Berlin, the capital of Prussia, and, since 1871, of the German empire, the chief residence of the emperor of Germany, the seat of the German Reichstag and Prussian Landtag, and the third largest city of Europe, is situated on the Spree, in 52° 30' N. lat., 13° 24' E. long. The city is built upon a flat sandy plain, which, though cultivated, is far from being fertile. Its average height above the level of the Baltic is only 100 feet, and its mean temperature is 48° F. The Spree, here about 200 feet wide, with a current so sluggish as scarcely to be perceptible, flows from SE. to NW. through the city, dividing it into two nearly equal parts, and communicating with the Oder and the Baltic by canals. The inconvenience of its low-lying situation in the midst of the sandy flats of Brandenburg is more than made up for by the great geographical advantages of its position in the heart of Northern Germany, Berlin being half-way from Hamburg to Breslau, from Stettin to Leipzig, and from Memel to Alsace, as well as equidistant from the frontiers of Russia and Holland, and from the mountains of Central Germany to the Baltic. By rail it is 177 miles SE. of Hamburg, 101 NNE. of Leipzig, and 362 ENE. of Cologne; whilst from London it can be reached in 25 hours, Paris in 23½, and Vienna in 15. The advance of the city has been extraordinary. In 1804 the pop. was 182,157; in 1858 it was 438,961; in 1871 it was 826,341 (including 20,565 soldiers); in 1880, 1,122,330; and in 1885, 1,315,287, the city covering at that date an area of 15,500 acres, and measuring about 6 miles across, with a circumference of 29 miles. Pop. (1890) 1,579,224.
As far back as the 13th century, the central part of the present city was inhabited. Kölln, on the island formed by the Spree on its left bank, was united to Old Berlin on the right bank in 1307. These names are still retained by the corresponding quarters of the modern city. The Wendish kollen means 'a hill rising above water or swampy ground,' and Berlin is most probably to be traced to the root of wehr (English veir or wear), 'a dam in a river.' Berlin was long little more than a fishing-village; it was not till the 'Great Elector,' Frederick-William (1640-88), had united the separate duchies of which Prussia is now formed, that the town became of consequence as the capital of a large state. In the next century it received accessions of French and Bohemian colonists, driven into exile by religious persecution. Every inducement was then held out to bring foreigners to settle in the rising city. Under Frederick the Great, it continued to prosper. At his death, the inhabitants numbered 145,000. After the peace of 1815, Berlin increased with extraordinary rapidity, and, being the seat of government, a focus of the arts and sciences, and a great centre of commercial enterprise, it has gradually risen to a position which fairly entitles it to its present rank as the metropolis of the German empire.
The centre of the city is now devoted almost exclusively to commerce. Small towns and villages are gradually being incorporated: Moabit has already disappeared as a separate community; and Charlottenburg, a town of 42,000 inhabitants, is likely soon to follow. Berlin consists of sixteen different quarters, containing about 560 streets, 65 squares, 48 bridges, 700 public buildings, and upwards of 25,000 private houses (comprising 305,000 dwellings). The houses are built of brick, plastered or stuccoed outside, and they soon acquire a faded appearance. The style of these has very much altered since 1864. Before that, the greater portion of the houses were of one, two, or three stories, but these are fast giving way to houses of a larger size. Private houses of more than five inhabited stories and over 72 feet high have (1887) been prohibited. The increase in the value of house-property has been enormous, and the result is that about one-tenth of the population are driven to take up their abode in cellars underground, and more than 63,000 families live in dwellings of one room. In 1887 one building in Ackerstrasse housed no fewer than 1000 persons! Berlin contains a large number of very fine buildings. At the centre of the city is the royal palace, with nearly 700 apartments, including the richly adorned staterooms, the finest of which are the magnificent 'Weisser Saal' and the palace chapel. Near this are the palaces formerly occupied by William I. and by Frederick III. as crown prince; the royal library (1,000,000 vols. and 30,000 MSS.); the old and new museums, the national gallery, the arsenal, the royal theatre, the opera-house, the guard-house, and the university. These are all situated between the Spree and the east end of the street 'Unter den Linden' (so called from its double avenue of limes), one of the finest streets in Europe, about a mile long, and almost 150 feet broad; a continuation of this is, called Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse, beyond the Opernplatz, Lustgarten, and Kaiserwilhelmsbrücke (1887), has been cut through the old town on the other side of the Spree. The other chief streets are the Friedrichstrasse (2 miles long), the Leipzigerstrasse, the Königstrasse, and the Wilhelmstrasse, in which is the imperial chancellor's palace, where the Congress of Berlin sat in 1878. The city is adorned throughout with numerous statues of national heroes, the statue of the Great Elector (on the Langebrücke), and the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great (in front of the emperor's palace), being the most remarkable. There are more than 20 theatres in Berlin. Berlin has 35 classical and other gymnasias, 12 higher boys' and 60 higher girls' schools, and 260 middle and elementary schools, with a total of 200,000 pupils. The university, though only established in 1809, has taken a distinguished place among the universities of the world. Among its professors have been Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Schleiermacher, the Grimms, Niebuhr, Savigny, Neander, Ranke, Curtius, Lepsius, Mommsen, and Virchow. The number of professors and lecturers is now about 380, and of students about 5600. It possesses a library of 300,000 volumes. Of other institutions may be mentioned the Academy of Sciences, by far the most important of the kind in Germany; the Military Academy; the Academy of Architecture; the Academic High School (of art); the School of Mines; the School of Agriculture; the Artillery, Technical, and Engineering Colleges; the Industrial (1881), Ethnological (1886), and other museums; the Academy of Music; the Observatory; many scientific and learned societies; several seminaries for teachers and missionaries; and a large number of public and private institutions and societies for benevolent purposes. Of the numerous hospitals in Berlin, the Charité (adjoining which is the Pathological Institute, under Professor Virchow) is the largest in Germany. About 88 per cent. of the population are Protestants, 7 per cent. Roman Catholics, and 5 per cent. Jews. The cathedral was rebuilt in 1893-95. Of some 60 other Protestant and 10 Catholic churches, the Nicolaikirche (restored in 1880), Marienkirche (with a spire 295 feet high), and Klosterkirche, all of the 13th century, are the oldest; the Petrikirche (with a tower 315 feet high) is the loftiest; and the Michaelskirche (Catholic), Thomaskirche, Zionskirche, Dankeskirche (1884), and Heiligekreuzkirche (1887), are the finest and most recent. The New Synagogue (1866) has a richly decorated interior, a gilded dome 158 feet high, and seats for 3000 persons.
The Old Museum contains antiquarian specimens, a collection of 90,000 coins, a gallery of ancient sculpture, and a picture-gallery with about 1300 paintings. The New Museum contains six magnificent mural paintings by Kaulbach in the grand staircase, a very extensive and valuable collection of casts arranged in 12 saloons, the Egyptian museum, and a fine collection of engravings numbering upwards of 500,000. The National Gallery includes about 700 works by modern artists. The celebrated Brandenburg Gate (erected in imitation of the Propylæa at Athens, 65 feet high, and 205 feet wide) leads from Unter den Linden and the Pariser Platz to the Thiergarten, a park of 370 acres (with the monument of Friedrich-Wilhelm III., and those of Goethe and Queen Luise, both erected in 1880), the largest of the five parks belonging to the town. To the south-west of this lies the Zoological Garden, which has recently been considerably extended. The Botanical Garden (at Schöneberg) contains 25,000 species. Noteworthy also are the Rauch Museum in the Lagerhans (the oldest secular building in the city), the Rathhaus, the Aquarium, the eight marble groups on the Schlossbrücke, the royal château of Monbijou (with the Hohenzollern Museum), the Ruhmeshalle in the arsenal (beautifully rebuilt in 1883), the monuments of Stein, of Calvin, of Schiller (before the royal theatre), and of the Humboldts (in front of the university), the Gothic monument on the Kreuzberg, the Column of Peace in the Belle-Alliance-Platz, the Warriors' Monument, and the Column of Victory, 200 feet high, erected in the Königsplatz in commemoration of the great victories of 1864, 1866, and 1870-71, near which are the War Office and the new building for the Reichstag (the latter, with four towers and a cupola, built in 1884-94).
The commerce and manufactures of Berlin have increased so rapidly of late years, that it now ranks among the most important mercantile places of continental Europe. The traffic is carried on by the Spree, the canals, and fourteen railways, of which the intra-mural or 'city railway,' opened in 1882, has a length of 7 miles, and passes through the middle of the city from east to west, and the suburban or 'ring railway,' 23 miles long, forms a complete circle round its outskirts. In 1886 the city railway carried eight million passengers; the city omnibuses, thirteen; and the tramway-cars, seventy. The traffic by water is 50 per cent. greater than that of any inland town of Germany, amounting in 1886 to 3,716,000 tons. The staple commodities are grain, cattle, spirits, and wool. The Exchange, daily visited by 3500 persons, is the centre of the North German money-market. The Reichsbank is the chief bank in Germany for the issue of notes. It has £6,000,000 of paid-up capital, and 218 branch offices. The principal branches of industry are woollen-weaving, calico-printing, and the manufacture of engines and other machinery (for which there are now 100 establishments), also of iron, steel, and bronze wares, drapery goods, and confections. Of ladies' mantles alone Berlin produces annually £5,000,000 worth (two-thirds for export trade). It has also very important manufactures of railway and other carriages, sewing-machines, safes, telegraphic apparatus, scientific instruments, chronometers, steel pens, and jewellery. Of the other industries of Berlin the chief are its manufactures of pianofortes (of which the four largest manufactories turn out as many as 6000 in a year), accordions (of which Berlin is the main source of supply for the foreign trade), and other musical instruments; hardware, German silver, lamps, and metal toys; leather, paper, rubber, soap, and chemicals; furniture, carpets, porcelain, and other earthenware; gloves, linen articles, straw-hats, and artificial flowers. The silk trade alone appears to have fallen off of late years. Of beer, over 47,000,000 gallons were brewed in the year 1883-84, the malt-tax for the same period amounting to nearly £100,000. Most large enterprises are now carried on by joint-stock companies, although a number have in recent years ended in disaster, with great loss to the shareholders. In respect of its publishing trade, Berlin now shares with Leipzig the first rank amongst German cities. Berlin publishes 630 journals (some 30 daily) and magazines. Till lately the sanitary condition of Berlin was very bad; the river was polluted and open drains ran through the streets. But since 1870 the corporation has spent £10,000,000 on public health, and Berlin municipal arrangements have become a model to many other cities.
See books on Berlin by Vizetelly (London, 1879), Ring (1883), Friedel (1882), Baedeker (8th ed. 1893), and Borrmann (1892).
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN met at Berlin in June 1878, and consisted of representatives of Russia, Turkey, Germany, Great Britain, France, Austria, and Italy. It was primarily designed to revise the preliminary treaty of San Stefano, concluded by Russia and Turkey after the war of 1877-78, and the treaty of Berlin began a new era in the history of the Ottoman empire. Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro were recognised as independent, the latter powers receiving additional territory. The concession of additional territory to Greece was recommended (and made, 1881). Roumania received the Dobruja in exchange for Bessarabia, given to Russia. Ardahan, Kars, Batoum, and other parts of Armenia were ceded to Russia by Turkey. Turkey engaged to carry out reform in Asia Minor and Crete. Bulgaria became an autonomous but tributary principality, and Eastern Roumelia (which was practically united to Bulgaria after the war with Servia in 1885), though remaining under the direct political and military authority of the sultan, secured administrative autonomy and the right to have a Christian governor-general. Bosnia and Herzegovina were to be occupied and administered by Austro-Hungary. Prince Bismarck was president of the Congress, and the Earl of Beaconsfield and the Marquis of Salisbury were the English plenipotentiaries.