1902 Encyclopedia > Berlin

Berlin




BERLIN is the chief city of the province of Brandenburg, the capital of the kingdom of Prussia, and since 1871 the metropolis of the German empire. It is situated in 52º 30' 16" N. lat. and 13º 23' 16" E. long., and lies about 120 feet above the level of the Baltic. Its longest day is 16 hours 47 minutes; its shortest day is 7 hours 36 minutes. Its average annual temperature is 48·2º Fahr., the maximum recorded heat being 99·5º in 1819, and the maximum cold--16·1º fahr. In 1823. The average rainfall is 21·74 Prussian inches, and Berlin has on the average 120 rainy, 29 snowy, and 17 foggy days in a year.

The city is built on what was originally in part a sandy and in part a marshy district on both sides of the River Spree, not far from its junction with the Havel, one of the principal tributaries of the Elbe. By its canals it has also direct water communication with the Oder. The Spree rises in the mountain region of Upper Lusatia, is navigable for the last 97 English miles of its course, enters Berlin on the S.E. as a broad sluggish stream, retaining an average width of 420 feet, and a depth of 6 or 7 feet, until it approaches the centre of the city, where it has a sudden fall of 4 feet, and leaves the city on the N.W., after receiving the waters of the Panke, again as a dull and sluggish stream, with an average width of only 160 feet, but with its depth increased to from 12 to 14 feet. Within the boundaries of the city it feed canals, and divides into branches, which, however, reunite. The river, with its canals and branches, is crossed by about 50 bridges, of which very few have any claim to architectural beauty. Among these latter may be mentioned the Schlossbrücke, built after designs by Schinkel in the years 1822-24, with its eight colossal figures of white marble, representing the ideal stages of a warrior’s career. The statues are for the most part of high artistic merit. They stand on granite pedestals, and are the work of Drake, Wolff, and other eminent sculptors. The Kurfürstenbrücke is another bridge which merits notice, on account of the equestrian bronze statue of the Great elector by which it is adorned.

The etymology of the word "Berlin" is doubtful. Some derive it form Celtic root—ber, small, short, and lyn, a lake. Others regard it as coming from the word werl, a river island. Professor paul Cassel, in a recently published dissertation, derives it from the German word "Brühl," a marshy district, and the Slavonic termination "in;" thus Brühl, by the regular transmutation Bürhl (compare Germ, bren-nen and Eng, burn), Bürhlin. The question is likely to remain in the satge of more or less probable conjecture.

Similar obscurity rests on the origin of the city. The hypotheses which carried it back to the early years of the Christian era have been wholly abandoned. Even the Margrave Albert the Bear (d.1170) is no longer unquestionably regarded as its founder, and the tendency of opinion now is to date its origin from the time of his great-grandsons, Otho and John. When first alluded to, what is now Berlin was spoken of as two towns, Cöln and Berlin. The first authentic document concerning the former is from the year 1237, concerning the latter from the year 1244, and it is with these dates that the trustworthy history of the city begins. Fidicin, in his Diplomatische Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stadt Berlin, vol. iii, divided the history of the town, for its origin to the times of the Reformation, into three periods. The first of these, down to the year 1307, is the period during which the two towns had separate administration; the second, from 1307 to 1442, dates from the initiation of the joint administration of the two towns to its consummation. The third period extends from 1442 to 1539, when the two towns embraces the reformed faith.

In the year 1565 the town had already a population of 12,000. About ninety years later, after the close of the Thirty year’s War, it has sunk to 6000. At the death of the Great Elector in 1688, it had risen to 20,000. The Elector Frederick III., afterwards King Frederick I., sought to make it worthy of a royal "residence," to which rank it had been raised in 1701. From that time onwards Berlin grew steadily in extent, splendour, and population. Frederick the Great found it, at his accession in 1740, with 90,000 inhabitants. At the accession of Frederick William Iv. in 1840 it had 331,894, and in the month of July 1874, thirty-four years later, the population had nearly trebled, the exact numbers in that year being 949,144. The two original townships of Cöln and Berlin have grown into the sixteen townships into which the city is now divided, covering about 25 English square miles of land, and Berlin now takes its place as the fourth, perhaps the third, greatest city in Europe, surpassed only by London, Paris, and possibly Vienna. Its importance is now such that a bill, at present submitted by the Government to the consideration of the Legislature, purposes to raise it to the rank of a province of the kingdom.

Progress and prosperity have, however, been chequered by reverses and humiliations. The 17th century saw the Imperialists and Swedes, under Wallenstein and under Gustavus Adolphus, as enemies, within its walls; the 18th century, the Austrians and Russians, during the Seven Year’s War; the 19th century, Napoleon I., and the French; and the year 1848 witnessed the bloody scenes of the March Revolution. But the development of constitutional government, and the triumphs of 1866 and 1870, have wiped out the memory of these dark spots in the history of the Prussian capital.

The town has grown in splendour as it has increased in numbers. Daniel, in the fourth volume of his Handbook of Geography, gives the number of its public buildings as 700. of these, its churches are the structures which lay claim to the highest antiquity, four of them dating from the 13th and 14th centuries. But in respect of its churches, both in their number and their beauty, Berlin is, relatively speaking, probably the poorest of the capitals of Christendom. It has only 48 churches and chapels belonging to the State Church, 5 Roman Catholic churches and chapels, 8 foreign and free chapels, and 3 synagogues, to satisfy the religious wants of a million of people. Nor are these over-filled. Dr Schwabe, the statistician, fixes the number of actual worshippers in all the churches on an average Sunday at less than 2 per cent. of the entire population. On the 1st of December 1871 the different creeds were found to be represented in the following proportions:—732,351 were Protestants of the State Church, 2570 Dissenters, 51,517 Roman Catholics, 36,015 Jews, 34 of non-Christian creeds, 3854 persons whose creed was uncertain.

It secular public buildings Berlin is very rich. Entering the city at the Potsdam Gate, traversing of a hundred a few hundred yards of the Leipzigerstrasse, turning into the Wilhelmyards, and following its course until it reaches the street Unter den Linden, then beginning at the Brandenburg Gate and going along the Unter den Linden until its termination, there will be seen within the limits of half an hour’s walk the following among other buildings, many of them of great architectural merit:—The Admiralty, the Upper House of the Prussian Legislature, the Imperial Parliament, the War Office, the residence of the Minister of Commerce, the palaces of Prince Carl and the Princes Pless and Radziwill, the Foreign Office, the Imperial Chancery, the palaces of the Ministers of the Royal House and of Justice, the palaces of the Princes Alexander and George, the Brandenburg Gate, the Royal School of Artillery and Engineering, the residences and offices of the Ministers of the Interior and Worship, the Russian Embassy, the Great Arcade, the Netherland Palace and the palace of the Emperor, the Royal Academy, the University, the Royal Library, the Opera, the Arsenal, the palace of the Crown Prince, the palace of the Commandant of Berlin, the Castle Bridge, the Academy of Architecture, the Castle, the Cathedral, the Old and New Museums, and the National Gallery. At a short distance from this line are the Exchange, the Rathhaus, the Mint, the Bank, and the Royal Theater. Further away are the various barracks, the palace of the general staff, and the eight railway termini. Berlin differs from other great capitals in this respect, that with the exception of the castle,—a large building enclosing two courts, and containing more than 600 rooms, and which dates back in its origin to the 16th century,—all its public buildings are comparatively modern, dating in their present form from the 18th and 19th centuries. The public buildings and monuments which render it famous, such as the palaces, museums, theatre, exchange, bank, rathhaus, the Jewish synagogue, the monuments and columns of victory, date almost without exception from later than 1814, the close of the great conflict with Napoleon I. The Exchange, finished in 1863, at a cost of £180,000 sterling; the Synagogue, a proud building in Oriental style, finished in 1866, at a cost of £107,000; and the Rathhaus, finished in 1869, at a cost of £500,000 sterling, including the land on which it stands, are the most recent of its great buildings. The New National Gallery is nearly completed, and the Imperial Bank is being rebuilt. It is probable that on city in the world can show so large a number of the structures so closely clustered together.

Up to a very recent date Berlin was a walled city. Those of its nineteen gates which still remain have only an historical or architectural interest. The principal of these is the Brandenburg Gate, and imitation of the Propylaea at Athens. It is 201 feet broad and nearly 65 feet high. It is supported by twelve Doric columns, each 44 feet in height, and surmounted by a car of victory, which, taken by Napoleon to Paris in 1807, was brought back by the Prussians in 1814. It has recently been enlarged by two lateral colonnades, each supported by 16 columns.

The streets, about 520 in number, are, with the exception of the districts in the most ancient part of the city, long, strait, and wide, lines with high houses, for the old typical Berlin house, with its ground floor and first floor, is rapidly disappearing. The Unter den Linden is 3287 feet long by 160 broad. The new boulevard, the Königgrätzerstrasse, is longer still, though not so wide. The Friedrichstrasse and the Oranienstrasse exceed 2 English miles in length. The city has about 60 squares. It has 25 theatres and 14 large halls for regular entertainments. It has an aquarium, zoological garden, and a floral institution, with park, flower, and palm houses. It has several hospitals, of which the largest is the Charité, with accommodation for 1500 patients. The Bethany Elizabeth, and Lazarus hospitals are attached to establishments of Protestant deaconesses. The St Hedwig’s hospital is under the care of Roman Catholic sisters. The Augusta hospital, under the immediate patronage and control of the empress, is in the hands of lady nurses, who nurse the sick without assuming the garb and character of a religious sisterhood. The people’s parks are the Humboldt’s Hain, the Thiergarten, a wood covering 820 Prussian acres of ground, and reaching up to the Brandenburg Gate.

As has been seen, the population has trebled itself within the last 34 years, naturally not so much by the excess of births over deaths, as by an unbroken current of immigration. In 1873 the births were 35,954, the deaths 26,427, leaving an excess of 8527 births. But the increase in the population of the city in the same year was 50,184, leaving 41,657 as the increase through the influx from without.It will thus be seen at a glance that only a minority of the population are native Berliners. In the census of 1867 it was found that, taking the population above 120 years of age, only one-third were natives of the city. The immigration is almost exclusively from the Prussian provinces, and among these principally from Brandenburg and from the eastern and north-eastern provinces. In 1871 it was found that out of every 10,000 inhabitants, 9725 were Prussian subjects, 165 were form other German states, 55 from foreign lands, and 47 were of a nationality not ascertained. The foreign element almost vanishes, and the German element is represented principally by the north, so that in blood and manners Berlin remains essentially a north-eastern German city, i.e., a city in which German, Wend, and Polish blood flows commingled in the veins of the citizens. In past times Berlin received a string infusion of foreign blood, the influence of which is perceptible to the present day in its intellectual and social life. Such names as Savigny, Lancizolle, De la Croix, De le Coq, Du Bois-Reymond, tell of the French refuges who found a home here in the cold north when expelled from their own land. Daniel, in his Geography, vol. iv. p. 155, says that there was a time when every tenth man in the city was a Frenchman. Flemish and Bohemian elements, to say nothing of the banished Salzburgers, were introduced in a similar manner. Add to these 36,013 Jews now resident in the city and the picture of the commingled races which make up its population is pretty complete.

The 826,341 inhabitants of the city were found at the census of 1871 to be living in 14,478 dwelling-houses, and to consist of 178,159 households. These numbers show that the luxury of a single house for a single family is rare, and his holds good also of the wealthier classes of the people. These numbers fall far short of the present (1875) number of houses and of households, as will be seen from the fact that the value of the household property of the city in 1874 exceeded that of 1871 by £18,000,000 sterling, of which the greatest part falls to newly-built houses or houses enlarged. In 1871 the average number of persons comprised in a household was found to be 4·6, the number of household dwelling in a house 12·3, and the number of households dwelling in a house 57·1. These numbers throw light on the moral and social life of the city, and compared with the past, show the change in the domestic habits of the people. In 1540 the average number of inmates in a house was 6, in 1740 it was 17, in 1867 it had risen to 32, and in 1871 to 57. Between the years 1864 and 1871 the one-storied houses of the city decreased 8 per cent, the two and three-storied houses 4 _ per cent., while the number of four-storied houses increased 11 per cent. and the five-storied and higher houses 50 per cent. With the increase of high houses, the underground cellar dwellings, which form so striking a feature in the house architecture of the city, increase in a like proportion, and these and the attics are the dwellings of the poor. In 1867 there were 14,292 such cellar dwellings, in 1871 they had increased to 19,208. Taking the average of 1867—4 inmates to a cellar dwelling—we got 76,832 persons living under ground. In 1871 there were 4565 dwelling which contained no room which could be heated. This class of dwelling had doubted between the two census years of 1867 and 1871. Taking 3 inmates (the ascertained average of 1867) to such a dwelling, we have 13,695 persons who pass the winter in unheated dwelling, in a climate where the cold not unfrequently sinks below the zero of Fahrenheit. Of the remaining dwellings of the city, 95,423 had only one room which could be heated. This number, at 4 persons to a dwelling, give us an insight into the domestic life of 381,692 of the inhabitants of the city; that is with the 13,695 persons mentioned above, of nearly half the population. Such dwellings engender no feeling of home, and the habits of the people are in a certain sense nomadic. In the poorer townships there were 70 removals to every 100 dwellings!

The rate of mortality is high. In 1873, a favourable year, it was 28 every 1000 of the population. Taking the deaths as a whole, 58 per cent. were of children under 10 years of age. The rate of mortality is on the increase. Professor Virchow, in a report to the municipal authorities, stated that, dividing the last 15 years into periods of 5 years each, the general mortality in each of the three periods was as 5,7,9. The mortality of children under 1 year in the same three periods was as 5,7,11; that is, it had more than doubled. In the year 1872, out of 27,800 deaths, 11,136 were of children under 1 year.

The city is well supplied with water by works constructed by an English company, which have now become the property of the city. English and German companies supply the city with gas. A system of underground drainage is at present in process of construction. Internal communication is kept up by means of tramways, omnibuses, and cabs. In 1873 there were 54 tram-carriages, 185omnibuses, and 4424 cabs licensed, served by 10,060 horses.

Berlin is governed by the president of police, by the municipal authorities, and in military matters by the governor and commandant of the city. The police president stands under the minister of the interior, and has the control of all that stands related to the maintenance of public order. The municipal body consist of a burgomaster-in-chief, a burgomaster, a body of town councilors (Stadträthe), and a body of town deputes (Stadtverordnete). The municipal purposes the city is divided into 16 townships and 210 districts. For police purposes the work is divided into six departments, and an extra department for the fire brigade and street cleaning, and the town into six larger and fifty smaller districts. At the head of each larger district is a police captain, at the head of each smaller district a police lieutenant.

With the exception of a few of the higher schools, which are under the direct supervision of the provincial authorities, the Berlin schools are either under the direct supervision of the municipal body or of its committee for school purposes. The schools, public, and private, are divided into higher, middle, and elementary. In 1872 there were 24 higher public schools. Of these, 10 were gymnasia or schools for the highest branches of a learned education. In these schools there were over, and 2931 under, 14 years of age. The second class of high schools, the so-called Realschulen, give instruction in Latin, but otherwise devote almost exclusive attention to the departments of mathematics, science, history, modern languages, and the requirements of the higher stages of general or commercial life. Of this class of school there were also 10, with 143 classes, 5770 pupils, of whom 1931 were over and 3839 under, 14 years of age. The remaining 4 high schools were for girls, with 54 classes, 2522 pupils, of whom 529 were over, and 1993 under, 14 years of age. In addition to these public schools there were 7 higher schools for boys, with 55 classes and 2098 pupils, and 36 higher schools for girls, with 243 classes and 6629 pupils.

Within the last five years (1875) no new school of this class has been established, but several are in process of erection. Between 1869 and 1873 the city voted about £328,747 sterling for the purchase of sites, and for enlarging and rebuilding schools of this class; and he sum still required for schools of this class, up to 1877, is £352,500 sterling.

The total number of schools of all sorts, higher, middle, and elementary, public and private, in 1872 was 232, with 1072 boys’ classes, 1009 girls’ classes, and 4 mixed classes—together, 2085; attended by 50,316 boys, 44,959 girls—together, 95,275 children, of whom 7309, or 7·35 per cent., were over 14 years of age. The extent to which the schools are used under the law of compulsory education is very difficult to determine. In 1867 there were 103,383 children of the school age, but only 71,814, or 69·5 per cent., were in the schools. Dr Schwabe, by a criticism of these numbers, reduces the percentage of non-attendance to 13 per cent., and maintains the even these are not all to be regarded as absolutely without instruction. In 1871 it was found that out of every 10,000 persons of 70 years of age and upwards, there were 1529 who could neither read nor write; and that out of a like number from 60 to 70, there were 860; 50 to 60,446; 40 to 50,234; 30 to 40,158; 25 to 30,155; 20 to 25,71;15 to 20,58; and from 10 to 15,48.

The scholastic life of Berlin culminates in its university, which is, of course, not a municipal, but a national institution. It is, with the exception of Bonn, the youngest of the Prussian universities, but the first of them all in influence and reputation. It was founded in 1810. Prussia had lost her celebrated university of Halle, when that city was included by Napoleon in his newly created "kingdom of Westphalia." It was as a weapon of war, as well as a nursery of learning, that Frederick William III., and the great men whose names are identified with its origin, called it into existence, for it was felt that knowledge and religion are the true strength and defence of nations. William v. Humboldt was at that time at the head of the educational department of the kingdom, and men like Fichte and Schleiermacher worked the popular mind. It was opened on the 15th of Octobe 1810. Its first rector was Schmalz; its first deans of faculty, Scheiermacher, Biener. Hufeland, and Fichte. Within the first ten years of its existence it counted among its professors such names as De Wette, Neander, Marheineke; Savigny, Eichhorn; Böckh, Bekker, Hegel, Raumer, Wolff, Niebuhr, and Buttmann. Later followed such names as Hengsten berg and Nitzsch; Homeyer, Bethman-Hollweg, Puchta, Stahl, and Heffter; Schelling, Trendelenburg, Bopp, the brothers Grimm, Zumpt, Carl Ritter; and at the present time it can boast of such names as Twesten and Dorner; Gneist and Hinschius; Langenbeck, Bardeleban, Virchow, and Du Bois-Reymond; von Ranke, Mommsen, Curtius, lepsius, Hoffman the chemist, and Kiepert the geographer. Taking ordinary, honorary, and extraordinary professors, licensed lecturees (privatdocenten), and readers together, its present professional strength consists of 15 teachers in the faculty of theology, 14 in the faculty of law, 63 in the faculty of medicine, and 96 in the faculty of philosophy—together, 188. The number of matriculated and unmatriculated attendants on the various lectures averages 3000 in the summer term, and 3500 in the winter. During the last two or three years, however, the number has been steadily decreasing. Berlin, in point of numbers, still stands at the head of the Prussian universities, but no longer of the German universities, being now outstripped by Leipsic.

In addition to its schools and its university, Berlin is rich in institutions for the promotion of learning, science, and the arts. It has a Royal Academy of Sciences, with 46 members, 23 in the class of physics and mathematics, and 23 in the class of philosophy and history. It was founded on the 11th of June 1700, and the name of Leibnitz is associated with its foundation. It was raised to the rank of a Royal Academy by Frederick the Great in 1743. Berlin has also a Royal Academy of Arts, consisting of 39 ordinary members (1875), under the immediate protection of the king, and governed by a director and a senate, composed of 15 members in the departments of painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving, and 4 members in the section for music. Berlin has also its academy for vocalmusic, and its royal high school for music in all its branches, theoretical and applied, and learned bodies and associations of the most various kinds. It has 9 public libraries, at the head of which stands the royal library, with 710,000 volumes and 15,000 manuscripts. In addition to these, there are 15 people’s libraries established in various parts of the city.

Berlins possesses eight public museums, in addition to the Royal Museums and the National Gallery. The Royal Museums are the Old and the New Museums. The former, which stands on the north-east side of the Lustgarten, facing the castle, is the most imposing building in Berlin. It was built in the reign of Frederick William III, from designs by Schinkel. Its portico, supported by 18 colossal Ionic columns, is reached by a wide flight of steps. The museum covers 47,000 square feet of ground, and is 276 feet long, by 170 feet wide and 61 feet high. The back and side walls of the portico are covered with frescoes, from designs by Schinkel, executed under the direction of Cornelius, and representing, in mythical and symbolical figures, the world’s progress from shapeless and chaotic to organic and developed life. The sides of the flight of steps support the well-known equestrian bronze groups of the Amazon by Kiss, and the Lion-slayer by Albert Wolff. Under the portico are monuments of the sculptors Rauch and Schadow, the architect Schinkel, and the art critic Winckelmann. The interior consist of a souterrain, containing the collection of antiquities, and of a first floor, entered from the portico through bronze doors of artistic merit, made after designs by Stüler, weighing 7 _ tons, and executed at a cost of £36000. This floor consists of a rotunda, and of halls and cabinets of sculptor. The second floor, in a series of cabinets running round the entire building, contains the national collection of paintings. These are divided into three classes,—the Italian, French, and Spanish; the Dutch, Flemish, and German; and the Byzantine, Italian, Dutch, and German pictures down to the end of the 15th century—each of the classes being chronologically arranged. The gallery, then containing 1300 paintings, was enriched in 1874 by the valuable pictures of the Suermondt gallery, purchased by the nation at a cost of £51,000. The Suermondts gallery was rich in pictures of the old Netherland and German schools, and of the Dutch and Flemish schools. It also contained a few Spanish, Italian, and French pictures.

The New Museum is connected with the Old Museum by a covered corridor. In its interior arrangements and decoration it is undoubtedly the most splendid structure in the city. Like the Old Museum, it has three floor. The lowest of these contains the Ethnographical and Egyptian Museums and the Museum of Northern Antiquities. In the first floor, plaster casts of ancient, mediaeval, and modern sculpture are found in thirteen halls and in three departments. On the walls of the ground marble staircase, which rises to the full height of the building, Kaulbach’s renowned cyclus of stereochromic pictures is painted, representing the six great epochs of human progress, from the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel and the dispersion of the nations to the Reformation of the 16th century. The uppermost story contains the collection of engravings and the gallery of curiosities.

The National Gallery is an elegant building, after designs by Stüler, situated between the New Museum and the Spree, and is intended to receive the collection of modern paintings now exhibited provisionally in the apartments of the Academy.

The public monuments are the equestrian statues of the Great elector on the Lange Brücke, erected in 1703; Rauch’s celebrated statue of Frederick the Great, "probably the grandest monument in Europe," opposite the emperor’s palace, Unter den Linden; and the statue of Frederick William III. in the Lustgarten. In the Thiergarten is Drake’s marble monument of Frederick William III.; and in the neigbouring Charlottenburg, Rauch’s figures of the same king and the Queen Loise in the mausoleum in the Park. A second group of monuments on the Wilhelm’s Platz commemorates the generals of the Seven Year’s War; and a third, in the neighbourhood of the Opera, the generals who fought against Napoleon I. On the Kreuzberg, the highest spot in the neigbourhood of Berlin, a Gothic monument in bronze was erected by Frederick William III. to commemorate the victories of 1813-15; and in the Königsplatz the present emperor has erected a coloum of victory in honour of the triumphs of 1864, 1866, and 1870. This monument rises to the height of 197 feet, the gilded figure of Victory on the top being 40 feet high. Literature, science, and art are represented in different parts of the city by statues and busts of Rauch, Schinkel, Thaer, Beuth, Schadow, Winckelmann, Schiller, Hegel, Jahn; while the monuments in the cemeteries and churches bear the names of distinguished men in all departments of political, military, and scientific life.

Next to Leipsic, Berlin is the largest publishing centre in Germany. In the year 1872 there were 1540 works published in Berlin, of which 20 per cent, had to to do with literature, 15 per cent. with philology and pedagogy, 14 per cent. with law and politics, 7 per cent. with history, 6 per cent. were military works, 5 per cent. theological, 5 per cent. had to do with agriculture, and 4 per cent. with medicine. Turning to journals and periodical literature, 265 newspapers and magazines, daily, weekly, or monthly, appeared in the same year. The political journals in Berlin do not, however, sustain the same relation to the political life in Germany as do the political journals of London and Paris to that of England and France.

Berlin is not only a centre of intelligence, but is also an important centre of manufacture and trade. Its trade and manufactures appear to be at present in a transition state—old branches are dying out, and new branches are springing into the existence. Direct railway communication between the corn lands of north-eastern Germany, Poland, and Russia on the one hand, and the states of Central and Western Germany on the other, have deprived Berlin of much of its importance as a centre of trade in corn and flour. In like manner the spirit trade and manufacture have suffered. The 20, 892,493 litres exported in 1870 had sunk to 9,737,597 litres in 1872. On the other hand, for petroleum, Berlin has become an emporium for the supply of the Mark of Brandenburg, part of Posen, Silesia, Saxony, and Bohemia. Silk and cotton manufacture, which in former times constituted a principal branch of Berlin manufacture, has died out. As late as 1849 Berlin has died out. As late as 1849 Berlin had 2147 silk looms; now it has few or none. Wollen manufacture maintained its ground for a time, occupying about 8000 looms and 11,404 workmen as late as 1861. In 1874 the number of hands sunk to 2918. The chief articles of manufacture and commerce are locomotives and machinery; carriages; copper, brass, and bronze wares; porcelain; and the requisites for building of every description. The manufacture of sewing-machines has assumed large proportions, from 70,000 to 75,000 being manufactured annually. According to the report of the Government inspector of factories for the city of Berlin, presented to the minister of trade and commerce, the number of persons employed in all the Berlin factories in the year 1874 was 64,466. By a "factory" was understood any wholesale manufacturing establishment employing more than 10 persons. In 1874 there were 1906 such factories at work employing 51,464 males and 11,004 females above 16 years of age; 1137 males and 760 females under 16 and above 14 years of age; and 66 male and 14 female children under 14 years of age. The manufacture of stream-engines and machinery occupied 14,737 persons; brass-founding, metallic belt and lamp manufacture, 9074; carpentry, joinery, and wood-carving, 4548; printing, 3620; spinning and weaving, 2918; sewing-machines and telegraphic apparatus, 2788; the finer qualities of paper, 2585; porcelain and ware, 1741; dyeing, 1712; gas-works, 1518; tobacco and cigars, 1477; manufacture of linen garments, 1355; pianos and harmonious, 1198; dressmaking and artificial flowers, 1127; brewing, 1061. None of the other branches found occupation for 1000 persons. The value of the annual exports to the United States of articles of Berlin manufacture has risen to about £1,000,000 sterling. The exports to the Brazils, the Argentine Republic, and Japan are also increasing. Berlin is growing in importance as a money market and centre of industrial undertakings. The Berlin Cassenverein, through which the banking houses transact their business, passed £1,351,988,967 sterling in 1871. In 1872, 23 new banking establishment were enrolled in the trade register, with a capital of £7,565,000 sterling; and in the same year 144 new joint0stock companies were enrolled, representing a capital of £18,000,000 sterling. Since that time the tide of enterprise has ebbed, but the majority of these undertakings continue to exits.

In the progress of its growth Berlin has lost mush of its original character. The numerical relations of class to class have been greatly modified. New political institutions have sprung into existence, of which the Berlin of the early years of Frederick William IV. had not a trace. It has become the seat a parliament of the realm, and of a parliament of the empire. Manufacture and trade have come to absorb 70 per cent, of the empire population. But these have also changed their character; old branches which constituted a marked feature of its commercial and manufacturing activity have almost suddenly died out, while new branches have with equal more than supplied their place. While the commercial and manufacturing elements has thus increased, other elements have undergone a relative decline. The learned professions and the civil services numbered in 1867 7.9 per cent. of the population. In 1871 the proportion had sunk to 6.11, and since then the percentage has gone on decreasing. In this altered state of affairs Berlin will have to cherish and nurture the scientific, educational, ethical, and religious elements in her life with double care, not only to keep up her old reputation abroad, but also for the purpose of preventing the degeneration of her people at home.

Sources of information:—Von Klöden, Handbuch der Läder-und Staatenkunde von Europa; Daniel, Handbuch der Geographie, vol. iv,; Fidicin, Historisch-Diplomatische Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stadt Berlin, 5 vola.; Köpke, Die Gründung der Fred. Wilhelm Universitat zu Berlin; Wiese, Das Höhere Schulwesen in Preussen, 3 vols. Das Statistische Jahrbuch von Berlin, 1867 to 1874. Dr. H. Schwabe, Resultate der Volkszählung und Volksbeschreibung vom 1ten December 1871, Berlin, Simion. (G. P. D.)







The above article was written by Rev. George Palmer Davies; formerly Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, Berlin.





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