Understanding Berlin (Berlin)

Member Name: interlektor

Product:	Berlin
Date:	16/02/01 (31 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: History

Disadvantages: People

This opinion will be continued.

Berlin - the most interesting town in Germany. Why?
Time to tell you something about Berlin's fourth dimension: history.
The structure of Berlin can be explained from it's history.

A few thousand years ago there was a river in the middle of that place we now call Berlin and in the middle of that river was a little island (today known als "Museumsinsel"). Them name of the District ist "Mitte" (=middle") today also.
The Name of the river is "Spree".
This place, the island, was a fantastic place for a king to build his castle the. He did so and the so called "town castle" of Berlin was there for 500 years, when Walter Ulbricht, chief of Eastern Germany, decided to nuke that castle, because it was too much "Kaiser"-like.
Bachk to the kings: Mostly they had only two names: Friedrich (Fredreric) and Wilhelm (William, as Leonardo Wilhelm Di Caprio or as your famous prince). These two name were combined to names no pupil or student ist able to remember mor than 50 seconds:

- Friedrich Wilhelm III. (when Napoleon occupied germany)
- Friedrich Wilhelm IV. (builder of the Museumsinsel)
- Wilhelm I. (Emperor, looking like uncle Scrooge, with chancellor Bismarck)
- Friedrich III. (99-days-Emperor; died of cancer, when he was prince, his name was Prince Friedrich Wilhelm)
- Wilhelm II. (World War I.) Not mentioned yet were "soldier-king" Friedrich Wilhelm I. and his french-loving son Friedrich II. in Germany known as the "old Fritz".

One of all those Friedrichs decided to make this little village a littel more bigger, and he gave his soldiers the order to build new houses on the south-western side near the castle. A new part of the city with a wall around to refuse enemies ist called "Werder" in germany. So this Part of Berlin is called "Friedrichswerder" (werder of Freder
ic) today.

That is the reason why a church neareby is called Friedrichswerder-church (architect: Karl F r i e d r i c h (!) Schinkel.

The buildings behind the Friedrichswerder were given the simple name "Friedrichstadt" (= town of Frederic, today you can shop ther in the "Friedrichstadt-Passagen" = Move through the town of Frederic). The borderline of the Friedrichstadt is the Friedrichstraße (=Frederic's Street).

Now to the femme fatale:
The wife of one of these Kings liked to get a castle of her own, and so the king built another castle outside the city for his wife with the nice name "Sophie-Charlotte" (wife of Friedrich I. of Prussia. Before he went king his name was Count Friedrich III. of Brandenburg). Since 1920 the Castle of Sophie Charlotte - Charlottenburg (= castle of Charlotte) is part of Berlin, because the town was growing and growing (guilty: Wilhelm I. and Bismarck).

To reach his wife there was a great east-west-achsis constructed, called Charlottenburger Allee (today: Unter den Linden/Str. of June 17th) Lindtrees decorated the road, it is called "Unter den Linden" (=under the lind trees today).

The Brandenburg gate was the gate to direction Brandenburg (ugly city in the country Brandenburg). You see - the Brandenburg gate was the exit of Berlin!

To be continued.

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