Travel / Part 1 / Berlin

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In this part we travel to Berlin

 

as you know

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Introduction

 

 

 

capital and chief urban centre of Germany. The city lies at the heart of the North German Plain, athwart an east-west commercial and geographic axis that helped make it the capital of the kingdom of Prussia and then, from 1871, of a unified Germany. Berlin's former glory ended in 1945, but the city survived the destruction of World War II. It was rebuilt and came to show amazing economic and cultural growth.

 

Germany's division after the war put Berlin entirely within the territory of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany). The city itself echoed the national partition—East Berlin being the capital of East Germany and West Berlin a Land (state) of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or West Germany). West Berlin's isolation was later reinforced by the concrete barrier erected in 1961 and known as the Berlin Wall. Its status as an enclave made Berlin a continuous focus of confrontation between the Eastern and Western powers as well as a symbol of Western lifestyle for 45 years.

 

The fall of the East German communist regime—and the accompanying opening of the wall—in late 1989 unexpectedly raised the prospect for Berlin's reinstatement as the all-German capital. That status was restored in 1990 under the terms of the unification treaty, and subsequently Berlin was designated a state, one of the 16 constituting Germany. These developments heralded the city's return to its historic position of prominence in European culture and commerce. Area 344 square miles (891 square km). Pop. (2005 est.) 3,395,189

 

 

The Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

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Physical and human geography

 

The landscape

 

The city site

Berlin is situated about 112 miles (180 km) south of the Baltic Sea, 118 miles (190 km) north of the Czech-German border, 110 miles (177 km) east of the former inner-German border, and 55 miles (89 km) west of Poland. It lies in the wide glacial valley of the Spree River, which runs through the centre of the city. The mean elevation of Berlin is 115 feet (35 metres) above sea level. The highest point near the centre of Berlin is the peak of the Kreuzberg, a hill that rises 218 feet (66 metres) above sea level.

Measuring approximately 23 miles (37 km) from north to south and 28 miles (45 km) from east to west, Berlin is by far the largest city in Germany.

 

It is built mainly on sandy glacial soil amid an extensive belt of forest-rimmed lakes, formed from the waters of the Dahme River to the southeast and the Havel to the west; indeed, about one-third of the Greater Berlin area is still covered by sandy pine and mixed birch woods, lakes, and beaches. “Devil's Mountain” (Teufelsberg), one of several hills constructed from the rubble left by World War II bombing, rises to 380 feet (116 metres) and has been turned into a winter sports area for skiing and sledding .

Climate

Berlin lies where the influence of the Atlantic Ocean fades and the climate of the continental plain begins. The city's mean annual temperature is about 48 °F (9 °C), and mean temperatures range from 30 °F (−1 °C) in winter to 65 °F (18 °C) in summer. The average precipitation is 22 inches (568 mm). About one-fifth to one-fourth of the total falls as snow

 

The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes

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The city layout

 

 

The original twin towns of Berlin and Kölln developed from the early 13th century onward, on an island of the Spree River (the site of Kölln) and a small portion of land on the north bank of the river facing the island (the site of Berlin). While still a small town, it became the capital of the electoral princes of Brandenburg from the end of the 15th century onward. From the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when the electors of Brandenburg (also kings of Prussia from 1701) developed into powerful figures on the European political stage, the city expanded and gained a Baroque appearance; new castles, such as Charlottenburg Palace, were built. The central quarter expanded and was embellished with broad avenues, handsome squares, and grandiose stone buildings. The central area acquired broad north-south avenues, such as Wilhelmstrasse and Friedrichstrasse, and also its characteristic east-west road axis. Supplementing this main axis are several exit roads that now serve as major traffic arteries.

 

In the late 19th century suburbs developed around these arteries and their subsidiary streets. Where destruction during World War II was massive, there has been large-scale construction of modern apartment and office buildings, one of the most famous being the Hansa Quarter, built by renowned architects from many countries.

Although there is only one major park near the city centre—the Tiergarten, just west of the Brandenburg Gate—Berlin has always been a surprisingly green city, with luxuriant trees softening the effect of the stone apartment blocks in many streets. Water is even more prevalent, with the Spree River running through the city's centre, a broad belt of lakes spreading out east and west, and canals running through much of the city.

 

Until the “peaceful revolution” of 1989, the most notorious feature of the city's topography was the Berlin Wall, erected by the East German communist government in 1961 to stop free movement between East Berlin (and indeed East Germany) and West Berlin. The boundary between East and West Berlin and the boundary between West Berlin and East Germany, for a combined length of 103 miles (166 km), were closed until 1989 by a solid ring of barriers, consisting mostly of prefabricated concrete slabs. Of the several heavily guarded crossing points, Checkpoint Charlie on Friedrichstrasse was the most famous. Here one can find remnants of the wall as well as a small museum dedicated to its history. In some places buildings had immediately adjoined the wall, and in the early days of division some people died attempting to jump to freedom from their upper floors. Today crosses mark some of the places where these and other would-be refugees, numbering at least 110, lost their lives

 

 

Tiergarten (foreground) with the Brandenburg Gate (lower left) and the television tower (centre), Berlin, Germany

 

 

The political and physical division of Berlin had a profound and pervasive influence on urban planning. Because the walled boundary created, in effect, an urban frontier immediately west of what had been the city's central administrative, commercial, and cultural quarter—Berlin Mitte—which became part of East Berlin, West Berlin was forced to develop a new central area of its own, around the Kurfürstendamm and the nearby Zoo railway station in the former suburb of Charlottenburg. The area had been a distinctive commercial and entertainment district since the late 19th century, but rebuilding following extensive damage from World War II gave it a decidedly modern character.

 

Throughout the city an effort to blend the modern with the traditional is evident. A striking example is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche), which incorporates the bell tower of the original 19th-century structure (ruined in World War II) into a dramatic glass-and-concrete church built in 1961

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about Berlin

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Berlin is the capital and the biggest city of Germany. It has a population of about 3.5 million and extends over 889 square kilometers. It is located in central Europe, longitude 13:25 E, latitude 52:32 N, 34 m above sea level, at the rivers Spree and Havel. The local time zone is Central European Time with daylight savings time in the summer

 

Berlin was the capital of Prussia until 1945 and the capital of Germany between 1871 and 1945 and again since the reunification of Germany on October 3, 1990. (The German parliament, called Bundestag, and the German government moved from Bonn to Berlin in 1999.) Between 1949 and 1990, it was divided into East Berlin, the capital of the German Democratic Republic, and West Berlin. It was divided by the Berlin Wall between August 13, 1961, and November 9, 1989.