly founded Prussia. Eight Friedrich Wilhelms followed his example, building the military and economic strength of Germany from Berlin.

The Industrial Revolution (c. 1750) brought new factories and an influx of settlers to the city from the surrounding countryside. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the city's population reached more than four million, attracting both industry and culture. By 1871, Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) and Wilhelm I (1797–1888) succeeded where others had failed by bringing together Denmark, Austria, France, Prussia, and the German states into one empire, with Berlin as the capital. This was the first time that the German states were truly unified, but the German empire, which extended across Europe and into the

The shock of losing World War I (1914–18) caused riots in Berlin against the traditional imperial system, which was replaced by a democratic constitution in Weimar, in 1919. This political instability was accentuated by the economic problems, or Great Depression, of the "golden" 1920s, but Berlin seemed to flower under pressure. Ironically, the city bloomed into the most popular gathering place for avant-garde artists, like Fritz Lang, Klaus Mann, and Bertolt Brecht. In 1933, Hitler ended the party by marching thousands of troops into Berlin and imposing military rule. The 1936 Olympic games in Berlin were sadly overshadowed by war preparations. When Hitler annexed Austria and part of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he also ordered the destruction of Jewish buildings in Berlin called Reichskristallnacht, or the night of the broken glass. The Nazis systematically killed approximately 50,000 Jews in concentration camps until World War II ended in 1945. Only two-and-a-half million of Berlin's four million inhabitants were left after the fighting ended.

Berlin was divided into four parts at first, with the Soviet Union, United States, Britain, and France overseeing the reconstruction. By 1948, the United States had claimed West Germany, and the Soviet Union had assumed control of East Germany, but Berlin's location in the east caused problems. The democracies wanted to keep some hold on Berlin (the traditional power seat), so they proceeded to airlift food into the starved Soviet city. In 1961, the Soviets built a wall dividing the city in half, which remained until 1989. At this point, the western capital moved to Bonn while the Soviet occupiers stayed in Berlin. This artificial separation made reunification a happy occasion, but difficult economically and socially. In 1994, the last foreign troops left Berlin, signaling the end to 50 years of occupation and allowing the German government's homecoming to Berlin in 1999.