Berlin: Old & New

Berlin originated in the 13th century from two marked towns, Cȍlln and Berlin, on the sandy banks of the river Spree, and even today it is possible to see how four historical periods have left their mark on the town. The first is the age of the Electors of Bradenburg; in 1470 they made the Palace in, Cȍlln their residence. Frederick William of Bradensburg, strengthened the banks of the Spree and made out of Berlin, abandoned by half of its inhabitants in the Thirty Years’ war, a clean and respectable town, and it soon became an important cultural center, which was due in no small measure to the hospitality given to exiled Huguenot scholars and craftsmen.

In its second historical period of Berlin was the town of the Kings of Prussia. We are reminded of this today by Charlottenburg palace, which Frederick I, the first King of Prussia, had built for his wife Sophie-Charlotte. Frederick William I enlarged Berlin and built the new suburb of Friedrichstraβe and the Wilhelmstraβe, which were later to form the government quarters. It was Frederick the Great who laid out Berlin’s most famous street, Unter den Linden, at the end of which the Bradenburg Gate was erected in 1789.

In 1871, when Berlin became the capital of the German Empire, the third great period began for the town. During the industrial age it had flourished tremendously and could soon boast one million inhabitants. All this part of the old Berlin of the kings and kaisers with its neo-classical buildings is today situated in East Berlin. Up to 1860 the present town district called Mitte around the Alexanderplatz was Berlin proper, and the Brandenburg Gate formed the architectural boundary of the town. Only at this time did the town begin to expand westwards, and smart residential areas center around the large new connecting road, the Kurfȕstendamm, extended out towards Grunewald.

The fourth period is the time between the end of the First World War and 1933, when Berlin became a town of international standing. This Greater Berlin came into being in 1920, when the whole growth of town districts, suburbs, villages, and land with its total of four million people was merged together under a uniform administration to form an organic whole. Thus a major city was born, with one-fifth of its total area of 350 square miles consisting of woods, lakes, and rivers, and which, with its fresh climate, could rightly call itself the healthiest city in the world.

This period was Berlin’s great age especially as far as culture is concerned. Since as early as 1700 Berlin possessed Germany’s first Academy of Sciences, as far back as 1696 the first Academy of Arts and the University founded by Humboldt in 1810 had long been Germany’s intellectual center. But now, in addition to all this, Berlin with more than fifty theaters, became a town with world-wide influence on the drama, a world-famous opera and concert town, a town of museums, whose art treasures could well stand comparison with those of London and Paris. But, this heyday was short-lived.