THE SIEMENSBAHN WAS a short, “spur”-style urban railroad that served Berlin’s northwestern district of Siemsstadt from 1929 until 1980. Consisting of only three stations, it originated at Jungfernheide (a still-active station on the present-day Ringbahn), crossing the Spree and passing through the Wernerwerk and Siemensstadt stations before ending at Gartenfeld.
SIEMENS, MUCH LIKE AEG and Daimler, is a present-day German company with roots stretching back to the 19th century. Founded in an office on Kreuzberg’s Schöneberger Straße in 1847, by the time of founder Werner von Siemens’ death in 1892 the company had offices in 13 countries.
WHILE THE PRIMARY campus of Berlin’s Freie Universität is in Dahlem, just west of the Botanischer Garten and just south of the US embassy’s imposing Dahlem location, the university also includes other satellite campuses in the former West Berlin. One of these is the Benjamin Franklin campus, located several kilometers southeast of Dahlem on the Spree.
FROM THE VERY earliest days of film, Berlin has made essential contributions to the medium, as both a center of production and a filming location. One of the most legendary silent films of all time, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, was made in Weißensee in 1920, part of a golden age when hundreds of films were produced in Berlin’s “Little Hollywood”.
EACH SPRING, BERLIN emerges from the frozen temperatures of Central-European winter with an incredible show of color: thousands of cherry trees blooming all across the city.
PFAUENINSEL (“PEACOCK ISLAND”), A 100-HECTARE island of forests and meadows on the Havel river, is a singular Berlin curiosity. Its origin as a game preserve dates back to Friedrich Wilhelm I, though it was his great-nephew Friedrich Wilhelm II that first populated the island with the eponymous birds. The island’s current peacock population, descendants of the originals, roam the island freely alongside human visitors (and the occasional pack of grazing sheep), and their distinctive hair-raising calls, which can be heard kilometers away, add to the surreal and otherworldly atmosphere.
RÜGEN, GERMANY’S LARGEST island, lies where the eastern Ostsee opens up into the Baltic. Closer to both Sweden and Denmark than to Hamburg, the island has remained remarkably untouched over centuries of changing rule…
CONSIDERED BY SOME to be the world’s first industrial designer, Peter Behrens (1868-1940) is also one of the giants of modern German architecture. His legacy looms especially large in Berlin, where two massive building complexes—the Turbinenfabrik in Moabit and the AEG Humboldthain campus in Wedding—tower monumentally over their respective neighborhoods.
