Maturski rad iz predmeta Engleski jezik
Tema: „
Berlin – The Gray City
“
Učenik:
Profesor:
2022
Berlin – The Gray City
Page 4
2. The City of Berlin
This part of the paper is going to talk about some nominal facts about the city of Berlin just to
give the context in witch this city has been given status of the „gray city“. When we talk about geografical
facts, for this paper we only need the basics so we can have geographical context of wher the city of Berlin
is situated. The historical facts, are here so they can give context to the arhitecture and culture throug big
evants that left the marck on this land and its residents.
2.1.Geografical facts
Berlin is the capital and largest city of Germany by both, area and population. Ppopulation of 3.7
million make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. The
city lies in the Central German dialect area, the Berlin dialect being a variant of the Lusatian-New
Marchian dialects. Berlin is a world city of culture, politics, media and science.
German is the official and predominant spoken language in Berlin. It is a West Germanic
language that derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language
family.
Berlin is in northeastern Germany, in an area of low-lying marshy woodlands with a mainly flat
topography, part of the vast Northern European Plain which stretches all the way from northern France to
western Russia.
Picture 1
. Berlin’s city boundaries
Berlin – The Gray City
Page 5
2.2.Historical facts – east and west Berlin
First documented in the 13th century and at the crossing of two important historic trade routes
Berlin became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (1417–1701), it also was the capital of the
Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1918), the German Empire (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933),
and Nazi Germany (1933–1945). In the 1920s it was the third-largest municipality in the world. For this
After World War II and its subsequent occupation by the victorious countries, the city was divided on East
and West Berlin. West Berlin became a de facto exclave of West Germany, surrounded by the Berlin Wall
(from August 1961 to November 1989) and East German territory. East Berlin was declared capital of East
Germany, while Bonn became the West German capital.
East Berlin included most of the city's historic center and the West German government
established itself in Bonn.
In 1961, East Germany began to build the Berlin Wall around West Berlin, and events escalated to
a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie. West Berlin was now de facto a part of West Germany with a
unique legal status, while East Berlin was de facto a part of East Germany. John F. Kennedy gave his "Ich
bin ein Berliner" speech on June 26, 1963, in front of the Schöneberg city hall, located in the city's western
part, underlining the US support for West Berlin.
1
In 1989, with the end of the Cold War and pressure
from the East German population, the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November. On 3 October 1990, the two parts
of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin again became a reunified city.
Forty years after the division of Berlin, the two sectors are as different as night and day. West
Berlin is flash and dazzle and crowded streets; East Berlin is gray and austere.
In West Berlin, the streets are crowded with Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs; here, the cars tend to
be small, with two-stroke engines that foul the air.
There are broad avenues lined with massive East Bloc embassies and trade mission buildings but
few pedestrians, for the shops and cafes of the sort that abound in the West are virtually nonexistent here.
When the city was divided among the Allies of World War II, the bombed-out shells of many
historic buildings were included in the Soviet sector, among them monuments to Imperial Germany and
the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler.
2.3.Rebuilding in Progress
Many of historical buildings and statues were devided too, the city began to change its sites, two
different parts were building on oposite parts. Some of them have been rebuilt, and others are in the
process of being rebuilt, particularly along the historic Unter den Linden, the tree-shaded avenue that
extends from the Brandenburg Gate, at the western edge of East Berlin, to Marx-Engels Square.
Even the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, has been
restored to its place of honor in the center of Unter den Linden--and facing east toward his old nemesis,
Russia.
1
Andreas Daum,
Kennedy in Berlin
, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-85824-3, pp.
125‒56, 223‒26.
