Berlin is something of a weather-vane of modern European
history, yet its rise to national prominence was a long and slow
process. Founded in the thirteenth century, it is little more than
a third of the age of Cologne or Augsburg. It did not achieve the
early growth and economic development of other medieval
foundations, such as Hamburg, Lübeck, Frankfurt or Nürnberg; it was
not even the capital of a substantial feudal duchy, as Munich and
Stuttgart were. Instead, it belatedly became the capital of
Brandenburg , a marshland territory at the very eastern
extremity of the Holy Roman Empire. This province was founded as a
Margravate, or frontier district, by Albert the Bear
(Albrecht der Bär) in 1157 from land bequeathed to him by
Pribislav-Heinrich, a Slav king who had converted to
Christianity.
In 1411, Brandenburg was made a hereditary possession of the
Hohenzollern family, and four years later the Margravate was
raised to the status of an Electorate of the Holy Roman Empire.
However, for all the dynasty's lofty ambitions, Berlin remained
little more than a village until the seventeenth century, by which
time it had still not played any significant part in German
history. The first important step towards a grander role came in
1618, when Elector Johann Sigismund inherited the Baltic duchy of
Prussia , and merged it with his family's heartlands to form
the new state of Brandenburg-Prussia, which quickly established
itself as an expansionist miltary force on the European stage.
Named after the exterminated tribe that had inhabited it in the
early Middle Ages, Prussia lay outside the Holy Roman Empire and
thus was not subject to any of its rules. In 1701, Elector
Friedrich III circumvented one of the most important of these - the
ban on the assumption of royal status - by crowning himself King
Friedrich I of Prussia. Thereafter, the Hohenzollern state,
although still centred on Berlin, went under the misleading
designation of Prussia. It became ever more predatory in its policy
of territorial acquisition, eventually stretching all the way west
to the French border.
When the Prussians finally forged a unified Germany for the
first time ever in 1871, Berlin was the only possible choice for
the new role of national capital . Hitler intended to take
this a stage further by transforming it into a world capital named
Germania. Instead, the city found itself partitioned among
the victors after World War II, and quickly became a microcosm of
the Cold War era. While the Soviet-occupied eastern sector - which
included the historic city centre - duly became the capital of the
rump state that was the GDR, the larger part of the city was left
as the stranded enclave of West Berlin, a place with an ambiguous
status (it was never formally merged into the Federal Republic)
propped up by vast outside subsidies, with a declining population
only kept in check by an influx of immigrants (principally from
Turkey), draft-dodgers and seekers of alternative lifestyles. From
1961, the two parts of the city were physically separated by the
Berlin Wall , the first frontier in history built to keep
its own citizens in, rather than an invader out.
After the Wall fell in 1989, Berlin's status as capital of
Germany (which it had never officially lost) was reconfirmed.
However, it faced determined opposition from Bonn in its desire to
re-establish itself as the national seat of government .
Although Berlin eventually emerged triumphant from this argument,
it was only able to gain the major share of the spoils, as it was
decided to keep several key ministries and other public bodies in
Bonn. This was a calculated measure designed to ensure that Berlin
- with its deeply tainted historical record - does not become too
powerful and dominant within Germany. Thus, the vast rebuilding and
redevelopment that the city is currently undergoing is something of
a delicate balance. There is a clear need to increase the
population (which had fallen by more than a million from its prewar
level), and to create a city that is a worthy capital of Europe's
most powerful nation, yet at the same time to ensure that it does
not become a direct German counterpart of London or Paris.
One unintended consequence of Berlin's postwar division is that
it has belatedly become a city-state, with the rest of the old
Margravate of Brandenburg now an entirely separate Land of the
Federal Republic. Though there were hopes that the two Länder would
eventually merge, that now seems a distant prospect at best, having
been flatly rejected by the latter in a referendum. Potsdam
, Brandenburg's present-day capital, forms a virtually seamless
whole with Berlin. Once the great cultural showpiece of the
Prussian kingdom, it has wonderful palaces and parks which easily
outdo those of its larger neighbour. Elsewhere in the province are
time-warped towns such as Neuruppin, Rheinsberg and
Brandenburg itself. There is also a highly distinctive
scenic area, the water-strewn Spreewald .