ABSTRACT
At the heart of modern Berlin, the dark, polluted waters of the river Spree slide malodorously round the island of Cölln, that once contained the Berlin Palace of the rulers of Prussia and of the German Second Reich, now replaced by the glassfronted modernity of the Palast der Republik of the GDR, a building that houses the country’s parliament (see figs 6.1 and 6.2). Here, where the stream once divided into three branches and was further interrupted by sandbanks, was from the earliest times the lowest easy crossing of the Spree before it emptied into the wider and often lake-like Havel river. It lay at a point where the low glacial-drift plateaus of Barnim to the north and of Teltow to the south, zones of relatively easy movement by land, were less than 5 km apart across the course of the Berlin Urstromtal (former proglacial melt-water channel) within which the river flows. In this part of its course the Spree is clear of the lakes which clutter the Havel confluence in the neighbourhood of Spandau to the west and the Dahme confluence in the neighbourhood of Köpenick to the east, lakes which were later to become a precious recreational resource for the future world city (see fig. 3.1). It must not be forgotten that the Spree, as well as being an obstacle to be overcome, was also a means of movement by water, as it remains to this day. When frozen in winter it could also be used for movement by sledge (Cornish 1923:153-5).
