50 Fun Facts About Berlin

Berlin's name probably comes from an old Slavic word for which kind of landscape?

Swamp: the name is thought to go back to a Polabian root, berl- or birl-, for wet ground, which fits a town that grew up on the low, boggy floor of a river valley.

Berlin's founding year, 1237, is really the first record of which twin town?

Cölln appears in a document of 1237, seven years before Berlin itself; in 1307 the two towns joined forces and shared a town hall, and Cölln's name later vanished into Berlin's.

Which river was Berlin built along?

The Spree splits into several branches as it winds through the city centre, and the island between two of them became Museum Island; farther west it flows into the Havel.

Bruno Taut's UNESCO-listed 1920s housing estate in Berlin-Britz is built around a block in the shape of what?

A horseshoe: the Hufeisensiedlung bends one long block of flats around a pond; it was among six estates built to give Berliners on low incomes decent modern homes, and UNESCO listed all six in 2008.

Which dynasty ruled Berlin from the 15th century until 1918, ending as German emperors?

The Hohenzollerns took their name from a castle in Swabia, in Germany's far south-west; one branch was granted Brandenburg in 1415, and its heirs ruled from Berlin for the next five centuries.

The Great Elector's Edict of Potsdam in 1685 offered asylum to which persecuted group?

The French Huguenots, Protestants driven out when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, settled in such numbers that a new quarter of Berlin was largely theirs; its French Cathedral still stands on Gendarmenmarkt.

Which sculpture did Napoleon carry off to Paris as war booty after his army took Berlin in 1806?

The Quadriga, the four-horse chariot on top of the Brandenburg Gate, spent eight years in Paris; it came home in 1814 after Napoleon's fall and was set back in its old place.

The Brandenburg Gate was modelled on the monumental gateway to which ancient site?

The Acropolis of Athens: architect Carl Gotthard Langhans copied its gateway, the Propylaea, giving Berlin twelve Doric columns and five passages, the middle one once reserved for royalty.

Before German unification in 1871, Berlin was the royal capital of which kingdom?

Prussia: Bismarck united the German states under Prussian leadership in 1871 and its king became emperor, so the Prussian capital simply became the capital of the whole empire.

Which wealthy independent city west of Berlin became one of its boroughs under the Greater Berlin Act of 1920?

Charlottenburg was one of seven towns merged with the capital, along with 59 villages and 27 estates; overnight Berlin's population doubled to about 3.8 million.

Which Social Democrat proclaimed the German republic from the Reichstag in November 1918 without his party's approval?

Philipp Scheidemann left his lunch to speak from a Reichstag window on hearing that Karl Liebknecht was about to declare a socialist republic; his party leader Friedrich Ebert was furious.

Hitler and Albert Speer planned to rebuild Berlin as a 'World Capital' under what name?

Germania was mostly never built: the war stopped work, and one surviving relic is a giant concrete cylinder that Speer had poured in 1941 to test whether Berlin's soft ground could carry his colossal buildings.

The 1936 Berlin Olympics introduced which ceremony that became a permanent Olympic tradition?

The torch relay from Olympia was the idea of organiser Carl Diem: 3,331 runners carried the flame from Greece to Berlin, each with a steel torch made by the arms firm Krupp.

During the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49, which cargo made up about two-thirds of everything flown into the city?

Coal: the blockade had cut West Berlin off from the fuel that heated its homes and ran its power stations, so sacks of coal, not food, made up most of what the aircraft carried.

What did the Berlin Airlift's 'raisin bombers' drop for the city's children?

Candy: pilot Gail Halvorsen began Operation Little Vittles, floating chocolate bars and chewing gum down to waiting children on tiny parachutes made from handkerchiefs.

On the night of 12-13 August 1961, what did East German troops first use to seal the border through Berlin?

Barbed wire and fencing went up overnight along the sector boundary; only in the following days did builders start replacing it with the concrete blocks that became the Wall.

Which West Berlin mayor coined the term 'Wall of Shame'?

Willy Brandt, West Berlin's governing mayor from 1957 to 1966, coined 'Wall of Shame' (Schandmauer); the East called it the 'Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart'.

On which date did the Berlin Wall fall?

9 November 1989: after spokesman Günter Schabowski mistakenly announced at a press conference that travel was allowed 'immediately', crowds forced the checkpoints open that night.

What did Berliners call the sealed East Berlin stations that western metro trains rolled through without stopping?

Ghost stations: trains slowed but never stopped at the dim, walled-up platforms, which armed East German guards patrolled; most were reopened soon after the Wall fell.

Soviet and American tanks faced off in October 1961 at which crossing point?

Checkpoint Charlie was named for the letter C in the NATO alphabet, after checkpoints Alpha and Bravo; in October 1961 the tanks stood gun to gun there for 16 hours before both sides pulled back.

Kennedy gave his 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech in 1963 outside which building, then West Berlin's city hall?

Rathaus Schöneberg housed West Berlin's mayor and senate through the years of division; only in 1991 did the city government move back to the Rotes Rathaus in the former East.

What do Berliners themselves call the jam doughnut that much of Germany knows as a Berliner?

Pfannkuchen is the Berlin word, which is one reason the tale that Kennedy called himself a jelly doughnut in 1963 falls flat: to his audience a 'Berliner' was a citizen, not a pastry.

The Fernsehturm, East Germany's showpiece television tower of 1969, rises beside which Berlin square?

Alexanderplatz was East Berlin's showcase square, and the 368 m tower beside it, opened by Walter Ulbricht in October 1969, was meant as a visible sign of socialism's superiority.

Berliners nicknamed the cross of light reflected on the TV tower's dome what?

The Pope's Revenge (Rache des Papstes) mocked the atheist state: sunlight on the stainless-steel sphere forms a cross, read as payback for the GDR's removal of crosses from churches.

Which architect gave the Reichstag its walk-in glass dome in the 1990s?

Norman Foster's rebuild, finished in 1999, added the glass dome with its spiral ramps; just before work began, Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the building in fabric in 1995.

What inscription was placed above the Reichstag's facade in 1916, to Kaiser Wilhelm II's displeasure?

Dem deutschen Volke, 'To the German People', went up only in 1916, in the middle of the First World War and more than twenty years after the building opened; the Kaiser had long resisted so democratic a dedication.

Which city lost the 1991 Bundestag vote that moved Germany's parliament and government to Berlin?

Bonn lost by only 338 votes to 320 after more than ten hours of debate; it kept the title of Federal City and several ministries, and the move itself was not finished until 1999.

Which Berlin boulevard runs east from the Brandenburg Gate to the Schlossbrücke?

Unter den Linden began in the 16th century as nothing grander than a bridle path from the palace to the elector's hunting grounds; the lime trees that gave it its name came a century later.

Which building on Museum Island displays the bust of Queen Nefertiti?

The Neues Museum, reopened in 2009 after David Chipperfield's restoration, displays the Nefertiti bust in its own domed room; Ludwig Borchardt's team found it at Amarna in 1912.

Which cub, hand-reared at Berlin Zoo after his mother rejected him, became a worldwide star in 2007?

Knut was bottle-fed by his keeper Thomas Dörflein after his mother abandoned him and his twin died; crowds flocked to see him at what is Germany's oldest zoo, opened in 1844.

What is the East Side Gallery?

Murals on the longest surviving stretch of the Wall: 1,316 m along Mühlenstraße, painted by international artists in 1990, including Dmitri Vrubel's Brezhnev–Honecker kiss.

What did Berlin do with Tempelhof Airport after it closed in 2008?

Berlin turned the airfield into a public park, Tempelhofer Feld, which opened in 2010; when the city later planned to build along its edges, voters blocked the scheme in a 2014 referendum.

Which West Berlin airport closed days after Berlin Brandenburg Airport opened in 2020?

Tegel handled its last flights on 8 November 2020, days after the new airport finally opened: inspectors had stopped its planned 2012 opening over thousands of defects, the fire-protection system above all.

Herta Heuwer is credited with inventing currywurst in 1949 using ingredients obtained from whom?

British soldiers' canteen stores gave her the ketchup and curry powder in occupied West Berlin; in 1951 she patented her sauce under the name Chillup.

Kadir Nurman is credited with first selling which Turkish dish as a sandwich in Berlin?

Döner in flatbread was his answer to busy Berliners who wanted a meal they could carry; others also claim the idea, and Nurman never patented it or grew rich on it.

Which Berlin department store, opened in 1907, stands on Wittenbergplatz?

KaDeWe is short for Kaufhaus des Westens, 'department store of the West': when Adolf Jandorf opened it in 1907, the site still lay a long way west of the city centre.

The Berlin International Film Festival's top prize is called what?

The Golden Bear, echoing the bear on Berlin's coat of arms, has been the Berlinale's top prize since the festival's founding in 1951; it has run every February since 1978.

Which Kenyan runner broke the men's marathon world record in Berlin twice, in 2018 and 2022?

Eliud Kipchoge ran 2:01:39 in 2018 and 2:01:09 in 2022; Berlin's flat course is the reason so many marathon world records have fallen there.

Berliners nickname the bomb-damaged Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church what?

The hollow tooth is the stump of a spire wrecked by bombing in 1943; when planners moved to pull it down in the 1950s, Berliners protested, and the ruin was kept beside Egon Eiermann's new church.

Which firm built Berlin's first U-Bahn line, opened in 1902?

Siemens: its founder had pressed Berlin with plans for an elevated railway since 1880; building began in 1896, and the first 'underground' line ran mostly above the streets.

Which conductor led the Berlin Philharmonic from 1955 to 1989?

Herbert von Karajan held the post for 34 years, but from 1982 a run of disputes soured his relations with the players, and he resigned in April 1989, three months before his death.

Berlin's Charité hospital began in 1710 as a quarantine house for victims of which feared disease?

Plague was expected but never reached Berlin, so the empty quarantine house was turned over to the sick poor; in 1727 King Frederick William I gave it the French name Charité.

The Love Parade, first held in West Berlin in 1989, celebrated which music genre?

Techno: the first Love Parade, on 1 July 1989, drew only about 150 dancers to the Kurfürstendamm; its organisers had registered it with the city as a demonstration.

Metropolis and The Blue Angel were shot at which studio complex, founded in 1912 just outside Berlin?

Babelsberg, the world's oldest large-scale film studio, began with a silent film shot in a glasshouse in 1912; Fritz Lang later made Metropolis there at a cost of some five million Reichsmarks.

As of 2025, which city ranks second to Berlin among the EU's most populous within city limits?

Madrid has about 3.5 million people inside its city limits, well ahead of Rome's 2.7 million; Paris proper is drawn so tightly that it counts only about two million, though its urban area is far larger.

In a 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate, Ronald Reagan challenged which Soviet leader to 'tear down this wall'?

Mikhail Gorbachev was addressed by name, with the sealed gate at Reagan's back: the president first urged him to come to Berlin and open the gate, then delivered the line that defined the speech.

Rudolf Hess died in 1987 in a prison in which Berlin borough?

Spandau, one of Berlin's twelve boroughs, housed the Nazi leaders jailed at Nuremberg; in his final years Hess was the only prisoner left, and after his death the whole prison was torn down.

Which American sprinter and long jumper won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?

Jesse Owens won the 100 m, 200 m, long jump and sprint relay; the regime had staged the Games as a showcase for Nazi Germany, and their outstanding athlete turned out to be a Black American.

The 1953 East German uprising began as a builders' strike on which East Berlin boulevard?

Stalinallee was the regime's showpiece boulevard; its builders downed tools over higher work quotas, and a day later protest had spread to some 700 towns before Soviet tanks crushed it. The street became Karl-Marx-Allee in 1961.

Which Berlin bridge, built in brick Gothic style, links Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg and carries the U1 line?

The Oberbaumbrücke, completed in 1896 with its twin neo-Gothic towers, was a Cold War pedestrian crossing; U1 trains returned in 1995 after the line across it was restored.