ABSTRACT

Berlin is fascinating. Like no other German city, it symbolises German history. In 1871 it became the capital of the newly founded Germany, and it was a major site of the 1918 revolution. Berlin was the cultural centre of the 1920s and the 1930s, and in 1933 it became the capital of Hitler’s National Socialist Reich. From 1949 to 1989 it was famous throughout the world as a divided city, until it was reunited in a blaze of television publicity. It is now once more the capital of the whole of Germany, and early in the twenty-first century it will become the seat of the German government. One short chapter cannot do justice to the exciting complexity which is Berlin, and this chapter does not attempt that. It merely attempts to give some indication of the atmosphere of Berlin, with particular reference to the building programme, the speed and extent of which is unique in present-day Europe and which profoundly affects this atmosphere. Of the many issues which could be discussed, two in particular have been highlighted: the choice of Berlin as capital and the unsuccessful attempt to merge the Länder of Berlin and Brandenburg.