Berlin History

Between Wars: Rebellion And Poverty. WWI and the Allied blockade reduced Berlin to poverty. A popular uprising led to Kaiser Wilhelm II’s abdication and Karl Liebknecht’s declaration of a socialist republic with Berlin as its capital on November 9, 1918. Locally, the revolt, led by Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, turned into a full-fledged workers’ revolution that controlled the city for several days. The rival Social Democratic government led by Philipp Scheidemann enlisted the aid of right-wing mercenaries, the Freikorps, to suppress the rebellion and murder Liebknecht and Luxemburg. As Berlin recovered from economic and political instability, it grew into one of the major cultural centers of Europe. Expressionist painting flourished, Bertolt Brecht revolutionized theater, and artists and writers from all over the world flocked to the city. The city’s “Golden Twenties” ended abruptly with the 1929 economic collapse, when the city erupted with bloody riots and political chaos.

War Again: A City Divided. With economic woes came a rise in the popularity of the extremist Nazi party. When Hitler took power on January 30, 1933, traditionally left-wing “Red Berlin” was not one of his strongholds. Furious at the radical city, Hitler famously declared: “Berliners are not fit to be German!” He finally consolidated control over the city through economic improvements and totalitarian measures, marshalling support for the savage anti-Semitic pogrom of November 9, 1938, known as Kristallnacht. Only 7000 members of Berlin’s once-thriving Jewish community of 160,000 survived the Holocaust. Allied bombing and the Battle of Berlin leveled one-fifth of the city, killing 80,000 citizens. The pre-war population of 4.3 million was reduced to a mere 2.8 million by 1945. With nearly all healthy men dead or gone, it was Berlin’s Trümmerfrauen (rubble women) who literally picked up the pieces of the city.

The Allies divided post-war Germany into American, British, French, and Soviet sectors, controlled by a joint Allied Command. On June 16, 1948, the Soviets withdrew from the alliance and demanded full control over Berlin. Ten days later, they blockaded the land and water routes that led into the non-Soviet sectors. The Allies saved West Berlin from starvation through a massive airlift of supplies, called the Luftbrücke (Berlin Airlift). On May 12, 1949, the Soviets ceded control of West Berlin to the Allies.

The Ddr Years: Concrete And Checkpoints. On October 5, 1949, the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic was formally established with East Berlin as its capital. East Berliners, dissatisfied with their government, staged a workers’ uprising on June 17, 1953. Soviet tanks overwhelmed the demonstrators, and when the dust settled, the only upshot of the day’s events was the renaming of a major West Berlin thoroughfare to “Straße des 17. Juni” in a gesture of solidarity between Ossis and Wessis. Many fled the repressive state for West Berlin—200,000 in 1960 alone. On the morning of August 13, 1961, the East German government responded to the exodus of its workforce with the overnight construction of the Berlin Wall, a 165km-long “anti-fascist protective barrier,” separating families and friends, and in some places even running through people’s homes. In the early 1970s, a second wall was erected parallel to the first; the space between them was filled with barbed wire, land mines, and glass shards and patrolled by armed East German guards. Known as the Todesstreifen (death strip), this wasteland claimed hundreds of lives. The Western Allies responded to West Berlin’s isolation by pouring millions of dollars into the city’s reconstruction, turning it into das Schaufenster des Westens (the shop-window of the West).

Even though West Berliners elected a mayor, the Allies retained ultimate authority over the city—never officially a part of the Federal Republic—until German reunification in 1990. One perk of this “special status” was West Berliners’ exemption from military conscription. Thousands of German artists, punks, homosexuals, and left-wing activists moved to West Berlin to escape the draft, forming an unparalleled alternative scene. The West German government, determined to make a Cold War showcase of the city, directly subsidized Berlin’s economy and cultural scene.

The Wall Comes Down. On November 9, 1989—the 71st anniversary of the proclamation of the Weimar Republic, the 66th anniversary of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, and the 51st anniversary of Kristallnacht—a series of popular demonstrations erupted throughout East Germany. The public unrest rode on a decade of discontent and a year of rapid change in Eastern Europe, and it culminated in the opening of the Berlin Wall. Photos of Berliners embracing beneath the Brandenburg Gate that night provided some of the most memorable images of the century. Berlin was officially reunited (and freed from Allied control) along with the rest of Germany on October 3, 1990, a result that was met with widespread celebration. Since then, the euphoria has evaporated. Resignation to reconstruction has taken the place of the biting criticism and tasteless jokes that were standard just after reunification. After a decade of planning, the Bundestag (German Parliament) finally moved from Bonn to Berlin in 1999, restoring Berlin to its pre-war status as the locus of German political power.