The Brandenburg Gate
The Reichstag
The Berlin Cathedral

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city and is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany on the River w:Spree, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, which has about 4½ million residents from over 180 nations.

First documented in the 13th century, Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1918), the German Empire (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–33) and the Third Reich (1933–45). Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city, along with the German state, was divided - into East Berlin — capital of the German Democratic Republic, colloquially identified in English as East Germany — and West Berlin, a political exclave (surrounded by the Berlin Wall from 1961 to 1989) and a de facto (although not de jure) state of the Federal Republic of Germany, known colloquially in English as West Germany from 1949 to 1990. Following German reunification in 1990, the city was once more designated as the capital of all Germany.

Quotes

  • It is true to say that Berlin had far fewer memorials associated with colonialism than imperial cities such as London or Paris. Two memorial stones Two memorial stones and one obelisk were erected to the memory of those soldiers who died in the colonial wars in China and German South-West Africa. Although Imperial Germany saw a major debate about a larger memorial for all Germans who died for the fatherland in the colonies, no specific plans were realized before the outbreak of war in 1914. A central memorial to the memory of the German colonies was only erected in 1932, and then it was built in Bremen and not in Berlin. However, the capital of the imperial nation saw the creation of an “African quarter” in Berlin Wedding. In 1899 the first two streets were named Kameruner Strasse and Togostrasse. 21 other names followed, names of colonies, of particular places in colonies, of famous colonizers and colonial generals. The renaming of streets with a colonial theme continued into the 1920s, demonstrating the strength and the appeal of colonial demonstrating the strength and the appeal of colonial revisionism in the Weimar Republic.
    • Stefan Berger; Alexei Miller (30 June 2015). Nationalizing Empires. Central European University Press. p. 284. ISBN 978-963-386-016-8. 
  • A disgusting city, this Berlin, a place where no one believes in anything.
    • Cagliostro, 1775. Quoted in Gordon, Mel (2000). Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, p. 1. ISBN 092291558X.
  • And now we come to the most lurid Underworld of all cities — that of post-war Berlin. Ever since the declaration of peace, Berlin found its outlet in the wildest dissipation imaginable. The German is gross in his immorality, he likes his Halb-Welt or underworld pleasures to be devoid of any Kultur or refinement, he enjoys obscenity in a form which even the Parisian would not tolerate.
    • Netley Lucas, Ladies of the Underworld, 1927. Quoted in Gordon, Mel (2000). Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, p. 1. ISBN 092291558X.
  • Berlin stimulates like arsenic.
    • Harold Nicolson, Der Querschnitt, 1929. Quoted in Gordon, Mel (2000). Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, front fold. ISBN 092291558X.
  • Berlin has become the paradise of international homosexuals.
    • Ilya Ehrenburg, 1931. Quoted in Quoted in Gordon, Mel (2000). Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, p. 83. ISBN 092291558X.
  • There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.
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