An interesting video. However, there's something you got wrong. At 9:40, the narration says: "During the Cold War, this [the Tempelhof Airport] was a lifeline for West Berliners. Basically, everything had to be flown in. ... This meant that taking on new construction projects and flying in everything was not very cost-effective or feasible." From that, one might get the impression that West Berlin was supplied by air for the entirety of the Cold War. In fact, that was the case only during the Berlin Blockade of 1948-49. Before and after the blockade, West Berlin was supplied by road and train through East Germany. Of course, that still meant that West Berlin was an exclave of West Germany, which was economically disadvantageous for the city. However, aside from the eleven months of the blockade, it was not in the desperate situation of being accessible only by air.

If you compare the maps of 1811 and Berlin today, you can also see that an entire section of the Spree river vanished. On the 1811 map you can see not only museum island but also a larger river island directly north of it. It's not as visible because the river ran along the zig-zag defensive wall and it's natural course was already altered because of it. When the S-Bahn (city train) was constructed, the northern arm of the river was filled in and the S-Bahn was constructed in it's place. Even a lot of Berliners are not aware that their daily commute on the S-Bahn takes them along a filled in arm of the Spree river.

Not to forget the Tegel Airport, which operated until 2020. Tempelhof was also the US base in Berlin and has a big basketball hall which you can see during guided tours.

Great video! It would have been even better if it would have been included how the divide between East and West Berlin lead to two city centers being developed as well as basically a double infrastructure. Because of this, Berlin has two zoos, two radio/tv towers, two main opera houses, two main theaters… you get the idea. I think answering the question why Berlin has no clear city center is very helpful for tourist, especially nowadays that also Alexanderplatz and Breitscheidplatz are also not the centers anymore, but more centers in the more frequented hip neighbourhoods emerged. Also explaining that Charlottenburg, Spandau, Steglitz, Schöneberg, Neukölln, etc. all used to be individual cities (all quite large in size already) before they were included into greater Berlin in the beginning of the 20th century would help for this.

I am a native berliner and I have to say I am very proud how you did this video. It sometimes hurts me, how people just see berlin as this "foreigner made vegan-techno paradise" and totally forget or ignore its history. my grandma was one of the "trümmerfrauen" (rubble women) which mean she literally helped rebuilding this city with her own hands. If she would speak english she would be very pleased with your presentation 🙂

Great video. A few notes: The fortification of Memhardt in 1650 didn't let to the unification. The cities acted united in foreign policies until 1442. Then the magraves of Brandenburg (later Prussia) divided them again. The history of the struggel between city and state is also an interesting aspect of the history of Berlin. The annexation of 1920 also included a bunch of villages, who where until this point not suburbs, but agrarian villages, not really influenced by the city. In the 20s this was the expansion ring around the city for modern development for evryone. (Hufeisen-Siedlung, etc.)

I'm Berliner and I praise your fast ride through history. Well done 👍 Thanks for sharing. I liked how, you pronounced the name Gendarmenmarkt ❤️

Being from Berlin and a map enthusiast, this is such a good video. With wonderful images, graphics and story's!!!

Thank you I learned some new things :) One thing I'd like to point out is that Tempelhof Airport was used as the lifeline that you were describing in a specific period. The soviet union put in place the Berlin Blockade on June 24, 1948 lasting until May 12, 1949 preventing the Allies from supplying the exclave through roads or waterways which lead to the infamous "Luftbrücke" (air bridge) and tightly spaced landings at Tempelhof.

Thanks for this video, as a native Berliner I appreciate the input. A little funfact if you are interested in architecture/city planing : The Marshallplan, as well as Interbau 1957 and Interbau 1987 characterised West Berlin. Within East Berlin it was the "16 Principles of Urban Planing." Today Berlin and Brandenburg share a same metropolitan strategy.

Hi, i work as an archivist for the city of Berlin. For the construction of the new Berlin by the nazis: theres a museum witb a big and detailed Modell at the Gesundbrunnen railway station. Theres some more stuff still visible in the city from these plans. The battle of Berlin caused great damage, but Tiergarten got destroyed and completly cut down for firewood during the winters of 1945 to 1950. Many buildings were destroyed by the nazis themselves or after the war during reconstruction of the city. The destruction seems very bad, but only affected few districts. The majority of Berlin only suffered smaller damages especially to they're industrial and military buildings. Most of the destruction to the old Berlin was done post war by the Allies. Especially the soviets bulldozed whole districts. Fischerinsel, wich is part of the "original" city of Berlin, was completly bulldozed and rebuild with modern buildings even though almost all the old buildings were undamaged after the war. In the Nikolaiviertel a reconstruction of medieval/old Berlin by the GDR you can find some of the torn down old buildings from all over east Berlin rebuild there. Also there's a few more streets where they rebuild old houses from all over the city that were torn down. If someone is interested for a deep dive theres an online tool to see older city maps and compare the streets with modern maps. It's on the city archive website and called Histomap.

It's really hard to condense Berlins long and turbulent history in such a short and fun video. Well done! For any city history fan, I recommend Berliner Unterwelten. It's surprising how many projects were build underground and fascinating to visit them.

Excellent video! I try to visit Berlin every time I can, and you have pointed out a few things that I have yet to see, like those remnants where the grand Arch was to be built. Loved the way you handled the subject !!

Such a great video! Awesome research and editing 👏👏👏

I used to live in Berlin and visited all these places actually lived in “east Berlin” and never noticed the side walk thing. It’s a super cool place to visit but glad to have moved down to Rhineland Pfalz. It very pretty here and it too has a lot of historical importance such as the oldest castle in Germany and the oldest city in Germany (trier). I’d highly suggest visiting Germany literally a magical place

Berliner and former Tour guide here. A decent video, though you might have missed some very important parts. The "Hobrecht Plan" from 1862 was one of the most influental plans for the wider development of Berlin, which you defintely should talk about in this context. You can even see the change of gradient on the chart at 02:20, just after 1850 passed. It was originally just ment to be a plan for the construction of strategical escape routes, but turned out to defy Berlin until today. The rapid growth of Berlin, beginning in 1875, led to many wild settlements and homeless people. In Order to fix this, they started to build simple, very basic and very crammed togehther housing units, the "Arbeiterbaracken" (Look for: "Meyers Hof in Berlin Wedding"). This led to many problems and is a quite complex topic. One of the biggest negatives was the rapid spreading of diseases like tuberculosis amongst the inhabitants, which at one point was at such an epidemic high, there was a major risk of crippling the local industry so bad, there might have been no coming back from that. These events changed the look af Berlin as a whole drasticly. They went to more wider and greener settlements, with huge parks inbetween as proclaimed by the british Ebenezer Howard, the "Garden City". This idea even reached out till the 1980ies, when the "Plattenbauten" in East & West Berlin were planned and constructed.

Berlin went through so much. So many different governments, currencies and ideologies. During the cold war, Berlin had 3 different TV standards. PAL for West German TV, SECAM for East German TV and NTSC for American Forces TV. Each standard needed a different TV set for each different signal.

Fantastic video, I love looking at cities from the PoV of their map throughout history, the evolving street grids and how all the events get reflected in it. I would love to watch your take on Warsaw. Warsaw and Berlin share a ton of the same patterns - destruction, reconstruction, the social-realistic architecture, various plans to remodel the entire city layout. They are almost sister cities, torn apart throughout the 20th century to now thrive as vibrant urban centers of central-eastern Europe.

Stellar work Daniel! Love the seeing the expansion of the walls, and your pronunciation 😂

Aside from some minor unimportant details, I could not have done it better as a Berliner and huge history fan! Have wonderful Christmas days!

I loved your video, specially the reference to the dead areas that once were roads and now only indications on the floor.

phenomenal animation! I love it and the way you explain things so interesting

My Family lives in Berlin for at least 7 generations and I must say even though I know a lot about Berlin, your video taught me even more. Thank you for that.

was so caught of guard when at 2:22 you showed the a picture of the facility where im almost daily for university lol, great video!

I've lived in Berlin since 1989, I arrived shortly before the fall of the wall, your video was very informative, and well done - great work, I really enjoyed it.

7:37 when the Johnny Harris electronic music hits 👌

Wonderful video. Please consider a longer version with the same amount of care!

This was beautiful. Thank you.

Love your choice of topics on Berlin. I'm an inhabitant. The so-called "Rosinenbomber" supplied goods during the Berlin Blockade, because the soviet sector prohibited transports getting through for nearly one year from June 1948 to May 1949...this was a protest against the fact the British, French and US zones cooperated economically.

Thank you for teaching me history facts about my city! Greetings from Berlin 🐻

Great!! Congratulations!!

I live in Berlin and was always very interested in the cities urban history aaaaand still i learned quite a bunch in your video :) thanks!

Amazing Video!

As a Berliner i got to say this ist a realy good Video about Berlin! Good Job!

Thanks for this interesting video from Germany 👋🏽

Extremely interesting and well made video about an exceptional city, congrats! Can I suggest a video about Rome next ?

Two things struck me the most when I visited Berlin in 1991, right after having been 6 days in Paris: 1) Its center is a metropolitan park, the Tiergarden, and 2) the city is a powerful mess... you can feel more its energy than its looks.

I wanna add that the right picure shown at 11:19 isnt Berlin. It (intentionally) looks like the Reichstag, but it's the Reichsgericht (Court of the Reich) in my beautiful hometown of Leipzig. I think it has also been designed by the same architects... though the photo was shot during the workers prostest of '53 as well. However, very good and interesting video :)

Local Berliner here that actually learn a lot of new stuff from this video. I used to live close to the Schwerbestlungskörper and walked passed it many times. But I never knew what it was (there is also no sign or info plate). Such a fascinating story.

Small sidenote: the two towns Berlin and Cölln merged together to one city, Berlin, in 1710. Until then they co-existed as a "dual-city". Berlin became the capital in January 1871 when the Deutsches Reich (Second Reich) was founded, with the new constitution. Before that, Königsberg (today Kaliningrad/Russia) was the capital of the Northern Union (Prussian Empire and the hanseatic cities).

very interesting! thank you!

Thanks for teaching me so much - about my own city

Cool video!

Amazing! Please do a Barcelona one!

One of my favorite pictures of Berlin that beautiful shows the east west Berlin divide is at night. Because at night the two halves of Berlin are lit with different colors as the east still uses actually yellow light bulbs whereas the west used neon and white lights It directly shows how the city’s division has acted on its construction

Aaand another Berliner approving this video! 👍🏼

9:47, for the air bridge you mention “during the Cold War” as if it was the status quo… It only happened for almost a year in 48-49 when the Soviets tried to see if they could let the Western powers give up West Berlin by cutting off land supply routes. They didn’t, they managed to keep supplying the city through the airlift and in 49 the Soviets gave up and land routes were again allowed. So in all a crisis lasting months, but it was not like the airlift was the primary supply route for the entire duration of the cold war 😅

I really enjoyed this video. Could you maybe do a similar one for Munich? I think this would be interesting.

Well explained! 😃👍 Except the giant swamp. Yes, Berlin is just at an altitude of 36 meters (118 ft) above sea level. So ground water is a problem in all construction pits. But the major problem is the ground. It's nothing but floating sand without any rocks. That's why you don't see such massive skyscrapers like in other cities. 😎

#5:34 -- Actually the Schwerbelastungskörper has till today an significant impact in sience for static and arcitecture. So .. nope. #6:50 -- the soviets was part of the allies .. if you want to use this term, say maybe _western allies_ ? #8:44 -- Nope, the street was used before till after WW2 as march avenue and it was named stalinallee till renamed to marx. The Buildings at Warschauer Tor was part of an greater area and reminisence of the lost gate and shouldn't be compared to the german and french dome. #9:00ff -- Your timeline is cracked/mixed up, the wall was built in the 60s, the rosinenbomber pointed before 50s and the 17.June was mit 50s.

I was born in 1980 in West-Berlin. I grew up in a divided Germany. When we would visit relatives in West-Germany we had to drive through the DDR (GDR) and had to pass border guards. West-Berliners were allowed to travel but they got questioned and searched sometimes at the border by GDR border guards. I had relatives in the GDR too we sometimes visited and we always brought them gifts from the West, because they couldn't buy/get a lot of stuff in the GDR. Technically West-Germany and East-Germany were considered "enemies". I remember a lot from the time after the Wall came down/opened. It was crazy and exciting. Everyone was happy and people shed tears of joy in the streets..literally. It was a time when people thought "everything is gonna be good and we can achieve everything now". I think - despite a lot of problems and division still existing today - it worked out very well for Germany.

0:57 In fact, just the north of the island is called "Museumsinsel". The rest is "Spreeinsel" (Spree island), "FIscherinsel" respectively.

As someone who’s been going to berlin over a decade you did a great job! Now I understand why Neukölln is a neighborhood!?

Grazie!

Hey, I recognized your hoodie😛😛 I used to work for that museum

That video is very well made! (Approved by a Berliner)

The earth underneath Berlin is also mostly sand, formed during the ice age, you can still find "Findlinge" (huge stones from Scandinavia) here

About the berlin wall, a former teacher of mine used to point out how he had to guard the wall, being a part of the east, being told they had to stop intruders most of all (at all cost, which he fortunately had never experienced.) At some point, being very young back then, he noticed how everything that is supposed to hold people back is facing his side, not the other side, yet he had no way to raise the question, as the consequences would have been terrible. The cultural exchange and travel that was possible at different times is quite hard to understand even after hearing about it from people who experienced it. Especially as your standing decided your options. You can still feel the difference between the east and the west in most places. Although during the last 10 years, I have noticed that especially transportation gaps were closed (public transport was basically still divided, and if you wanted to "change sides" it would always mean taking a long time to get there and changing trains/trams/metros) and the communities seem more similar. You'd have more traditional and "high class" cafes and restaurants on the west that would close early, and more relaxed and open end places on the east. Now it starts to even out, getting a bit of both worlds on both sides. Elections also still showed a difference. Now it might have changed due to availability of affordable housing too. About "Tempelhofer Feld", there was a vote about whether it should be partly used for housing or remain a park, and as there used to be a lot of luxury projects being build and many did not yet notice how dire the housing situation would become as it had not yet affected them, they basically voted to make it impossible to build anything on it. However, as people claimed to have understood the yes or no question on the vote the wrong way around, it is hard to tell what would have been the majority had everyone voted as they intended. As I have been helping with couting votes (from mail votes) a couple of times now, I can totally see it being true, as people have a part time even placing everything where it belongs, or some even sign their vote to this day. There have been passports found in those letters even, it is believed that people accidentally put them in there, but maybe they really thought they have to send it along. From the last time that had a similar yes/no vote in it, I can confirm that many of those votes were unusable and did not count as they had been in the same envelope as the name of the person who voted. And seeing how close it was and the amount of invalid papers, it could have changed the outcome in this particular area. I used to live close to it before the vote and whenever I was there I would only see a jogger or two. Afterwards people first started realizing it existed, using it throughout the year, yet it is very empty most of times and it takes a very long time to get around, which makes it unbearable unless you are in good condition in the summer (unlike the Tiergarten, although it had other issues during the past couple years that made it somewhat unsafe). I do not recommend trying to drag kids all around it. Quite impressive how huge those airports really are.

The fact that everything had to be flown in was only during the time of the Berlin Air Lift, when the transit routes to (West-)Berlin were blocked by the soviet authorities (The Berlin Blockade 24 June 1948 - 12 May 1949) - not during the whole time if the separation. Though this experience led to some specialities like hundreds of bicycles stored for the governmental use in the case if, or to an independent electric power grid in West Berlin not connected to GDR national grid… and many other stories

Please do a map explained of cape town

Good video! Can I ask if somebody know the song name at 4:40? Thanks!!!

6:29 Regarding the destruction of Tiergarten: most of the trees were cut down to use it as burning material during the last months of the war.

Great video! But don‘t forget, the US, GB, France AND the Sovjet Union are the allies, the first three often named „the western allies“

I live in Berlin and I was surprised by several of these facts that I really didn't know. Anybody else, too?

I just moved to Berlin and have been wondering about these random curbs on the sidewalks, who would have known it was older sidewalks!

West Berlin was already different from West Germany before 1985. Not all West German laws applied. For example, anyone who wanted to avoid military service could do so in West Berlin. West Berlin had its own postage stamps, and lesbians and gays were free to live in West Berlin. There were West Berliners who worked for the East Berlin U Bahn and it was certain that agents from five different nations were also hanging around in West Berlin. Some dug tunnels to enable escapes, others joined in to expose the helpers. And others regularly tapped phones. It was good when the digital phone came, which was wiretapped from day one.

Great video - but I have a minor point of criticism: The Berlin Airlift during which all of Berlin got exclusivly supplied by allied airplanes lasted only 9 months, from summer 1948 until spring of 1949, shortly before West Germany aka the Federal Republic of Germany even got founded. Back then there hadn't even been a german state yet, neither east nor west. For not quite 9 months the Soviet Union took the western part of the city under siege to cut it off from supplies in what amounts to a power struggle within the allies. With this exception of just 9 months West Berlin got supplied via air, road and ship as any other city and during all of the cold war: Citizens of West Berlin could use their car to reach West Germany by using certain stretches of East Germany's Autobahn system which was called "transfer", and citizens of the West could reach West Berlin just as well by road. In fact it was pretty easy for Westerners to aquire visa to get into the East, and their hard currency was happily taken - as a westerner you had to exchange a minimum amount to be allowed in, usually more than people would have exchanged if they had a saying in the matter. For Easterners things had been considerably more difficult: For a single or even a young familiy getting allowed to visit the west was close to impossible if you weren't politically privileged, and usually they would have ensured that your familiy would stay because the Berlin Wall got constructed to prevent people from leaving to begin with. In the first years of the GDR you had constant drain of the working demographics because life in the West seemed more attractive in comparison thanks to the Marshall Plan while the Spviet Union was still dealing with getting up on its own feet after the devastations of WW2 and couldn't support the GDR to the same extend, but it certainly didn't help to build trust in a state which essencially kept you a prisoner. It's not that the citizens of the East weren't allowed to leave whatsoever and other states of the Warsaw Pact such as Poland and Hungary became important holiday destinations for east germans, but without a professional reason approved by the state there was essencially no way to leave towards west if you weren't willing to risk prison or even death. All that led to the pretty absurd consequence that although the citizens of West Berlin lived in an exclave surrounded by the ideological enemy they still had been way more free than the inhabitants of East Germany. How complex the relationship of both parts of the city had been in outright spite of the Cold War should become clear when one learns that the public transportation inner-city railway system in the western part of the city was maintained and operated by the east german railway operator and the sewage as well as electricity infrastructure had been intertwined as well.

5:26 The area in and around Berlin is not only a swamp: "Berlin" comes from the old Slavic langauges and can be roughly translated as "city in the swamp".

It's funny that todays "Frankfurter Tor" (City square and U-Bahn Station) is named wrong. The actual Frankfurter Tor was on stop further West, at Weberwiese

My commute takes me from the former socialist east right through the center into the west (and of course back again). It's honestly still amazing to see the history, the different districts and the great reconstruction that took place.

You gave me high hopes.

Actually, Karl-Marx Allee was NOT named after Karl Marx. Initially, it was known as Stalinallee - and even featured a statue of the man. However, after he fell into disgrace, the Allee was renamed. It is an interesting street though. You feel totally as if you are in Moscow. Some very prominent features were still intact decades after the Wall fell, like cinema "International" and "Cafe Moskau". In the former, I watched "Blue Thunder" back in the eighties. Very expensive one, that one, because of it's western origins. A ticket was twice as expensive as normal, "100% Aufschlag" - from 1M to 2M (1M = 0.10 Euro, although the official exchange rate was 1DM = 1M). I once wandered into "Cafe Moskau" with my brother - in the middle of the day. We were greeted at the door by a formally dressed female employee. We were helped out of our coats and accompanied - in person - to a huge, completely empty ballroom, with tables at the side. Then a black tied waiter took our order - and served us our coffee in a very formal way - like you'd expect in a high class establishment. It was totally a "David Lynch" experience. When we got out we looked at each other and said "Did this REALLY happen?"

8:57 The Second Picture is Not in Berlin

I love this map videos. I hope you do one for Mexico City and Jerusalem, those are cool cities.

You've done our city well!

I know its impossible to squeeze the history of Berlin in short video. But you could have mentioned the Berlin airlift memorial.

What you refer to in your video as museum island is not actually museum island, but Spree island (I live on that island). Museum island refers to a cluster of certain buildings.

Cool

Nice

If you've some trouble with "ä, ö, ü" you should use Google Translate's "Listen" function. I think it's nearly accurate. For me, as a german.

Thanks for the video! You really have been digging down into the material but at 6:45 and also later on, you've got something wrong. WW2 allies have been The Big Three: United Kingdom (from Sep. 1939), Soviet Union (from Jun. 1941), United States (from Dec. 1941), later on joint by more than a dozen other countries, including France. Saying that "the Soviet Union taking the east and the Allies taking the west" might therefor be misguiding ;-)

Btw: Berlin was formally not part of West-Germany… That’s why there were e.g. similar looking but slightly different post stamps in West Berlin - with the postal name “DEUTSCHE BUNDESPOST BERLIN” printed on them.

I've heard people describe my hometown Berlin as ugly. And I'm not even insulted. When I moved o Berlin from Poland (we were descendents of Germans that didn't move right after WWII) the wall was still there. Many parts of Berlin were gray and ugly. Since the old nice buildungs were gone, the ones that came as a replacement had to built fast and cost effective to provide housing as fast as possible for the struggling folks and like you said with the insular position the city was in, things were limited too. After the wall dissapeared Berlin changed a lot, so much buildiung went on. But of course the new buildings were still in a modern style, stripped of decoration and such. When I wander the streets of Paris or look at Vienna and other older cities that were not destroyed, I wonder how Berlin would like if all that destruction did not happen. However when I started cycling and not using the big streets anymore I started to like the the city a lot more. Also because of the insularity with the wall, Berlin has kept a lot of green and has a lot of water. You can just take the U- and S-Bahn (which is just the public transport of the city) and reach big lakes, forests, some biger and many small river beaches in a short time. And it's not to replace parks, because we have these on top. I love the other cities as tourists, but I guess I prefer to live in Berlin as it's less crowded.

9:50 this was only for one year! 24th of June 1948 to 30th of September 1949

Nice What tribes used to live on this territories Before germanization and what dialects was spoken

do la next!!

Warsaw certainly tops Berlin with how destroyed it was in WW2.

I'm from Berlin. Like someone who actually was born here (many people gasp when I tell them because most people in my age group are expats from somewhere else) and I love my city. But you need to know that Berlin is huge. You don't have one city center, you have many many many centers with their unique feeling. If you come here, be sure to go to the Märkisches Museum where you can learn everything about the citys history (do NOT go to History of Berlin - they are a cheap made, for-profit thing for American tourists, all about flashy lights and not about actual history) Anyway, they have a huge 3d map of the city in one of their rooms where you can see how most of Berlin used to be just fields. You have pictures of certain places where you can compare then to now. It's super cool! Also, if you want to come here don't buy a piece of the wall in museum shops. Those pieces are fake.

Do Rome please Great content anyway

BTW, The Tempelhof Airport building would have served nicely as an illustration of Hitler's preferred architecture. It's one of the few buildings that went up and are still around from his plan.

Actually there is another sign of 'Germania' one can still see today and is even in the video at 3:48 and those are the street lamps on what is now the "Straße des 17. Juni". These are still the original lamps Albert Speer, Hitlers architect who planned 'Germania', designed and built back in the day.

Berlin my favourite city on earth

Berlin in a nutshell. I like it 😀

Hey, you had a small error, or at least something you misrepresented, when you talked about having to fly all supplies to west berlin. This was only the reality for a fraction of the cold war between 1948 and 1949, during the Berlin blockade. Afterwards supplytrains were mostly allowed to pass through eastern germany, because of Bilateral Agreements. Greetings from Germany

There were also a bunch of architectural plans started but never finished along the XIXth century. In a sense, Berlin was always thought as a city of representation, and never as a city to live in. I recommend "Berlin is too big for Berlin" from Hanns Zischler.

There is an old joke from east german times. It roughly translates to: Name an island in the red sea with 10 letters: West Berlin

In Germany today, we call Berlin a "failed state". They are last in almost every metric compared to other German cities. Poor city management, too many people depending on handouts and arab gangs pillaging the city. The Tempelhofer Feld exemplifies the city's issues: Berliners are protesting against high rents and the limited availability of affordable housing. Instead of using this vast former airport in the center of the city to build apartments, it's now an ugly "park".

Makes me sad when history is destroyed Berlin was like Manila in the War everything wiped out, luckily Berlin recovered but Manila went downhill with urban planning

Karl-Marx-Allee was first called Stalinallee. It got renamed due to „Entstalinisierung“ after Stalins death.

A very well-made video! Only the font used (Geneva) is basically the ugliest font ever.