Berlin

Berlin began as two towns facing each other across the Spree: Kölln on the river island, first recorded in 1237, and Berlin on the north-eastern bank, first recorded in 1244. Standing at the crossing of two historic trade routes, the twin towns shared a town hall from 1307 and rivalled Stendal, Prenzlau and Frankfurt on the Oder as the richest places in the March of Brandenburg, as the tax roll of Emperor Charles IV in 1375 shows. Its name comes from an Old Polabian word for a marshy place.

The town passed from the Ascanian margraves to the Wittelsbachs in 1323, and to the Luxembourgs in 1373. It was a Hanseatic member from the fourteenth century, and the plague cut deeply into its population before 1400. In 1415 King Sigismund granted the March to Frederick of Hohenzollern, whose family made Berlin the seat of its rule. When Elector Frederick II Irontooth began a new castle on the Spree, the burghers rose in the Berlin Unwille of 1448 and lost most of their political and economic liberties. Elector John Cicero made Berlin the chief residence of Brandenburg in 1486, and the Reformation came peacefully under Joachim II in 1539.

The Thirty Years' War damaged a third of the houses and halved the population, after which the Great Elector fortified the double town with thirteen bastions and founded new suburbs from 1662. In 1685 his Edict of Potsdam welcomed French Huguenots, and about a fifth of Berliners were French by 1700. Frederick I's coronation in 1701 made Berlin the Prussian capital, and in 1709 the five towns were united as a royal residence of some 55,000 people. French troops occupied the city from 1806 to 1808, and in 1810 the new university, proposed by Wilhelm von Humboldt, opened its doors.