Politics

In order for Berlin to become the capital of Germany again by law, a vote had to be held in the Bundestag in June 1991, where it was decided to transfer the institutions from Bonn to Berlin. The transfer of the Federal Government and the Chancellery took place in 1999.

Following German reunification, several enthusiasts have launched the project to officially return the name of Prussia to the region made up of the states of Berlin and Brandenburg. In a referendum in 1996, the majority of the residents of Brandenburg and East Berlin spoke out against the merger of the two states, while those of West Berlin spoke in favor. Despite the setback, the merger initiative continued.

Since the 1990s, according to Allcitycodes, Berlin has been undergoing a serious economic and financial crisis, due, on the one hand, to the consequences of reunification (which, among other things, doubled the number of civil servants that the City Council had to pay), and for another, to the bankruptcy of a state banking company in 2001.

This latest scandal led to a change in the regional government and the replacement of the conservative Eberhard Diepgen by the Social Democrat Klaus Wowereit, who was the first leader of his party to agree to a government in coalition with the Left Party (since 2007 renamed Die Linke), heir to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in the GDR.

Culture

Museums and art galleries

The Bode Museum at the northern tip of Museum Island. Berlin is home to 365 museums. The ensemble on the Museum Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is situated in the northern part of the Spree Island between the Spree and the Kupfergraben.

Already in 1841 it was named “district dedicated to art and antiquities” by a royal decree. Consequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten, the Neues Museum (New Museum) showing the bust of Queen Nefertiti, the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), the Pergamon Museum and the Bode Museum were erected there. The names of the buildings did not necessarily correspond to the content of the collections they exhibited.

In the Museumszentrum Berlin-Dahlem (Dahlem district), there are several museums of world art and culture, such as the Museum of Indian Art, the Museum of East Asian Art, the Ethnological Museum, the Museum of European Cultures, as well as the Museum of the Allies (a museum about the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum).

Other museums

• Bauhaus-Archive: is an architecture museum of the integrated design school founded by Walter Gropius.
• German Museum of Technology (Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin) in Kreuzberg: has a wide collection of historical technical artifacts.
• Egyptian Museum in Berlin: Across the street from Charlottenburg Palace, it houses one of the world’s most important collections of objects from Ancient Egypt, including the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti.
• Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near the zoo: it claims to be the largest erotic museum in the world.
• Humboldt Museum of Natural History near Berlin Hauptbahnhof: It has the world’s largest assembled dinosaur skeleton and the best existing specimen of an Archeopteryx.
• Jewish Museum of Berlin: it has a permanent exhibition of two thousand years of German-Jewish history.
• Stasi Museum, in Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi).
• Story of Berlin Museum: combines new audiovisual technologies with the history of the city. In it you can also visit one of the 23 underground bunkers that remain in the city.
• Filmmuseum, museum of German

Main events

• Berlin International Film Festival: Every year in February, the Berlinale festival evokes the magic of the film world between the towers and glass palaces of Potsdamer Platz. An international jury chooses the winners of the Golden and SilverBears.
• Love Parade: Every summer the biggest parade of techno music lovers that goes through the Tiergarten park in the city center. More than a million people come together every year in the midst of floats and colorful clothing. This festival was held again in 2006 after being suspended for two seasons.
• Berlin International Literature Festival: Draws large audiences annually to ecumenical trends in contemporary prose and lyric. In the first fortnight of September, a hundred authors meet in the German capital who not only share their texts with the audience, but also express their opinions and vicissitudes on current political or cultural issues of the countries of origin in which symposia organized for this purpose.

Transportation

The city has three airports:

• Schönefeld (airport that began operating in the 1930s and after the division of Germany had remained in the territory of the GDR), Tegel and Tempelhof (closed on October 31, 2008), although between all of them they register less traffic than the Frankfurt am Main and Munich
• The Berlin Metro (in German Berliner U-Bahn) is one of the most functional and practical in Europe. Together with the suburban train (S-Bahn) it forms a dense urban transport network that facilitates travel around the German capital. The metro is managed by the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) to which buses and trams also belong, the S-Bahn by the Deutsche Bahn (DB).
• Berlin Central Station (in German Hauptbahnhof) is a 900 million euro project started in 1992, which began to be built in 1995 and was inaugurated in May 2006, just in time for the celebration of the Soccer World Cup in Germany.

Twinned cities

Berlin has established a brotherhood since 1967 with nineteen cities:

• Los Angeles, United States (1967)
• Paris, France (1987)
• Madrid, Spain (1988)
• Istanbul, Turkey (1989)
• Moscow, Russia (1990)
• Warsaw, Poland (1991)
• Budapest, Hungary (1991)
• Brussels, Belgium (1992)
• Jakarta, Indonesia (1993)
• Tashkent, Uzbekistan (1993)
• Mexico City, Mexico (1993)
• Beijing, China (1994)
• Tokyo, Japan (1994)
• Buenos Aires, Argentina (1994)
• Prague, Czech Republic (1995)
• Windhoek, Namibia (2000)
• London, UK (2000)
• Seville, Spain (2008)