Berlin's 3.7 million make it Germany's largest city proper
Germany's capital spreads along the Spree toward the Havel at Spandau, with about 3.7 million people inside city limits. First documented in the thirteenth century, it later split into West and East sectors divided by the Wall after World War II occupation.
Berlin holds Germany's highest population within municipal boundaries and functions as federal capital. The Spree runs through the city to meet the Havel in Spandau, and the name itself may come from an Old Polabian root meaning swamp; five of the twelve boroughs still carry Slavic-derived names. Documentary mentions begin in the 1200s, anchoring a Slavic-German frontier town that became a kingdom's and then a nation's showcase.
People were here long before the town: a deer mask from about 9,000 BCE is linked to the Maglemosian culture, and dense settlements along the Spree and Havel around 2,000 BCE produced the Lusatian culture. Albert the Bear founded the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1157, and Spandau is recorded in 1197. The Thirty Years' War destroyed or damaged a third of Berlin's houses and halved its population, so the Great Elector courted immigrants; by 1700 roughly 30 percent of residents were French Huguenots. The city became Prussia's capital in 1701 and a centre of the Enlightenment under Frederick the Great.
Industrialisation made it Germany's main railway hub, and the 1920 Greater Berlin Act swelled its area from 66 to 883 square kilometres. Under the Nazis the Jewish community fell from 160,000 to about 80,000 through emigration between 1933 and 1939 before deportations began in 1943. Allied bombs, some 67,607 tons, and the 1945 battle destroyed 26 square kilometres of built-up area and killed around 125,000 civilians. After the war the city was divided by the Berlin Wall, and East Berlin became East Germany's capital while Bonn served the West, until reunification in 1990 restored Berlin as capital of all Germany. It is home to Humboldt University, the Free University, Europe's most visited zoo and Babelsberg, the world's first large-scale film studio complex.
Source: Berlin
