ArticleTitle stringclasses 109 values | Question stringlengths 4 586 ⌀ | Answer stringlengths 1 926 ⌀ | ArticleFile stringclasses 57 values | EvidencesAvailable stringclasses 120 values |
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Arabic_language | Does Modern Standard Arabic continue to evolve like other languages? | yes | data/set5/a3 | Arabic_language
Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible. "Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the LisÄn al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (ÙصØÙ fuṣḥÄ) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve. Kaye, 1991. Many modern terms have entered into common usage, in some cases taken from other languages (for example, ÙÙÙÙ
film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, Ùات٠hÄtif "telephone" For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Gujarati, Hindustani , Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Marathi, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Sindhi, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitÄb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro","llibre" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" Gregersen, 1977, p. 237.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.
Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the lingua franca of the afterlife.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. A History of the Arabic Language
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Easternâespecially Egyptianâfilms and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fÄ«h, and North African kayÉn all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakÅ«n, fÄ«hi, kÄ'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree. Kaplan and Baldauf, 2007, p. 48. See also Bateson, 2003, pp. 96-103 and Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of North African Arabic by Ernest N. McCarus.
Other varieties include:
* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese MED Magazine
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of , , and . There are also two diphthongs: and .
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, Ä, u or Å« (after i or Ä« it is unvelarized: bismi l-lÄh ).
# In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
# and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. e.g. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written â¹Dâº; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)âand closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC), the latter two, which are (CVVC) and (CVCC) occuring only at the end of the sentence. Every syllable begins with a consonant. Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the director," which becomes .
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length . The basic rules are:
* Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
* Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
* If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
* In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)
For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bu "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-RA-sa "school", qaa-HI-ra "Cairo". In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses", MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks", ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and :
* Ù retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
* ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in much of Gulf Arabic.
* Ù usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana Arabic, is pronounced .
Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus
Compared with other Semitic language systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and morphology." Hetzron, 1997, p. 229. Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwÄ«n).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (termed perfective and imperfective, or past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods in the imperfective (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately characterized as tense, aspect or a combination of the two. The perfective aspect is constructed using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a single morpheme, while the imperfective aspect is constructed using a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/ for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/ for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-Ä«/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition, Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate write, indicate read, indicate eat, etc. Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root , do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as "form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are incidental.
An example of a text written in Arabic calligraphy.
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabetâin particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting. Hanna, 1972, p. 2
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. There are multiple conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An example of such a system is the Bahá'à orthography. A third type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII communication device).
An example is the system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ayn. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab countries. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes teaching Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education.
* Arabic alphabet
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic diglossia
* Arabic influence on Spanish
* Arabic literature
* Arabist
* Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
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* List of Arabic loanwords in English
* List of French words of Arabic origin
* List of Islamic terms in Arabic
* List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
* Literary Arabic
* Macrolanguage
* Varieties of Arabic
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* Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
* Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English/Latin Characters
* eiktub - realtime Arabic transliteration
* Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
* Learn Classical Arabic Online
* Arabic - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
* Yalla-2009, a free software to understand how Arabic language is built
* Arabic grammar online
* Arabic language pronunciation applet with audio samples
* The Expansion of the Arabic language video on YouTube
* Free Arabic Course Online
* Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* The Arabic Language & the Qur'an
* Software utility for converting between Arabic language
* Software for Arabic language
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Arabic_language | Is Hassaniya Arabic spoken in Mauritania? | yes | data/set5/a3 | Arabic_language
Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible. "Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the LisÄn al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (ÙصØÙ fuṣḥÄ) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve. Kaye, 1991. Many modern terms have entered into common usage, in some cases taken from other languages (for example, ÙÙÙÙ
film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, Ùات٠hÄtif "telephone" For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Gujarati, Hindustani , Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Marathi, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Sindhi, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitÄb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro","llibre" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" Gregersen, 1977, p. 237.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.
Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the lingua franca of the afterlife.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. A History of the Arabic Language
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Easternâespecially Egyptianâfilms and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fÄ«h, and North African kayÉn all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakÅ«n, fÄ«hi, kÄ'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree. Kaplan and Baldauf, 2007, p. 48. See also Bateson, 2003, pp. 96-103 and Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of North African Arabic by Ernest N. McCarus.
Other varieties include:
* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese MED Magazine
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of , , and . There are also two diphthongs: and .
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, Ä, u or Å« (after i or Ä« it is unvelarized: bismi l-lÄh ).
# In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
# and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. e.g. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written â¹Dâº; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)âand closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC), the latter two, which are (CVVC) and (CVCC) occuring only at the end of the sentence. Every syllable begins with a consonant. Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the director," which becomes .
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length . The basic rules are:
* Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
* Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
* If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
* In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)
For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bu "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-RA-sa "school", qaa-HI-ra "Cairo". In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses", MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks", ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and :
* Ù retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
* ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in much of Gulf Arabic.
* Ù usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana Arabic, is pronounced .
Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus
Compared with other Semitic language systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and morphology." Hetzron, 1997, p. 229. Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwÄ«n).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (termed perfective and imperfective, or past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods in the imperfective (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately characterized as tense, aspect or a combination of the two. The perfective aspect is constructed using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a single morpheme, while the imperfective aspect is constructed using a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/ for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/ for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-Ä«/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition, Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate write, indicate read, indicate eat, etc. Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root , do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as "form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are incidental.
An example of a text written in Arabic calligraphy.
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabetâin particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting. Hanna, 1972, p. 2
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. There are multiple conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An example of such a system is the Bahá'à orthography. A third type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII communication device).
An example is the system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ayn. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab countries. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes teaching Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education.
* Arabic alphabet
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic diglossia
* Arabic influence on Spanish
* Arabic literature
* Arabist
* Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
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* List of Arabic loanwords in English
* List of French words of Arabic origin
* List of Islamic terms in Arabic
* List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
* Literary Arabic
* Macrolanguage
* Varieties of Arabic
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* Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
* Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English/Latin Characters
* eiktub - realtime Arabic transliteration
* Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
* Learn Classical Arabic Online
* Arabic - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
* Yalla-2009, a free software to understand how Arabic language is built
* Arabic grammar online
* Arabic language pronunciation applet with audio samples
* The Expansion of the Arabic language video on YouTube
* Free Arabic Course Online
* Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* The Arabic Language & the Qur'an
* Software utility for converting between Arabic language
* Software for Arabic language
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Arabic_language | Is Hassaniya Arabic spoken in Mauritania? | Yes | data/set5/a3 | Arabic_language
Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible. "Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the LisÄn al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (ÙصØÙ fuṣḥÄ) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve. Kaye, 1991. Many modern terms have entered into common usage, in some cases taken from other languages (for example, ÙÙÙÙ
film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, Ùات٠hÄtif "telephone" For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Gujarati, Hindustani , Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Marathi, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Sindhi, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitÄb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro","llibre" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" Gregersen, 1977, p. 237.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.
Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the lingua franca of the afterlife.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. A History of the Arabic Language
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Easternâespecially Egyptianâfilms and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fÄ«h, and North African kayÉn all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakÅ«n, fÄ«hi, kÄ'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree. Kaplan and Baldauf, 2007, p. 48. See also Bateson, 2003, pp. 96-103 and Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of North African Arabic by Ernest N. McCarus.
Other varieties include:
* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese MED Magazine
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of , , and . There are also two diphthongs: and .
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, Ä, u or Å« (after i or Ä« it is unvelarized: bismi l-lÄh ).
# In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
# and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. e.g. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written â¹Dâº; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)âand closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC), the latter two, which are (CVVC) and (CVCC) occuring only at the end of the sentence. Every syllable begins with a consonant. Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the director," which becomes .
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length . The basic rules are:
* Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
* Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
* If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
* In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)
For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bu "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-RA-sa "school", qaa-HI-ra "Cairo". In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses", MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks", ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and :
* Ù retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
* ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in much of Gulf Arabic.
* Ù usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana Arabic, is pronounced .
Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus
Compared with other Semitic language systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and morphology." Hetzron, 1997, p. 229. Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwÄ«n).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (termed perfective and imperfective, or past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods in the imperfective (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately characterized as tense, aspect or a combination of the two. The perfective aspect is constructed using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a single morpheme, while the imperfective aspect is constructed using a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/ for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/ for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-Ä«/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition, Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate write, indicate read, indicate eat, etc. Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root , do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as "form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are incidental.
An example of a text written in Arabic calligraphy.
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabetâin particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting. Hanna, 1972, p. 2
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. There are multiple conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An example of such a system is the Bahá'à orthography. A third type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII communication device).
An example is the system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ayn. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab countries. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes teaching Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education.
* Arabic alphabet
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic diglossia
* Arabic influence on Spanish
* Arabic literature
* Arabist
* Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
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* List of Arabic loanwords in English
* List of French words of Arabic origin
* List of Islamic terms in Arabic
* List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
* Literary Arabic
* Macrolanguage
* Varieties of Arabic
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* Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
* Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English/Latin Characters
* eiktub - realtime Arabic transliteration
* Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
* Learn Classical Arabic Online
* Arabic - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
* Yalla-2009, a free software to understand how Arabic language is built
* Arabic grammar online
* Arabic language pronunciation applet with audio samples
* The Expansion of the Arabic language video on YouTube
* Free Arabic Course Online
* Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* The Arabic Language & the Qur'an
* Software utility for converting between Arabic language
* Software for Arabic language
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Arabic_language | What is the only variety of modern Arabic that has acquired official language status? | maltese | data/set5/a3 | Arabic_language
Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible. "Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the LisÄn al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (ÙصØÙ fuṣḥÄ) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve. Kaye, 1991. Many modern terms have entered into common usage, in some cases taken from other languages (for example, ÙÙÙÙ
film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, Ùات٠hÄtif "telephone" For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Gujarati, Hindustani , Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Marathi, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Sindhi, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitÄb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro","llibre" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" Gregersen, 1977, p. 237.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.
Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the lingua franca of the afterlife.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. A History of the Arabic Language
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Easternâespecially Egyptianâfilms and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fÄ«h, and North African kayÉn all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakÅ«n, fÄ«hi, kÄ'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree. Kaplan and Baldauf, 2007, p. 48. See also Bateson, 2003, pp. 96-103 and Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of North African Arabic by Ernest N. McCarus.
Other varieties include:
* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese MED Magazine
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of , , and . There are also two diphthongs: and .
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, Ä, u or Å« (after i or Ä« it is unvelarized: bismi l-lÄh ).
# In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
# and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. e.g. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written â¹Dâº; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)âand closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC), the latter two, which are (CVVC) and (CVCC) occuring only at the end of the sentence. Every syllable begins with a consonant. Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the director," which becomes .
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length . The basic rules are:
* Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
* Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
* If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
* In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)
For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bu "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-RA-sa "school", qaa-HI-ra "Cairo". In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses", MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks", ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and :
* Ù retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
* ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in much of Gulf Arabic.
* Ù usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana Arabic, is pronounced .
Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus
Compared with other Semitic language systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and morphology." Hetzron, 1997, p. 229. Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwÄ«n).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (termed perfective and imperfective, or past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods in the imperfective (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately characterized as tense, aspect or a combination of the two. The perfective aspect is constructed using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a single morpheme, while the imperfective aspect is constructed using a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/ for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/ for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-Ä«/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition, Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate write, indicate read, indicate eat, etc. Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root , do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as "form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are incidental.
An example of a text written in Arabic calligraphy.
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabetâin particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting. Hanna, 1972, p. 2
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. There are multiple conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An example of such a system is the Bahá'à orthography. A third type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII communication device).
An example is the system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ayn. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab countries. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes teaching Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education.
* Arabic alphabet
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic diglossia
* Arabic influence on Spanish
* Arabic literature
* Arabist
* Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
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* List of Arabic loanwords in English
* List of French words of Arabic origin
* List of Islamic terms in Arabic
* List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
* Literary Arabic
* Macrolanguage
* Varieties of Arabic
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* Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
* Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English/Latin Characters
* eiktub - realtime Arabic transliteration
* Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
* Learn Classical Arabic Online
* Arabic - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
* Yalla-2009, a free software to understand how Arabic language is built
* Arabic grammar online
* Arabic language pronunciation applet with audio samples
* The Expansion of the Arabic language video on YouTube
* Free Arabic Course Online
* Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* The Arabic Language & the Qur'an
* Software utility for converting between Arabic language
* Software for Arabic language
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Arabic_language | What is the only variety of modern Arabic that has acquired official language status? | Maltese | data/set5/a3 | Arabic_language
Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible. "Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the LisÄn al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (ÙصØÙ fuṣḥÄ) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve. Kaye, 1991. Many modern terms have entered into common usage, in some cases taken from other languages (for example, ÙÙÙÙ
film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, Ùات٠hÄtif "telephone" For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Gujarati, Hindustani , Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Marathi, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Sindhi, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitÄb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro","llibre" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" Gregersen, 1977, p. 237.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.
Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the lingua franca of the afterlife.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. A History of the Arabic Language
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Easternâespecially Egyptianâfilms and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fÄ«h, and North African kayÉn all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakÅ«n, fÄ«hi, kÄ'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree. Kaplan and Baldauf, 2007, p. 48. See also Bateson, 2003, pp. 96-103 and Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of North African Arabic by Ernest N. McCarus.
Other varieties include:
* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese MED Magazine
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of , , and . There are also two diphthongs: and .
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, Ä, u or Å« (after i or Ä« it is unvelarized: bismi l-lÄh ).
# In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
# and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. e.g. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written â¹Dâº; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)âand closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC), the latter two, which are (CVVC) and (CVCC) occuring only at the end of the sentence. Every syllable begins with a consonant. Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the director," which becomes .
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length . The basic rules are:
* Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
* Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
* If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
* In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)
For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bu "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-RA-sa "school", qaa-HI-ra "Cairo". In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses", MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks", ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and :
* Ù retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
* ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in much of Gulf Arabic.
* Ù usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana Arabic, is pronounced .
Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus
Compared with other Semitic language systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and morphology." Hetzron, 1997, p. 229. Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwÄ«n).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (termed perfective and imperfective, or past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods in the imperfective (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately characterized as tense, aspect or a combination of the two. The perfective aspect is constructed using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a single morpheme, while the imperfective aspect is constructed using a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/ for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/ for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-Ä«/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition, Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate write, indicate read, indicate eat, etc. Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root , do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as "form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are incidental.
An example of a text written in Arabic calligraphy.
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabetâin particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting. Hanna, 1972, p. 2
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. There are multiple conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An example of such a system is the Bahá'à orthography. A third type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII communication device).
An example is the system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ayn. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab countries. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes teaching Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education.
* Arabic alphabet
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic diglossia
* Arabic influence on Spanish
* Arabic literature
* Arabist
* Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
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* List of Arabic loanwords in English
* List of French words of Arabic origin
* List of Islamic terms in Arabic
* List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
* Literary Arabic
* Macrolanguage
* Varieties of Arabic
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* Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
* Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English/Latin Characters
* eiktub - realtime Arabic transliteration
* Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
* Learn Classical Arabic Online
* Arabic - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
* Yalla-2009, a free software to understand how Arabic language is built
* Arabic grammar online
* Arabic language pronunciation applet with audio samples
* The Expansion of the Arabic language video on YouTube
* Free Arabic Course Online
* Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* The Arabic Language & the Qur'an
* Software utility for converting between Arabic language
* Software for Arabic language
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Arabic_language | Egyptian Arabic is spoken by how many in Egypt? | 76 million | data/set5/a3 | Arabic_language
Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible. "Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the LisÄn al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (ÙصØÙ fuṣḥÄ) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve. Kaye, 1991. Many modern terms have entered into common usage, in some cases taken from other languages (for example, ÙÙÙÙ
film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, Ùات٠hÄtif "telephone" For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Gujarati, Hindustani , Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Marathi, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Sindhi, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitÄb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro","llibre" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" Gregersen, 1977, p. 237.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.
Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the lingua franca of the afterlife.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. A History of the Arabic Language
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Easternâespecially Egyptianâfilms and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fÄ«h, and North African kayÉn all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakÅ«n, fÄ«hi, kÄ'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree. Kaplan and Baldauf, 2007, p. 48. See also Bateson, 2003, pp. 96-103 and Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of North African Arabic by Ernest N. McCarus.
Other varieties include:
* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese MED Magazine
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of , , and . There are also two diphthongs: and .
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, Ä, u or Å« (after i or Ä« it is unvelarized: bismi l-lÄh ).
# In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
# and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. e.g. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written â¹Dâº; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)âand closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC), the latter two, which are (CVVC) and (CVCC) occuring only at the end of the sentence. Every syllable begins with a consonant. Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the director," which becomes .
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length . The basic rules are:
* Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
* Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
* If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
* In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)
For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bu "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-RA-sa "school", qaa-HI-ra "Cairo". In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses", MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks", ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and :
* Ù retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
* ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in much of Gulf Arabic.
* Ù usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana Arabic, is pronounced .
Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus
Compared with other Semitic language systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and morphology." Hetzron, 1997, p. 229. Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwÄ«n).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (termed perfective and imperfective, or past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods in the imperfective (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately characterized as tense, aspect or a combination of the two. The perfective aspect is constructed using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a single morpheme, while the imperfective aspect is constructed using a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/ for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/ for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-Ä«/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition, Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate write, indicate read, indicate eat, etc. Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root , do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as "form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are incidental.
An example of a text written in Arabic calligraphy.
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabetâin particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting. Hanna, 1972, p. 2
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. There are multiple conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An example of such a system is the Bahá'à orthography. A third type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII communication device).
An example is the system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ayn. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab countries. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes teaching Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education.
* Arabic alphabet
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic diglossia
* Arabic influence on Spanish
* Arabic literature
* Arabist
* Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
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* List of Arabic loanwords in English
* List of French words of Arabic origin
* List of Islamic terms in Arabic
* List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
* Literary Arabic
* Macrolanguage
* Varieties of Arabic
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* Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
* Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English/Latin Characters
* eiktub - realtime Arabic transliteration
* Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
* Learn Classical Arabic Online
* Arabic - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
* Yalla-2009, a free software to understand how Arabic language is built
* Arabic grammar online
* Arabic language pronunciation applet with audio samples
* The Expansion of the Arabic language video on YouTube
* Free Arabic Course Online
* Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* The Arabic Language & the Qur'an
* Software utility for converting between Arabic language
* Software for Arabic language
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Arabic_language | Egyptian Arabic is spoken by how many in Egypt? | 76 million | data/set5/a3 | Arabic_language
Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible. "Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the LisÄn al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (ÙصØÙ fuṣḥÄ) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve. Kaye, 1991. Many modern terms have entered into common usage, in some cases taken from other languages (for example, ÙÙÙÙ
film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, Ùات٠hÄtif "telephone" For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Gujarati, Hindustani , Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Marathi, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Sindhi, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitÄb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro","llibre" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" Gregersen, 1977, p. 237.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.
Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the lingua franca of the afterlife.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. A History of the Arabic Language
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Easternâespecially Egyptianâfilms and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fÄ«h, and North African kayÉn all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakÅ«n, fÄ«hi, kÄ'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree. Kaplan and Baldauf, 2007, p. 48. See also Bateson, 2003, pp. 96-103 and Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of North African Arabic by Ernest N. McCarus.
Other varieties include:
* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese MED Magazine
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of , , and . There are also two diphthongs: and .
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, Ä, u or Å« (after i or Ä« it is unvelarized: bismi l-lÄh ).
# In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
# and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. e.g. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written â¹Dâº; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)âand closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC), the latter two, which are (CVVC) and (CVCC) occuring only at the end of the sentence. Every syllable begins with a consonant. Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the director," which becomes .
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length . The basic rules are:
* Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
* Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
* If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
* In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)
For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bu "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-RA-sa "school", qaa-HI-ra "Cairo". In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses", MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks", ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and :
* Ù retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
* ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in much of Gulf Arabic.
* Ù usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana Arabic, is pronounced .
Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus
Compared with other Semitic language systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and morphology." Hetzron, 1997, p. 229. Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwÄ«n).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (termed perfective and imperfective, or past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods in the imperfective (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately characterized as tense, aspect or a combination of the two. The perfective aspect is constructed using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a single morpheme, while the imperfective aspect is constructed using a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/ for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/ for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-Ä«/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition, Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate write, indicate read, indicate eat, etc. Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root , do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as "form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are incidental.
An example of a text written in Arabic calligraphy.
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabetâin particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting. Hanna, 1972, p. 2
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. There are multiple conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An example of such a system is the Bahá'à orthography. A third type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII communication device).
An example is the system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ayn. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab countries. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes teaching Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education.
* Arabic alphabet
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic diglossia
* Arabic influence on Spanish
* Arabic literature
* Arabist
* Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
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* List of Arabic loanwords in English
* List of French words of Arabic origin
* List of Islamic terms in Arabic
* List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
* Literary Arabic
* Macrolanguage
* Varieties of Arabic
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* Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
* Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English/Latin Characters
* eiktub - realtime Arabic transliteration
* Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
* Learn Classical Arabic Online
* Arabic - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
* Yalla-2009, a free software to understand how Arabic language is built
* Arabic grammar online
* Arabic language pronunciation applet with audio samples
* The Expansion of the Arabic language video on YouTube
* Free Arabic Course Online
* Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* The Arabic Language & the Qur'an
* Software utility for converting between Arabic language
* Software for Arabic language
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Arabic_language | Where are the Western Arabic numerals used? | North Africa | data/set5/a3 | Arabic_language
Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible. "Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the LisÄn al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (ÙصØÙ fuṣḥÄ) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve. Kaye, 1991. Many modern terms have entered into common usage, in some cases taken from other languages (for example, ÙÙÙÙ
film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, Ùات٠hÄtif "telephone" For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Gujarati, Hindustani , Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Marathi, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Sindhi, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitÄb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro","llibre" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" Gregersen, 1977, p. 237.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.
Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the lingua franca of the afterlife.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. A History of the Arabic Language
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Easternâespecially Egyptianâfilms and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fÄ«h, and North African kayÉn all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakÅ«n, fÄ«hi, kÄ'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree. Kaplan and Baldauf, 2007, p. 48. See also Bateson, 2003, pp. 96-103 and Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of North African Arabic by Ernest N. McCarus.
Other varieties include:
* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese MED Magazine
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of , , and . There are also two diphthongs: and .
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, Ä, u or Å« (after i or Ä« it is unvelarized: bismi l-lÄh ).
# In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
# and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. e.g. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written â¹Dâº; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)âand closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC), the latter two, which are (CVVC) and (CVCC) occuring only at the end of the sentence. Every syllable begins with a consonant. Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the director," which becomes .
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length . The basic rules are:
* Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
* Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
* If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
* In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)
For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bu "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-RA-sa "school", qaa-HI-ra "Cairo". In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses", MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks", ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and :
* Ù retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
* ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in much of Gulf Arabic.
* Ù usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana Arabic, is pronounced .
Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus
Compared with other Semitic language systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and morphology." Hetzron, 1997, p. 229. Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwÄ«n).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (termed perfective and imperfective, or past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods in the imperfective (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately characterized as tense, aspect or a combination of the two. The perfective aspect is constructed using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a single morpheme, while the imperfective aspect is constructed using a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/ for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/ for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-Ä«/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition, Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate write, indicate read, indicate eat, etc. Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root , do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as "form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are incidental.
An example of a text written in Arabic calligraphy.
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabetâin particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting. Hanna, 1972, p. 2
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. There are multiple conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An example of such a system is the Bahá'à orthography. A third type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII communication device).
An example is the system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ayn. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab countries. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes teaching Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education.
* Arabic alphabet
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic diglossia
* Arabic influence on Spanish
* Arabic literature
* Arabist
* Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
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* List of Arabic loanwords in English
* List of French words of Arabic origin
* List of Islamic terms in Arabic
* List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
* Literary Arabic
* Macrolanguage
* Varieties of Arabic
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* Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
* Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English/Latin Characters
* eiktub - realtime Arabic transliteration
* Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
* Learn Classical Arabic Online
* Arabic - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
* Yalla-2009, a free software to understand how Arabic language is built
* Arabic grammar online
* Arabic language pronunciation applet with audio samples
* The Expansion of the Arabic language video on YouTube
* Free Arabic Course Online
* Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* The Arabic Language & the Qur'an
* Software utility for converting between Arabic language
* Software for Arabic language
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Arabic_language | Where are the Western Arabic numerals used? | present-day North Africa | data/set5/a3 | Arabic_language
Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible. "Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the LisÄn al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (ÙصØÙ fuṣḥÄ) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve. Kaye, 1991. Many modern terms have entered into common usage, in some cases taken from other languages (for example, ÙÙÙÙ
film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, Ùات٠hÄtif "telephone" For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Gujarati, Hindustani , Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Marathi, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Sindhi, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitÄb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro","llibre" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" Gregersen, 1977, p. 237.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.
Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the lingua franca of the afterlife.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. A History of the Arabic Language
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Easternâespecially Egyptianâfilms and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fÄ«h, and North African kayÉn all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakÅ«n, fÄ«hi, kÄ'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree. Kaplan and Baldauf, 2007, p. 48. See also Bateson, 2003, pp. 96-103 and Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of North African Arabic by Ernest N. McCarus.
Other varieties include:
* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese MED Magazine
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of , , and . There are also two diphthongs: and .
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, Ä, u or Å« (after i or Ä« it is unvelarized: bismi l-lÄh ).
# In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
# and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. e.g. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written â¹Dâº; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)âand closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC), the latter two, which are (CVVC) and (CVCC) occuring only at the end of the sentence. Every syllable begins with a consonant. Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the director," which becomes .
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length . The basic rules are:
* Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
* Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
* If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
* In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)
For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bu "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-RA-sa "school", qaa-HI-ra "Cairo". In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses", MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks", ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and :
* Ù retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
* ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in much of Gulf Arabic.
* Ù usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana Arabic, is pronounced .
Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus
Compared with other Semitic language systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and morphology." Hetzron, 1997, p. 229. Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwÄ«n).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (termed perfective and imperfective, or past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods in the imperfective (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately characterized as tense, aspect or a combination of the two. The perfective aspect is constructed using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a single morpheme, while the imperfective aspect is constructed using a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/ for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/ for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-Ä«/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition, Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate write, indicate read, indicate eat, etc. Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root , do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as "form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are incidental.
An example of a text written in Arabic calligraphy.
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabetâin particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting. Hanna, 1972, p. 2
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. There are multiple conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An example of such a system is the Bahá'à orthography. A third type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII communication device).
An example is the system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ayn. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab countries. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes teaching Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education.
* Arabic alphabet
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic diglossia
* Arabic influence on Spanish
* Arabic literature
* Arabist
* Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
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* List of Arabic loanwords in English
* List of French words of Arabic origin
* List of Islamic terms in Arabic
* List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
* Literary Arabic
* Macrolanguage
* Varieties of Arabic
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* Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
* Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English/Latin Characters
* eiktub - realtime Arabic transliteration
* Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
* Learn Classical Arabic Online
* Arabic - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
* Yalla-2009, a free software to understand how Arabic language is built
* Arabic grammar online
* Arabic language pronunciation applet with audio samples
* The Expansion of the Arabic language video on YouTube
* Free Arabic Course Online
* Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* The Arabic Language & the Qur'an
* Software utility for converting between Arabic language
* Software for Arabic language
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Arabic_language | The most active Academies of Arabic Language are found where? | damascus and cairo | data/set5/a3 | Arabic_language
Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible. "Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the LisÄn al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (ÙصØÙ fuṣḥÄ) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve. Kaye, 1991. Many modern terms have entered into common usage, in some cases taken from other languages (for example, ÙÙÙÙ
film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, Ùات٠hÄtif "telephone" For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Gujarati, Hindustani , Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Marathi, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Sindhi, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitÄb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro","llibre" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" Gregersen, 1977, p. 237.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.
Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the lingua franca of the afterlife.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. A History of the Arabic Language
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Easternâespecially Egyptianâfilms and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fÄ«h, and North African kayÉn all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakÅ«n, fÄ«hi, kÄ'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree. Kaplan and Baldauf, 2007, p. 48. See also Bateson, 2003, pp. 96-103 and Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of North African Arabic by Ernest N. McCarus.
Other varieties include:
* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese MED Magazine
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of , , and . There are also two diphthongs: and .
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, Ä, u or Å« (after i or Ä« it is unvelarized: bismi l-lÄh ).
# In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
# and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. e.g. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written â¹Dâº; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)âand closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC), the latter two, which are (CVVC) and (CVCC) occuring only at the end of the sentence. Every syllable begins with a consonant. Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the director," which becomes .
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length . The basic rules are:
* Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
* Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
* If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
* In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)
For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bu "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-RA-sa "school", qaa-HI-ra "Cairo". In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses", MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks", ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and :
* Ù retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
* ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in much of Gulf Arabic.
* Ù usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana Arabic, is pronounced .
Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus
Compared with other Semitic language systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and morphology." Hetzron, 1997, p. 229. Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwÄ«n).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (termed perfective and imperfective, or past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods in the imperfective (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately characterized as tense, aspect or a combination of the two. The perfective aspect is constructed using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a single morpheme, while the imperfective aspect is constructed using a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/ for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/ for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-Ä«/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition, Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate write, indicate read, indicate eat, etc. Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root , do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as "form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are incidental.
An example of a text written in Arabic calligraphy.
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabetâin particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting. Hanna, 1972, p. 2
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. There are multiple conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An example of such a system is the Bahá'à orthography. A third type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII communication device).
An example is the system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ayn. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab countries. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes teaching Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education.
* Arabic alphabet
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic diglossia
* Arabic influence on Spanish
* Arabic literature
* Arabist
* Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
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* List of Arabic loanwords in English
* List of French words of Arabic origin
* List of Islamic terms in Arabic
* List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
* Literary Arabic
* Macrolanguage
* Varieties of Arabic
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* Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
* Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English/Latin Characters
* eiktub - realtime Arabic transliteration
* Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
* Learn Classical Arabic Online
* Arabic - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
* Yalla-2009, a free software to understand how Arabic language is built
* Arabic grammar online
* Arabic language pronunciation applet with audio samples
* The Expansion of the Arabic language video on YouTube
* Free Arabic Course Online
* Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* The Arabic Language & the Qur'an
* Software utility for converting between Arabic language
* Software for Arabic language
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Arabic_language | Hassan Massoudy is a master of what genre? | Hassan Massoudy | data/set5/a3 | Arabic_language
Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible. "Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the LisÄn al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (ÙصØÙ fuṣḥÄ) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve. Kaye, 1991. Many modern terms have entered into common usage, in some cases taken from other languages (for example, ÙÙÙÙ
film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, Ùات٠hÄtif "telephone" For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Gujarati, Hindustani , Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Marathi, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Sindhi, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitÄb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro","llibre" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" Gregersen, 1977, p. 237.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.
Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the lingua franca of the afterlife.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. A History of the Arabic Language
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Easternâespecially Egyptianâfilms and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fÄ«h, and North African kayÉn all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakÅ«n, fÄ«hi, kÄ'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree. Kaplan and Baldauf, 2007, p. 48. See also Bateson, 2003, pp. 96-103 and Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of North African Arabic by Ernest N. McCarus.
Other varieties include:
* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese MED Magazine
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of , , and . There are also two diphthongs: and .
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, Ä, u or Å« (after i or Ä« it is unvelarized: bismi l-lÄh ).
# In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
# and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. e.g. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written â¹Dâº; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)âand closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC), the latter two, which are (CVVC) and (CVCC) occuring only at the end of the sentence. Every syllable begins with a consonant. Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the director," which becomes .
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length . The basic rules are:
* Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
* Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
* If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
* In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)
For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bu "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-RA-sa "school", qaa-HI-ra "Cairo". In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses", MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks", ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and :
* Ù retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
* ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in much of Gulf Arabic.
* Ù usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana Arabic, is pronounced .
Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus
Compared with other Semitic language systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and morphology." Hetzron, 1997, p. 229. Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwÄ«n).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (termed perfective and imperfective, or past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods in the imperfective (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately characterized as tense, aspect or a combination of the two. The perfective aspect is constructed using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a single morpheme, while the imperfective aspect is constructed using a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/ for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/ for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-Ä«/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition, Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate write, indicate read, indicate eat, etc. Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root , do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as "form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are incidental.
An example of a text written in Arabic calligraphy.
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabetâin particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting. Hanna, 1972, p. 2
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. There are multiple conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An example of such a system is the Bahá'à orthography. A third type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII communication device).
An example is the system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ayn. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab countries. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes teaching Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education.
* Arabic alphabet
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic diglossia
* Arabic influence on Spanish
* Arabic literature
* Arabist
* Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
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* List of Arabic loanwords in English
* List of French words of Arabic origin
* List of Islamic terms in Arabic
* List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
* Literary Arabic
* Macrolanguage
* Varieties of Arabic
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* Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
* Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English/Latin Characters
* eiktub - realtime Arabic transliteration
* Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
* Learn Classical Arabic Online
* Arabic - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
* Yalla-2009, a free software to understand how Arabic language is built
* Arabic grammar online
* Arabic language pronunciation applet with audio samples
* The Expansion of the Arabic language video on YouTube
* Free Arabic Course Online
* Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* The Arabic Language & the Qur'an
* Software utility for converting between Arabic language
* Software for Arabic language
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Arabic_language | Hassan Massoudy is a master of what genre? | Arabic calligraphy | data/set5/a3 | Arabic_language
Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible. "Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the LisÄn al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (ÙصØÙ fuṣḥÄ) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve. Kaye, 1991. Many modern terms have entered into common usage, in some cases taken from other languages (for example, ÙÙÙÙ
film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, Ùات٠hÄtif "telephone" For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Gujarati, Hindustani , Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Marathi, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Sindhi, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitÄb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro","llibre" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese Maltese language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" Gregersen, 1977, p. 237.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.
Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the lingua franca of the afterlife.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. A History of the Arabic Language
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Easternâespecially Egyptianâfilms and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fÄ«h, and North African kayÉn all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakÅ«n, fÄ«hi, kÄ'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree. Kaplan and Baldauf, 2007, p. 48. See also Bateson, 2003, pp. 96-103 and Berber: Linguistic "Substratum" of North African Arabic by Ernest N. McCarus.
Other varieties include:
* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese MED Magazine
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of , , and . There are also two diphthongs: and .
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, Ä, u or Å« (after i or Ä« it is unvelarized: bismi l-lÄh ).
# In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
# and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. e.g. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written â¹Dâº; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)âand closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC), the latter two, which are (CVVC) and (CVCC) occuring only at the end of the sentence. Every syllable begins with a consonant. Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the director," which becomes .
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length . The basic rules are:
* Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
* Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
* If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
* In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)
For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bu "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-RA-sa "school", qaa-HI-ra "Cairo". In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses", MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks", ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and :
* Ù retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
* ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in much of Gulf Arabic.
* Ù usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana Arabic, is pronounced .
Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus
Compared with other Semitic language systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and morphology." Hetzron, 1997, p. 229. Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long Ä) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwÄ«n).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (termed perfective and imperfective, or past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods in the imperfective (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately characterized as tense, aspect or a combination of the two. The perfective aspect is constructed using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a single morpheme, while the imperfective aspect is constructed using a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/ for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/ for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-Ä«/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition, Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate write, indicate read, indicate eat, etc. Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root , do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as "form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are incidental.
An example of a text written in Arabic calligraphy.
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabetâin particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting. Hanna, 1972, p. 2
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. There are multiple conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An example of such a system is the Bahá'à orthography. A third type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII communication device).
An example is the system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ayn. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab countries. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes teaching Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education.
* Arabic alphabet
* Arabic calligraphy
* Arabic diglossia
* Arabic influence on Spanish
* Arabic literature
* Arabist
* Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
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* List of Arabic loanwords in English
* List of French words of Arabic origin
* List of Islamic terms in Arabic
* List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
* Literary Arabic
* Macrolanguage
* Varieties of Arabic
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* Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
* Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English/Latin Characters
* eiktub - realtime Arabic transliteration
* Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
* Learn Classical Arabic Online
* Arabic - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
* Yalla-2009, a free software to understand how Arabic language is built
* Arabic grammar online
* Arabic language pronunciation applet with audio samples
* The Expansion of the Arabic language video on YouTube
* Free Arabic Course Online
* Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* The Arabic Language & the Qur'an
* Software utility for converting between Arabic language
* Software for Arabic language
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Berlin | Is Berlin the capital city of Germany? | Berlin is the capital city of Germany. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Is Berlin the capital city of Germany? | yes | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Is Berlin the largest city in Germany? | Berlin is Germany's largest city. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Is Berlin the largest city in Germany? | yes | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Is Schloss Charlottenburg the largest existing palace in Berlin? | Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Is Schloss Charlottenburg the largest existing palace in Berlin? | yes | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Which building is the site of the German parliament? | The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Which building is the site of the German parliament? | The Reichstag building | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Which two sports events did the Olympiastadion host? | The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Which two sports events did the Olympiastadion host? | the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Where is the Berliner Dom located? | The Berliner Dom is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Where is the Berliner Dom located? | on the Spree Island | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Which Berlin building did architect Norman Foster remodel in the 1990s? | The Reichstag building was remodeled by architect Norman Foster in the 1990s. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Which Berlin building did architect Norman Foster remodel in the 1990s? | Reichstag building | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Why is Vattenfall shifting towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources? | Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Why is Vattenfall shifting towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources? | Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | What are the names of the two zoos in Berlin? | The two zoos in Berlin are the Zoologischer Garten Berlin and the Tierpark Friedrichsfelde. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | What are the names of the two zoos in Berlin? | Zoologischer Garten Berlin and Tierpark Friedrichsfelde | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Is Berlin the headquarters of Springer? | Yes, Berlin is the headquarters of Springer. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Is Berlin the headquarters of Springer? | null | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Does the Gendarmenmarkt border the French Cathedral? | Yes, the Gendarmenmarkt borders the French Cathedral. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Does the Gendarmenmarkt border the French Cathedral? | null | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Is the Nauen plain north of Berlin? | No, the Nauen plain stretches to the west of Berlin. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Is the Nauen plain north of Berlin? | null | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Where is the bust of Queen Nefertiti? | The bust of Queen Nefertiti is in the Altes Museum. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Where is the bust of Queen Nefertiti? | null | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Where does the German President live? | The German President lives west of the center, Schloss Bellevue. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Where does the German President live? | null | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | When did Berlin give up its status as a free Hanseatic city? | In 1451 Berlin gave up its status as a free Hanseatic city. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | When did Berlin give up its status as a free Hanseatic city? | null | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Which is the busiest airport in Berlin? | Tegel International Airport is the busiest airport in Berlin. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Which is the busiest airport in Berlin? | null | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | How many occupation zones was Germany divided into after the war? | Germany was divided into four occupation zones after the war. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | How many occupation zones was Germany divided into after the war? | null | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Where was Popkomm held before moving to Berlin? | Popkomm was held in Cologne before moving to Berlin. | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Berlin | Where was Popkomm held before moving to Berlin? | null | data/set3/a1 | Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital city and one of 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations. Geographically embedded in the European Plains Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city´s territory is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701â1918), the German Empire (1871â1918), the Weimar Republic (1919â1933) and the Third Reich (1933â1945). During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961â1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.
Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. See also:
Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, congress and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include optoelectronics, traffic engineering, IT, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.
The metropolis is home to world-renowned universities, research institutes, sporting events, orchestras, museums and personalities. The urban and historical legacy has made it a popular setting for international film productions. The city is recognized for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, extensive public transportation networks and a high quality of living. See also: and
Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist. See also:
The name Berlin is of unknown origin, but may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- "swamp".
Map of Berlin in 1688
The earliest evidence of settlements in today's Berlin central areas is a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th century. The settlement of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. The former is considered to be the "founding date". From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin.
In 1435, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the âBerlin Indignationâ against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
Frederick the Great was one of Europe's enlightened monarchs.
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the âGreat Electorâ, who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately 20 percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years. (Unter den Linden in 1900)
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king (in Königsberg), Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740â1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically oriented Frederick II, a centre of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815 the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. On 1 April 1881 it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
Berlin in ruins after World War II (Potsdamer Platz, 1945).
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city at the expense of Brandenburg. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin became internationally renown as a center of cultural transformation, at the heart of the Roaring Twenties.
On 30 January 1933 (Machtergreifung), Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943â45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall in 1986, painted on the western side. People crossing the so-called "death strip" on the eastern side were at risk of being shot.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany, and eventually included all of the American, British, and French zones, but excluded those three countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British, and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government, meanwhile, established itself provisionally in Bonn.
The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population broke free across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall. Democracy and market economy changed East Germany and East Berlin.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In June 1991 the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voted to move the (West) German capital back from Bonn to Berlin. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
Natural and built environment.
Berlin is located in eastern Germany, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the border with Poland in an area with marshy terrain. The BerlinâWarsaw Urstromtal (ice age melt water flow), between the low Barnim plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, Berlin's westernmost borough, the Spree meets the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and GroÃer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the GroÃer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
View over central Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim plateau, while most of the boroughs Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow plateau. The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Urstromtal and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. The highest elevations in Berlin are the Teufelsberg and the Müggelberge. Both hills have an elevation of about . The Teufelsberg is in fact an artificial pile of rubble from the ruins of World War II.
The outskirts of Berlin are covered with woodlands and numerous lakes
Berlin has a temperate/mesothermal climate (Cfb) according to the Köppen climate classification system.
Summers are warm with average high temperatures of 22â25°C (mid 70s F) and lows of 12â14°C (mid 50s F). Winters are cold with average high temperatures of 4°C (upper 30s F) and lows of â2 to 0°C (upper 20s and low 30s F). Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings. Temperatures can be 4°C (7°F) higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. www.weather.com
Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall mainly occurs from December through March, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.
Berlin along the Spree river and the Fernsehturm by night.
The city's appearance today is predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history in the twentieth century. Each of the national governments based in Berlin â the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the reunified Germany â initiated ambitious construction programs, each with its own distinctive character. Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during World War II and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. The design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights, the Ampelmännchen, are also rather widespread in Eastern parts. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings.
"Haus des Lehrers" and Congress Hall at Alexanderplatz.
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second-tallest structure in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The Brandenburg Gate.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 cent, 20 cent, and 50 cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe World War II damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Potsdamer Platz at dusk.
The Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there. FriedrichstraÃe was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
The glass dome adorning the roof of the Reichstag.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger StraÃe and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
Schloss Charlottenburg is the largest existing palace in Berlin.
The StraÃe des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the GroÃer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938â39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on TauentzienstraÃe is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Reichstag building is the site of the German parliament.
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany and is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. Bundespräsident Horst Köhler, www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006. Since German reunification on 3 October 1990, it has been one of the three city states, together with Hamburg and Bremen, among the present sixteen states of Germany. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The European Union invests in several projects within the city of Berlin. Infrastructure, education and social programs are co-financed with budgets taken from EU cohesion funds. URBAN regeneration, a European Commission initiative, ErasmusPC. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
Governing Mayor since 2001, Klaus Wowereit
The city and state parliament is the House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus), which currently has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate of Berlin consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and up to eight senators holding ministerial positions, one of them holding the official title "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the city (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Prime Minister of the Federal State (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of Berlin's Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2001 this office has been held by Klaus Wowereit of the SPD. See also: The city's government is based on a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and The Left.
The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2007 exceeded â¬20.5 ($28.7) billion including a budget surplus of â¬80 ($112) million. The figures indicate the first surplus in the history of the city state. Berlin schafft erstes Etatplus seit dem Krieg(German), SpiegelOnline. Retrieved February, 2008. Due to increasing growth rates and tax revenues, the Senate of Berlin calculates an increasing budget surplus in 2008. The total budget includes an estimated amount of â¬5.5 ($7.7) bn, which is directly financed by either the German government or the German Bundesländer. Mainly due to reunification-related expenditures, Berlin as a German state has accumulated more debt than any other city in Germany, with the most current estimate being â¬60 ($84)bn in December 2007. Debt-Laden Berlin Goes to Court For Federal Aid, Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 October 2006.
Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their localities.
Berlin is subdivided into twelve boroughs (Bezirke), but before Berlin's 2001 administrative reform there were 23. Each borough is subdivided into a number of localities (Ortsteile), which represent the traditional urbanized areas that inhabitants identify with. Some of these have been rearranged several times over the years. At present the city of Berlin consists of 95 such localities. The localities often consist of a number of city neighborhoods (usually called Kiez in the Berlin dialect) representing small residential areas.
Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five Councilors (Bezirksstadträte) and a Borough Mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The Borough Council is elected by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). The boroughs of Berlin are not independent municipalities. The power of borough governments is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough mayors form the Council of Mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), led by the city's Governing Mayor, which advises the Senate.
The localities have no government bodies of their own, even though most of the localities have historic roots in older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. The subsequent position of locality representative (Ortsvorsteher) was discontinued in favor of borough mayors.
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between Berlin and other cities began with Los Angeles in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification and later partially reestablished. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War era, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the West, and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Copenhagen, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin's population 1880â2007.
As of December 2008, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,431,700 (an increase of 15,400 from December 2007) registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 3,848 inhabitants per km² (9,966 /sq mi). The urban area of Berlin stretches beyond the city limits and comprises about 3.7 million people while the metropolitan area of the Berlin-Brandenburg region is home to about 4.3 million in an area of . The Larger Urban Zone comprised about five million people in an area of 17,385 km² in the year 2004.
Crowd in Kreuzberg
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and a tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin. The act increased the area of Berlin from 66 square kilometers (25.5 square miles) to 883 square kilometers (341 sq mi) and the population from 1.9 million to 4 million. Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin have initiated waves of immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze made immigration from the former Soviet Union possible. Today ethnic Germans make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking population. Berlin is speaking Russiansâ language. The Russia Journal. 2001-03-10. The current decade experiences an increasing influx from various Western countries. Especially young EU-Europeans are settling in the city.
In December 2008, 470,051 residents (13.9% of the population) were of foreign nationality, originating from 195 different countries.
Estimated 394,000 citizens (11.7%) are descendants of international migrants and have either become naturalized German citizens or obtained citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany.
The largest groups of foreign national are those from Turkey (111,285), Poland (43,700), Serbia (22,251), Italy (14,964), Russia (14,915), the United States (14,186), France (13,113), Vietnam (12,494), Croatia (10,752), Bosnia and Herzegovina (10,556), the United Kingdom (10,196), Greece (9,582), Austria (8,982), Ukraine (8,706), Lebanon (7,553), Bulgaria (7,375), Spain (7,044), the People's Republic of China (6,023), and Thailand (5,772). There is also a large Arab community, mostly from Palestine and Iraq, but there are no statistics about them, because they are often stateless. /ref>
Berlin's largest church is the Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral.
A majority of Berlin residents (60%) have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denominations are the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (a united church within the Evangelical Church in Germany) at 19.8% of the population EKD /ref> and Roman Catholics at 9.4% chiesa cattolica /ref>. 2.7% of the population adhere to other Christian churches, and 8.8 % adhere to Islam /ref>. Most of the over 120,000 Jews in Berlin have come from the former Soviet Union. Germany: Berlin Facing Challenge Of Assimilating Russian-Speaking Jews. Radio Free Europe. 17 September 2007.
Berlin is seat of both a Roman Catholic bishop (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin) and a Protestant bishop (Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia). The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin.
There are 36 Baptist congregations, 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. See also: Berlin has eleven synagogues, two Buddhist temples, and 76 mosques. There are also a number of humanist and atheist groups in the city.
The economy of the city is mainly based on the service sector. The ICC and the Funkturm are part of the city's exhibition and congress center.
In 2008, the nominal GDP of the citystate Berlin experienced a growth rate of 1.6% (1.3% in Germany) and totaled â¬83.0 ($108) billion. After Germany´s reunification, significant de-industrialization changed Berlin´s economy which is today dominated by the service sector. The unemployment rate steadily decreased and reached a 13 year-low with 13.3% in September 2008 (German average: 7.4%/September/2008). See also:
Among the Forbes Global 2000 and the 30 German DAX companies, Siemens and Deutsche Bahn control headquarters in Berlin. A multitude of German and international companies established secondary departments or service offices in the city. Among the 20 largest employers in Berlin are the railway company Deutsche Bahn, the hospital company Charité, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. Daimler manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. Bayer Schering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The second most important German airline Air Berlin and the rail company Deutsche Bahn are headquartered in Berlin. " Contact." Air Berlin. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. " Deutsche Bahn AG at a glance." Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved on 12 May 2009. In Germany, Universal Music and Sony Music are headquartered in Berlin as well.
Fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is among the 15 largest technology parks worldwide. Research and development have established economic significance, and the Berlin Brandenburg region ranks among the top three innovative regions in the EU. Berlin is among the top three convention cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector encompassing 659 hotels with 97,400 beds and numbered 17.8 million overnight stays and 7.9 million hotel guests in 2008. Berlin has established itself as the third most-visited city destination in the European Union.
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside the Humboldt University
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the European Union. The city has four universities and numerous private, professional and technical colleges (Fachhochschulen), offering students a wide range of disciplines. Around 130,000 students attend the universities and professional or technical colleges. The three largest universities account for around 100,000 students. These are the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with 35,000 students, the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin) with around 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin with 30,000 students. The Universität der Künste has about 4,300 students.
The city has a high concentration of research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. A total number of 62,000 scientists are working in research and development.
In addition to the libraries affiliated with the various universities, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. It has two main locations: one near Potsdamer Platz on Potsdamer StraÃe and one on Unter den Linden. There are 108 public libraries to be found in the city.
Canisius-Kolleg Berlin
Berlin has 878 schools teaching 340,658 children in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a six-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students will progress to the Sekundarschule (a comprehensive school) or Gymnasium (college preparatory school).
Berlin has a unique bilingual school program embedded in the "Europaschule". At these schools children get taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and later in secondary school. Throughout nearly all boroughs, a range of 9 major European languages in 29 schools can be chosen.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin which was founded in 1689 for the benefit of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. (German) The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual GermanâAmerican public school located in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of Diplomats and the expat community. There are also four schools ("Humanistische Gymnasien") teaching Latin and Classical Greek, which are traditionally renowned for highest academic standards . Two of them are state schools (Steglitzer Gymnasium in Steglitz and Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf), one is Protestant (Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Wilmersdorf) and one Jesuit (Canisius-Kolleg in the "Embassy Quarter" in Tiergarten).
Berlin is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (Future information and communication society and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). /ref>
The Museum Island is a World Heritage Site.
Berlin is noted for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the Zeitgeist Metropolis led to an ever-changing and trendsetting image among major cities. The city has a very diverse art scene, and is home to around 420 art galleries. Young Germans and international artists continue to settle in the city, and Berlin has established itself as a center of youth and popular culture in Europe. See also: and
Signs of this expanding role was the 2003 announcement that the annual Popkomm, Europe's largest music industry convention, would move to Berlin after 15 years in Cologne. Shortly thereafter, the Universal Music Group and MTV also decided to move their European headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree in Friedrichshain. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title of "City of Design" by UNESCO.
The prestigious Berlin Film Festival is annually held in February. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.
Berlin is the home of many television and radio stations; international, national as well as regional. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters there as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe, VIVA, TVB, FAB, N24 and Sat.1. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin. Additionally, most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city. American radio programming from National Public Radio NPR is also broadcast on the FM dial.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of two major German-language publishing houses: Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Berlin is an important center in the European and German film industry. Wall-to-wall culture, The Age. Retrieved 30 November 2007. It is home to more than one thousand film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The venerable Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Karneval der Kulturen.
Berlin has one of the most diverse and vibrant nightlife scenes in Europe. Losing your mind in Berlin, metrotimes. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Throughout the 1990s, twentysomethings from surrounding countries, particularly those in Eastern and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene the premier nightlife destination of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were renovated. Many had not been rebuilt since the Second World War. Illegally occupied by young people, they became a fertile ground for all sorts of underground and counter-culture gatherings. It is also home to many nightclubs, including Kunst Haus Tacheles, techno clubs Tresor, WMF, Ufo, E-Werk, the infamous Kitkatclub and Berghain. The Linientreu, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, has been well known since the 1990s for techno music. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became famous as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack, German Embassy, Washington D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
Berlin is one of the most popular areas for nightlife and DJ-culture in Europe.
SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music but today has become a popular venue for dances and parties of all kinds. SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend, ENGLISH SUMMARY, www.karneval-berlin.de, . Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day, which is Central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event and is celebrated the last weekend of June, are openly supported by the city's government. Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the techno carnival Love Parade, club transmediale and the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
The Jewish Museum presents a standing exhibition on two millennia of GermanâJewish history.
Berlin is home to 153 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. As early as 1841 it was designated a âdistrict dedicated to art and antiquitiesâ by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, A 3,000-year-old smile, Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house. Opposite the Museum Island there is the DDR Museum about the life in the GDR.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in twentieth century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus-Archive is an architecture museum.
The reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. Exhibitions, Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved 10 August 2008. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The World of Dinosaurs, Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, 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 Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sir Simon Rattle conducting the renowned Berlin Philharmonic.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849â50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944â45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913â14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
German Cathedral and Concert Hall at the Gendarmenmarkt.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the oldest; it opened in 1742. Its current musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is located at Unter den Linden as well. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg. During the division of the city from 1961 to 1989 it was the only major opera house in West Berlin.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; Is Rattle's Berlin honeymoon over?, The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2006. it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Music: Berlin, New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2006. The current principal conductor is Simon Rattle. Berlin Philharmonic elects Sir Simon Rattle, Culturekiosque. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin, since the Philharmonic was based in West Berlin. Its current principal conductor is Lothar Zagrosek. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents various exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, www.hkw.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world.
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844, and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It is the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut, born in December 2006. Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, founded in 1955 in the grounds of Schloss Friedrichsfelde in the Borough of Lichtenberg, is Europe's largest zoo in terms of square meters.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species it is one of the largest and most diverse gardens in the world.
Cafés are part of the city's bohemian and hipster lifestyle.
The Tiergarten is Berlin's largest park located in Mitte and was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. Peter Joseph Lenné, Senate Department of Urban Development. Retrieved 18 November 2006. In Kreuzberg the Viktoriapark provides a good viewing point over the southern part of inner city Berlin. Treptower Park beside the Spree in Treptow has a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers killed in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city. Its summit is man-made and covers a Second World War bunker and rubble from the ruins of the city; at its foot is Germany's main memorial to Polish soldiers.
Berlin is known for its numerous beach bars along the river Spree. Together with the countless cafés, restaurants and green spaces in all districts, they create an important source of recreation and leisure time. 36 Hours in Berlin, NYT, Accessed 29 May 2007.
The Olympiastadion hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.
The annual Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
Berlin has established a high profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events. Melbourne above Berlin, Sydney, ABCNews. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Berlin 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, www.olympic.org, Accessed 18 November 2006. See also: The IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in the Olympiastadion in August 2009. 12. IAAF Leichtathletik WM berlin 2009, www.berlin2009.org. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The annual Berlin Marathon and the annual Ã
F Golden League event ISTAF for athletics are also held here. Berlin Marathon, www.scc-events.com. Retrieved 12 November 2006. The WTA Tour holds the Qatar Total German Open annually in the city. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest tennis tournaments for women. The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site near Alexanderplatz to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam every year.
Open Air gatherings of several hundred thousands spectators have become popular during international football competitions like the World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship. Fans of the respective national football squads are coming together to watch the match on huge videoscreens. The event is known as the Fan Mile and takes place at the Brandenburg Gate every two years. 500,000 spectators to watch the game together , SABAH Newspaper. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Several major clubs representing the most popular spectator sports in Germany have their base in Berlin.
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe and has operated since 2006.
Berlin has developed a highly complex transportation infrastructure providing very diverse modes of urban mobility. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways, of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways ("Autobahn"). In 2006, 1.416 million motor vehicles, were registered in the city. With 358 cars per 1000 inhabitants in 2008 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a German state and as a major European city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita.
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the largest crossing station in Europe. Deutsche Bahn runs trains to regional destinations like Nuremberg, Hamburg, Freiburg and more. It also runs the Airport express, as well as trains to international destinations like Moscow, Vienna, and Salzburg.
Berlin is known for its highly developed bike lane system. 710 bicycles per 1000 inhabitants are estimated. Around 500,000 daily riders accounting for 13% of total traffic in 2008. The Senate of Berlin aims to increase the number to 15% of city traffic by the year 2010. Riders have access to 620 km of bike paths including approx. 150 km mandatory bicycle paths, 190 km off-road bicycle routes, 60 km of bike lanes on the roads, 70 km of shared bus lanes which are also open to bicyclists, 100 km of combined pedestrian/bike paths and 50 km of marked bike lanes on the sidewalks. The and the Deutsche Bahn manage several dense urban public transport systems. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Die kleine Berlin-Statistik. (German) Accessed 2009-01-06.
Tegel International Airport
Berlin has two commercial airports. Tegel International Airport (TXL), the busier, and Schönefeld International Airport (SXF) handled more than 21 million passengers in 2008. Together they serve 155 destinations in 48 countries (summer 2009). Tegel lies within the city limits, whereas Schönefeld handles mainly low-cost-aviation and is situated just outside Berlin's south-eastern border in the state of Brandenburg.
Berlin's airport authority aims to transfer all of Berlin's air traffic in November 2011 to a newly built airport at Schönefeld, to be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. City authorities aim to establish a European aviation hub with a gateway to Asia.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte.
Berlin's power supply is mainly provided by the Swedish firm Vattenfall and relies more heavily than other electricity producers in Germany on lignite as an energy source. Because burning lignite produces harmful emissions, Vattenfall has announced a commitment to shift towards reliance on cleaner, renewable energy sources. Former West Berlin's electricity supply was provided by thermal power stations. To facilitate buffering during load peaks, accumulators were installed during the 1980s at some of these power stations. These were connected by static inverters to the power grid and were loaded during times of low power consumption and unloaded during times of high consumption.
In 1993 the power connections to the surrounding areas, which had been capped in 1951, were restored. In the western districts of Berlin, nearly all power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line was constructed when West Berlin's electrical system was a totally independent system and not connected to those of East or West Germany. This has now become the backbone of the whole city's power system.
Carmaker Daimler AG and utility RWE AG are going to begin a joint electric car and charging station test project in Berlin called "E-Mobility Berlin."
The Charité main building.
Berlin has a long tradition as a city of medicine and medical technology. The history of medicine has been widely influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch, discovered the vaccinations for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis bacillus.
The Charité hospital complex is today the largest university hospital in Europe tracing back its origins to the year 1710. The Charité is spread over four sites and comprises 3,300 beds, around 14,000 staff, 8,000 students, over 60 operating theatres with an annual turnover of over one billion euros.
It is a joint institution of the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and medical competence centers. Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. Scientific research is complemented by many industry research departments of companies such as Siemens, Schering or debis.
Marlene Dietrich was born in Berlin-Schöneberg.
* "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor, in a press interview, 2003) (German)
* "Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen." ("Berlin will live and the wall will fall.")
(Willy Brandt, Former Governing Mayor of West Berlin and chancellor of Germany, 10 November 1989)
* âThe greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine..â
(David Bowie, singer, on 1970s Berlin)
* "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a citizen of Berlin")
(John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, 1963 while visiting Berlin)
* "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I still have a suitcase in Berlin")
(Marlene Dietrich, 1951 song by the actress and singer born in Berlin-Schöneberg.)
* "âBerlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu seinâ ("Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.")
(Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 1910)
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* Jochen Visscher (Ed.): "Berlin Modernism", Photographs by Alfred Englert, JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939633-44-0
* Toufic Beyhum, Photographer: "Emotions in Motion", JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-35-8
* Official Website Berlin.de
* Official Website of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Area
* Regional directory
* Berlin Tourist Information
* Monthly English-language magazine for Berlin
* English-language city guide for Berlin
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* Berlin photo gallery Images of Berlin and its most popular monuments.
* BBC documentary on Berlin History
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Blaise_Pascal | Who was Blaise Pascal's father? | His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Who was Blaise Pascal's father? | Ãtienne Pascal. | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Was Pascal a French mathematician? | yes | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
*
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Blaise_Pascal | Was Pascal a French mathematician? | Yes. | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Did Pascal have poor health throughout his life? | yes | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
*
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Blaise_Pascal | Did Pascal have poor health throughout his life? | Yes. | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | How old was Pascal when he lost his mother? | at the age of three | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | How old was Pascal when he lost his mother? | 3. | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Who was Pascal's younger sister? | Jacqueline | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Who was Pascal's younger sister? | Jacqueline. | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | What led Pascal to his religious conversion? | Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | What led Pascal to his religious conversion? | sickness and Jansenism | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | How old was Pascal when he died? | 39 | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | How old was Pascal when he died? | 1662-08-19. | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Did Pascal write about cycloid before 1658? | no | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Is there a programming language called Pascal? | yes | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Is there a programming language called Pascal? | Yes. | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
*
*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic where acclaimed a miracle? | Paris | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
*
* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
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*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Wasn't Blaise Pascal a work of Desargues on conic sections? | Yes, it was | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
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* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
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*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Who died the next morning? | Pascal. | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
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* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
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*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | When did his father die? | 1651 | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
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* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
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*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | When did his father die? | His father died in 1651. | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
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* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
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*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Was he a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant? | yes | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
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* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
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*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
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Blaise_Pascal | Was Pascal's earliest work in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli? | Yes | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
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* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
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*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
*
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Blaise_Pascal | Did Pascal also write in defense of the scientific method? | Yes | data/set4/a4 | Blaise_Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( ), (b. 1623-06-19 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, d. 1662-08-19 in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Ãtienne Pascal (1588â1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, after the death of his wife, Ãtienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Ãtienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Ãtienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Ãtienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europeâsuch as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartesâin the monastic cell of Père Mersenne.
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the sixteen-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent itâhis first serious work of mathematicsâto Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes, when shown the manuscript, refused to believe that the composition was not by the elder Pascal.
When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a sixteen-year-old child." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
In France at that time offices and positions could beâand wereâbought and sold. In 1631 Ãtienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres. Connor, James A., Pascal's Wager(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) p.42 The money was invested in a government bond which provided if not a lavish then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Year War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Ãtienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Like so many others, Ãtienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbor Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Ãtienne was pardoned. In time Ãtienne was back in good graces with the cardinal, and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen â a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid, Pascal, not yet nineteen, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators. Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Because it was extraordinarily expensive the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and status symbol, for the very rich both in France and throughout Europe. However, Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade and built fifty machines in total.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition to showing binomial coefficients.
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented:
He defines the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the (m+1)st row and (n+1)st column t mn . Then t mn = t m-1,n + t m,n-1 , for m = 0, 1, 2... and n = 0, 1, 2... The boundary conditions are t m, -1 = 0, t -1, n for m = 1, 2, 3... and n = 1, 2, 3... The generator t 00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,
: t_{mn} = \frac{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+1)}{n(n-1)...1}.\
In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded with Fermat on the subject, and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Méré, and the specific problem was that of two players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.
After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics. However, after a sleepless night in 1658, he anonymously offered a prize for the quadrature of a cycloid. Solutions were offered by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, Christopher Wren, and others; Pascal, under the pseudonym Amos Dettonville, published his own solution. Controversy and heated argument followed after Pascal announced himself the winner.
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Mind"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them upâfirst principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes.
In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. By 1646, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment which involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible; and this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something," Aristotle declared. Aristotle,Physics,VII,1. Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
* Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.
* Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by something.
* Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuumsâthe absence of any and everythingâwere simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New Experiments with the Vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
On September 19, 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally to carry out the fact finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
"The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...
"...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured sixteen pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26" and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...
"I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day...Taking the other tube and a portion of the quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case..." Périer to Pascal, September 1647,Åuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about fifty meters. The mercury dropped two lines. These, and other lesser experiments carried out by Pascal, were hailed throughout Europe as establishing the principle and value of the barometer.
In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one of the seventeenth century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including Descartes.
:::::Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
Two basic influences led him to his conversion: sickness and Jansenism. From as early as his eighteenth year, Pascal suffered from a nervous ailment that left him hardly a day without pain. In 1647, a paralytic attack so disabled him that he could not move without crutches. His head ached, his bowels burned, his legs and feet were continually cold, and required wearisome aids to circulate the blood; he wore stockings steeped in brandy to warm his feet. Partly to get better medical treatment, he moved to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. His health improved, but his nervous system had been permanently damaged. Henceforth, he was subject to deepening hypochondria, which affected his character and his philosophy. He became irritable, subject to fits of proud and imperious anger, and seldom smiled. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, I, 89.
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." Connor, James A. Pascal's Wager (HarperCollins, 2006)p.70 But treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become household guests.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert , proponent of a splinter group from the main body of Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and upon his successful treatment of Ãtienne, borrowed works by Jansenist authors from them. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year.
Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648â54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and Jacqueline, of which Pascal acted as her conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he too needed her.
"Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind." Miel p.122
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
In early June of 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline,
Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." Miel p.124 With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29 year old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.
For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside." Pascal, Pensées, Havet ed. Introd., p. civ. During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian." Mesnard, Pascal, 57.
Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, p.58) During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 52.
In October 1654, Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time.
On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholarsâ¦" and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Oeuvres complètes, 618. This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the Memorial is disputed by some scholars. MathPages, /ref>
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial Letters
Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665â66).
Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France." Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358. And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.
When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and noseâan affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both pro and anti Jansenists used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed.
Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidiâ"I know whom I have believed." Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, III, 173f.; Beard, Charles, Port-Royal, I 84. His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées.
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). What was found upon sifting through his personal items after his death were numerous scraps of paper with isolated thoughts, grouped in a tentative, but telling, order. The first version of the detached notes appeared in print as a book in 1670 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God. This strategy was deemed quite hazardous by Pierre Nicole, Antoine Arnauld and other friends and scholars of Port-Royal, who were concerned that these fragmentary "thoughts" might lead to skepticism rather than to piety. Henceforth, they concealed the skeptical pieces and modified some of the rest, lest King or Church should take offense Pascal, Pensées, Introduction, p. xxviii; Mesnard, Pascal, 137â138. for at that time the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the editors were not interested in a renewal of controversy. Not until the nineteenth century were the Pensées published in their full and authentic text.
Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century, 174. Will Durant, in his 11-volume, comprehensive The Story of Civilization series, hailed it as "the most eloquent book in French prose." The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV" by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4 (pg. 66) In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanityâseemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace. Rolling these into one he develops Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for man to suffer. In 1659, Pascal, whose health had never been good, fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians." Muir, 104.
Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, moving passengers within Paris in a carriage with many seats.
In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on August 18, 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Ãtienne-du-Mont. Muir, 104.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his continual poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. Muir, 103. The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.
* Essai pour les coniques (1639)
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (1647)
* Traité du triangle arithmétique (1653)
* Lettres provinciales (1656â57)
* De l'Esprit géométrique (1657 or 1658)
* Ãcrit sur la signature du formulaire (1661)
* Pensées (incomplete at death)
*In France, prestigious annual awards, Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region.
*The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour. The Pascal Contest is open to any student from around the world, who is fifteen years or under and is in grade nine or lower.
*Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic (entitled Blaise Pascal) which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.
*Pascal was a subject for the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "The Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt (see ).
*Scientific Revolution
* Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God (1995)
* Adamson, Donald. "Pascalâs Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study (eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407-21.
* Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965). ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
* Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
* Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven of Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell UP, 2006).
* Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964.
* Jordan, Jeff. Pascalâs Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
* Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
* Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969).
* Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996). ISBN 0-486-28973-7
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise."
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960).
* Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. Jean Mesnard, ed. 4 vols have appeared. (Paris: Desclée-Brouwer, 1964-0
* Saka, Paul. âPascalâs Wager and the Many Gods Objection,â Religious Studies, 2001, pp.321-41.
* Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascalâs Wager: A Skepticâs Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus". authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
* Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth T. Knuth.
* Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
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* Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
* Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
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*Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
*Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
*Etext of a number of Pascal's minor works (English translation) including, De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader.
*
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Butterfly | Do butterflies make sounds? | Some butterflies make sounds. | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | Do butterflies make sounds? | null | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | Do butterflies have two eyes? | Yes, butterflies have two eyes. | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | Do butterflies have two eyes? | null | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | Does a black moth mean that someone has died? | In the Philippines a black butterfly or moth mean that someone has died. | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | Does a black moth mean that someone has died? | null | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | What is the outer layer of the cuticle made of? | The outer layer of the cuticle is made of of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins. | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | What is the outer layer of the cuticle made of? | null | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
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* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | Where was there a vast swarm of butterflies? | In Kyoto there was a vast swarm of butterflies. | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | Where was there a vast swarm of butterflies? | null | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | What butterfly is migratory? | The Monarch butterfly is migratory. | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | What butterfly is migratory? | null | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | Do butterflies carry more pollen than Hymenoptera? | No, butterflies carry less pollen than Hymenoptera. | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | Do butterflies carry more pollen than Hymenoptera? | null | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | What allows the butterfly to evade predators? | A butterfly's hind wings allow the butterfly to evade predators. | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | What allows the butterfly to evade predators? | null | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
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* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | What happens if a wing is removed? | If a ring is removed the other three will grow to a larger size. | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Butterfly | What happens if a wing is removed? | null | data/set1/a6 | Butterfly
Spider lily and butterfly Papilio xuthus Linnaeus 1767
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight.
Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea); all the very many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. In addition, a few species are pests, because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees.
Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Mating Common Buckeye Butterflies
It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters. Powell, J. A. 1987. Records of prolonged diapause in Lepidoptera. J. Res. Lepid. 25: 83-109.
Butterflies may have one or more broods per year. The number of generations per year varies from temperate to tropical regions with tropical regions showing a trend towards multivoltinism.
Egg of Ariadne merione
Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Each egg contains a number of tiny funnel-shaped openings at one end, called micropyles; the purpose of these holes is to allow sperm to enter and fertilize the egg. Butterfly and moth eggs vary greatly in size between species, but they are all either spherical or ovate.
Butterfly eggs are fixed to a leaf with a special glue which hardens rapidly. As it hardens it contracts, deforming the shape of the egg. This glue is easily seen surrounding the base of every egg forming a meniscus. The nature of the glue is unknown and is a suitable subject for research. The same glue is produced by a pupa to secure the setae of the cremaster. This glue is so hard that the silk pad, to which the setae are glued, cannot be separated.
Eggs are usually laid on plants. Each species of butterfly has its own hostplant range and while some species of butterfly are restricted to just one species of plant, others use a range of plant species, often including members of a common family.
The egg stage lasts a few weeks in most butterflies but eggs laid close to winter, especially in temperate regions, go through a diapause (resting) stage, and the hatching may take place only in spring. Other butterflies may lay their eggs in the spring and have them hatch in the summer. These butterflies are usually northern species, such as the Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) and the Large and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.
Caterpillars of Junonia coenia.
Butterfly larvae, or caterpillars, consume plant leaves and spend practically all of their time in search of food. Although most caterpillars are herbivorous, a few species such as Spalgis epius and Liphyra brassolis are entomophagous (insect eating).
Some larvae, especially those of the Lycaenidae, form mutual associations with ants. They communicate with the ants using vibrations that are transmitted through the substrate as well as using chemical signals. The ants provide some degree of protection to these larvae and they in turn gather honeydew secretions.
Caterpillars mature through a series of stages called instars. Near the end of each instar, the larva undergoes a process called apolysis, in which the cuticle, a tough outer layer made of a mixture of chitin and specialized proteins, is released from the softern epidermis beneath, and the epidermis begins to form a new cuticle beneath. At the end of each instar, the larva moults the old cuticle, and the new cuticle expands, before rapidly hardening and developing pigment. Development of butterfly wing patterns begins by the last larval instar.
Butterfly caterpillars have three pairs of true legs from the thoracic segments and up to 6 pairs of prolegs arising from the abdominal segments. These prolegs have rings of tiny hooks called crochets that help them grip the substrate.
Some caterpillars have the ability to inflate parts of their head to appear snake-like. Many have false eye-spots to enhance this effect. Some caterpillars have special structures called osmeteria which are everted to produce smelly chemicals. These are used in defense.
Host plants often have toxic substances in them and caterpillars are able to sequester these substances and retain them into the adult stage. This helps making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Such unpalatibility is advertised using bright red, orange, black or white warning colours. The toxic chemicals in plants are often evolved specifically to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Insects in turn develop countermeasures or make use of these toxins for their own survival. This "arms race" has led to the coevolution of insects and their host plants. Ehrlich, P. R., and P. H. Raven. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586 â 608
Detail of a butterfly wing
Last instar wing disk, Junonia coenia
Wings or wing pads are not visible on the outside of the larva, but when larvae are dissected, tiny developing wing disks can be found on the second and third thoracic segments, in place of the spiracles that are apparent on abdominal segments.
Wing disks develop in association with a trachea that runs along the base of the wing, and are surrounded by a thin peripodial membrane, which is linked to the outer epidermis of the larva by a tiny duct.
Wing disks are very small until the last larval instar, when they increase dramatically in size, are invaded by branching tracheae from the wing base that precede the formation of the wing veins, and begin to develop patterns associated with several landmarks of the wing.
Near pupation, the wings are forced outside the epidermis under pressure from the hemolymph, and although they are initially quite flexible and fragile, by the time the pupa breaks free of the larval cuticle they have adhered tightly to the outer cuticle of the pupa (in obtect pupae). Within hours, the wings form a cuticle so hard and well-joined to the body that pupae can be picked up and handled without damage to the wings.
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary
When the larva is fully grown, hormones such as prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) are produced. At this point the larva stops feeding and begins "wandering" in the quest of a suitable pupation site, often the underside of a leaf.
The larva transforms into a pupa (or chrysalis) by anchoring itself to a substrate and moulting for the last time. The chrysalis is usually incapable of movement, although some species can rapidly move the abdominal segments or produce sounds to scare potential predators.
The pupal transformation into a butterfly through metamorphosis has held great appeal to mankind. To transform from the miniature wings visible on the outside of the pupa into large structures usable for flight, the pupal wings undergo rapid mitosis and absorb a great deal of nutrients. If one wing is surgically removed early on, the other three will grow to a larger size. In the pupa, the wing forms a structure that becomes compressed from top to bottom and pleated from proximal to distal ends as it grows, so that it can rapidly be unfolded to its full adult size. Several boundaries seen in the adult color pattern are marked by changes in the expression of particular transcription factors in the early pupa.
The adult, sexually mature, stage of the insect is known as the imago. As Lepidoptera, butterflies have four wings that are covered with tiny scales (see photo). The fore and hindwings are not hooked together, permitting a more graceful flight. An adult butterfly has six legs, but in the nymphalids, the first pair is reduced. After it emerges from its pupal stage, a butterfly cannot fly until the wings are unfolded. A newly-emerged butterfly needs to spend some time inflating its wings with blood and letting them dry, during which time it is extremely vulnerable to predators.
Some butterflies' wings may take up to three hours to dry while others take about one hour. Most butterflies and moths will excrete excess dye after hatching. This fluid may be white, red, orange, or in rare cases, blue.
Parts of an adult butterfly
Butterflies have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis
Adult butterflies have four wings: a forewing and hindwing on both the left and the right side of the body. The body is divided into three segments: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. They have two antennae, two compound eyes, and a proboscis.
Butterflies are characterized by their scale-covered wings.
The coloration of butterfly wings is created by minute scales. These scales are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, but blues, greens, reds and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but the microstructure of the scales. This structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales. Vukusic, P., J.R.Sambles, and H. Ghiradella (2000) Optical Classification of Microstructure in Butterfly Wing-scales. Photonics Science News, 6, 61-66 The scales cling somewhat loosely to the wing and come off easily without harming the butterfly.
Image:Microphoto-butterflywing.jpg|Scales on the wing give the colours
Image:Inachis io top detail MichaD.jpg|Closeup of the scales of the Inachis io
Image:Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Untagged 3008px.jpg|A Monarch butterfly with the scales rubbed off a section of the wing.
Many adult butterflies exhibit polymorphism, showing differences in appearance. These variations include geographic variants and seasonal forms. In addition many species have females in multiple forms, often with mimetic forms. Sexual dimorphism in coloration and appearance is widespread in butterflies. In addition many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of ultraviolet reflectivity, while otherwise appearing identical to the unaided human eye. Most of the butterflies have a sex-determination system that is represented as ZW with females being the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males homogametic (ZZ).
Genetic abnormalities such as gynandromorphy also occur from time to time. In addition many butterflies are infected by Wolbachia and infection by the bacteria can lead to the conversion of males into females or the selective killing of males in the egg stage.
The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are the classical model for Müllerian mimicry.
Batesian and Mullerian mimicry in butterflies is common. Batesian mimics imitate other species to enjoy the protection of an attribute they do not share, aposematism in this case. The Common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. Mullerian mimicry occurs when aposematic species evolve to resemble each other, presumably to reduce predator sampling rates, the Heliconius butterflies from the Americas being a good example.
Wing markings called eyespots are present in some species; these may have an automimicry role for some species. In others, the function may be intraspecies communication, such as mate attraction. In several cases, however, the function of butterfly eyespots is not clear, and may be an evolutionary anomaly related to the relative elasticity of the genes that encode the spots.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. Experimental modification by ecdysone hormone treatment has demonstrated that it is possible to control the continuum of expression of variation between the wet and dry-season forms. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
Bicyclus anynana is a species of butterfly that exhibits a clear example of seasonal polyphenism. These butterflies, endemic to Africa, have two distinct phenotypic forms that alternate according to the season. The wet-season forms have large, very apparent ventral eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, ventral eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults where as those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. Lyytinen, A., P. M. Brakefield, L. Lindström, and J. Mappes. 2004. Does predation maintain eyespot plasticity in Bicyclus anynana. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 271:279-283. This polyphenism has an adaptive role in B. anynana. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because B. anynana blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for B. anynana to express. Brakefield, P. M., J. Gates, D. Keys, F. Kesbeke, P. J. Wijngaarden, A. Monteiro, V. French, and S. B. Carroll. 1996. Development, plasticity and evolution of butterfly eyespot patterns. Nature 384:236-242.
Antennae shape in the lepidoptera from C. T. Bingham (1905)
The Australian painted lady feeding on a flowering shrub
Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung At 7 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the BBC2 television program Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness showed a butterfly feeding from wolf faeces in the Canadian boreal forest , decaying flesh At 7.30 to 8 pm 27 October 2009 the ITV1 television program Grimefighters showed a butterfly feeding from a decaying dead rat in a town in England , and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera. They are however capable of moving pollen over greater distances. Within the Lepidoptera, the Hawkmoths and the Noctuidae are dominant as pollinators. Inouye, David W. (2001) Role of Pollinators pp. 723-730 in Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity Volume 4. Academic Press.
As adults, butterflies consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. They feed on nectar from flowers and also sip water from damp patches. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for their reproduction. Several species of butterflies need more sodium than provided by nectar. They are attracted to sodium in salt and they sometimes land on people, attracted by human sweat. Besides damp patches, some butterflies also visit dung, rotting fruit or carcasses to obtain minerals and nutrients. In many species, this Mud-puddling behaviour is restricted to the males and studies have suggested that the nutrients collected are provided as a nuptial gift along with the spermatophore during mating. Molleman Freerk, Grunsven Roy H. A., Liefting Maartje, Zwaan Bas J., Brakefield Paul M. (2005) Is male puddling behaviour of tropical butterflies targeted at sodium for nuptial gifts or activity? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 86, (3):345-361
Butterflies sense the air for scents, wind and nectar using their antennae. The antennae come in various shapes and colours. The hesperids have a pointed angle or hook to the antennae, while most other families show knobbed antennae. The antennae are richly covered with sensillae. A butterfly's sense of taste is coordinated by chemoreceptors on the tarsi, which work only on contact, and are used to determine whether an egg-laying insect's offspring will be able to feed on a leaf before eggs are laid on it. Many butterflies use chemical signals, pheromones, and specialized scent scales (androconia) and other structures (coremata or 'Hair pencils' in the Danaidae) are developed in some species.
Vision is well developed in butterflies and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Many species show sexual dimorphism in the patterns of UV reflective patches. Obara Y, Hidaki T. (1968). Recognition of the female by the male, on the basis of ultra-violet reflection, in the white cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae crucivora Boisduval. Proc. Japan Acad., 44: 829-832. Color vision may be widespread but has been demonstrated in only a few species. Tadao Hirota and Yoshiomi Kato 2004 Color discrimination on orientation of female Eurema hecabe (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) Applied Entomology and Zoology Vol. 39:229-233 Michiyo Kinoshita, Naoko Shimada And Kentaro Arikawa (1999) Color vision of the foraging swallowtail butterfly ''Papilio
xuthus''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 202:95 â 102
Some butterflies have organs of hearing and some species are also known to make stridulatory and clicking sounds. Swihart, S. L (1967). Hearing in butterflies. J. Insect Physiol 13, 469
Many butterflies, such as the Monarch butterfly, are migratory and capable of long distance flights. They migrate during the day and use the sun to orient themselves. They also perceive polarized light and use it for orientation when the sun is hidden. Reppert, Steven M.; Haisun Zhu; White, Richard H. (2004) Polarized light helps monarch butterflies navigate. Current biology 14(2):155-158
Many species of butterfly maintain territories and actively chase other species or individuals that may stray into them. Some species will bask or perch on chosen perches. The flight styles of butterflies are often characteristic and some species have courtship flight displays. Basking is an activity which is more common in the cooler hours of the morning. Many species will orient themselves to gather heat from the sun. Some species have evolved dark wingbases to help in gathering more heat and this is especially evident in alpine forms. Ellers, J. and Carol L. Boggs (2002) The evolution of wing color in Colias butterflies: Heritability, Sex Linkage,
and population divergence. Evolution, 56(4):836 â 840
Geitoneura klugii taking off
:See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly. Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF
The Monarch butterfly migrates large distances
:See also Insect migration
Many butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous migrations are those of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern USA and southern Canada, a distance of about 4000 to 4800 km (2500â3000 miles). Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India. Williams, C. B. 1927 A study of butterfly migration in south India and Ceylon, based largely on records by Messrs. G Evershed, E.E.Green, J.C.F. Fryer and W. Ormiston. Trans. Ent. Soc. London 75:1-33 Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes. Urquhart, F. A. & N. R. Urquhart. 1977. Overwintering areas and migratory routes of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus p. plexippus, Lepidoptera: Danaidae) in North America, with special reference to the western population. Can. Ent. 109: 1583-1589 Wassenaar L.I., Hobson K.A. 1998. Natal origins of migratory monarch butterflies at wintering colonies in Mexico: new isotopic evidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95(26):15436-9. Full text
Butterflies have been shown to navigate using time compensated sun compasses. They can see polarized light and therefore orient even in cloudy conditions. The polarized light in the region close to the ultraviolet spectrum is suggested to be particularly important. Ivo Sauman, Adriana D. Briscoe, Haisun Zhu, Dingding Shi, Oren Froy, Julia Stalleicken, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, and Steven M. Reppert (2005) Connecting the Navigational Clock to Sun Compass Input in Monarch Butterfly Brain. Neuron. 46:457-467
It is suggested that most migratory butterflies are those that belong to semi-arid areas where breeding seasons are short. Southwood, T. R. E. 1962. Migration of terrestrial arthropods in relation to habitat. Biol. Rev. 37:171-214 The life-histories of their host plants also influence the strategies of the butterflies. Dennis, R L H, Tim G. Shreeve, Henry R. Arnold and David B. Roy (2005) Does diet breadth control herbivorous insect distribution size? Life history and resource outlets for specialist butterflies. Journal of Insect Conservation 9(3):187-200
The wings of a butterfly become increasingly damaged as it ages, and do not repair
Butterflies are threatened in their early stages by parasitoids and in all stages by predators, diseases and environmental factors. They protect themselves by a variety of means.
Chemical defenses are widespread and are mostly based on chemicals of plant origin. In many cases the plants themselves evolved these toxic substances as protection against herbivores. Butterflies have evolved mechanisms to sequester these plant toxins and use them instead in their own defense. Nishida, Ritsuo (2002). Sequestration of defensive substances from plants by Lepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 47:57â92 These defense mechanisms are effective only if they are also well advertised and this has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies. This signal may be mimicked by other butterflies. These mimetic forms are usually restricted to the females.
Eyespots on the hind wing of this butterfly are part of the animal's defense
Cryptic coloration is found in many butterflies. Some like the oakleaf butterfly are remarkable imitations of leaves. Robbins, Robert K. (1981) The "False Head" Hypothesis: Predation and Wing Pattern Variation of Lycaenid Butterflies. American Naturalist 118(5):770-775 As caterpillars, many defend themselves by freezing and appearing like sticks or branches. Some papilionid caterpillars resemble bird dropping in their early instars. Some caterpillars have hairs and bristly structures that provide protection while others are gregarious and form dense aggregations. Some species also form associations with ants and gain their protection (See Myrmecophile).
Behavioural defenses include perching and wing positions to avoid being conspicuous. Some female Nymphalid butterflies are known to guard their eggs from parasitoid wasps. Nafus, D. M. and I. H. Schreiner (1988) Parental care in a tropical nymphalid butterfly Hypolimas anomala. Anim. Behav. 36: 1425- 143
Eyespots and tails are found in many lycaenid butterflies and these divert the attention of predators from the more vital head region. An alternative theory is that these cause ambush predators such as spiders to approach from the wrong end and allow for early visual detection. William E. Cooper, Jr. (1998) Conditions favoring anticipatory and reactive displays deflecting predatory attack. Behavioral Ecology
A butterfly's hind wings are thought to allow the butterfly to take swift, tight turns to evade predators. Hind Wings Help Butterflies Make Swift Turns to Evade Predators Newswise, Retrieved on January 8, 2008.
Siproeta epaphus, Butterfly World (Florida)
There are between 15,000 and 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. Some well-known species from around the world include:
* Swallowtails and Birdwings, Family Papilionidae
** Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
** Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus
** Lime Butterfly, Papilio demoleus
** Ornithoptera genus (Birdwings; the largest butterflies)
* Whites or Yellows, Family Pieridae
** Small White, Pieris rapae
** Green-veined White, Pieris napi
** Common Jezebel, Delias eucharis
* Blues and Coppers or Gossamer-Winged Butterflies, Family Lycaenidae
** Xerces Blue, Glaucopsyche xerces (extinct)
** Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis (endangered)
** Red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus
* Metalmark butterflies, Family Riodinidae
** Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina
** Plum Judy, Abisara echerius
* Brush-footed butterflies, Family Nymphalidae
** Painted Lady, or Cosmopolitan, Vanessa cardui
** Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus
** Morpho genus
** Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria
* Skippers, Family Hesperiidae
** Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae
** Zabulon Skipper, Poanes zabulon
Artistic depictions of butterflies have been used in many cultures including Egyptian hieroglyphs 3500 years ago. Larsen, Torben (1994) Butterflies of Egypt. Saudi Aramco world. 45(5):24-27 Online Today, butterflies are widely used in various objects of art and jewelry: mounted in frame, embedded in resin, displayed in bottles, laminated in paper, and used in some mixed media artworks and furnishings. Butterflies have also inspired the "butterfly fairy" as an art and fictional character, including in the Barbie Mariposa film.
According to the âButterfliesâ chapter in , by Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you. However, large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened â -thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.
The Russian word for "butterfly", бабоÑка (bábochka), also means "bow tie". It is a diminutive of "baba" or "babka" (= "woman, grandmother, cake"), whence also "babushka" = "grandmother".
The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ÏÏ
Ïή (psȳchÄ), which primarily means "soul", "mind". Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2003.
According to Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, some of the Nagas of Manipur trace their ancestry from a butterfly. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
Butterfly and Chinese wisteriaflowers, by Xü Xi (c.886 c.975), painted around 970 during the early Song Dynasty.
In Chinese culture two butterflies flying together are a symbol of love. Also a famous Chinese folk story called Butterfly Lovers. The Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream of being a butterfly flying without care about humanity, however when he woke up and realized it was just a dream, he thought to himself "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.
Jose Rizal delivered a speech in 1884 in a banquet and mentioned "the Oriental chrysalis ... is about to leave its cocoon" comparing the emergence of a "new Philippines" with that of butterfly metamorphosis. He has also often used the butterfly imagery in his poems and other writings to express the Spanish Colonial Filipinos' longing for liberty. Much later, in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal compared his life in exile to a weary butterfly with sun-burnt wings.
Der Schmetterlingsjäger (The butterfly hunter) by Carl Spitzweg (1840), a depiction from the era of butterfly collection.
Some people say that when a butterfly lands on you it means good luck. However, in Devonshire, people would traditionally rush around to kill the first butterfly of the year that they see, or else face a year of bad luck. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs, and Events, Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Days, in Past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Months, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac, Including Accounts of the Weather, Rules for Health and Conduct, Remarkable and Important Anecdotes, Facts, and Notices, in Chronology, Antiquities, Topography, Biography, Natural History, Art, Science, and General Literature; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources, and Valuable Original Communication, with Poetical Elucidations, for Daily Use and Diversion. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678. Also, in the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean that someone in the family has died or will soon die.
The idiom "butterflies in the stomach" is used to describe a state of nervousness.
In the NBC television show "Kings", butterflies are the national symbol of the fictional nation of Gilboa and a sign of God's favor.
Researches on the wing structure of Palawan Birdwing butterflies led to new wide wingspan kite and aircraft designs.
Studies on the reflection and scattering of light by the scales on wings of swallowtail butterflies led to the innovation of more efficient light-emitting diodes. Vukusic, Pete and Ian Hooper. 2005. Directionally Controlled Fluorescence Emission in Butterflies Science. 310(5751):1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116612
The structural coloration of butterflies is inspiring nanotechnology research to produce paints that do not use toxic pigments and in the development of new display technologies.
The discoloration and health of butterflies in butterfly farms, is now being studied for use as indicators of air quality in several cities.
*Butterfly zoo
*Florida Museum of Natural History#McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
*List of butterflies in Taiwan
*List of butterflies of Great Britain
*List of butterflies of Tobago
*List of butterflies of Menorca
*List of butterflies of India
*List of butterflies of North America
*List of U.S. state butterflies
*Moth
* Boggs, C., Watt, W., Ehrlich, P. 2003. Butterflies: Evolution and Ecology Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
* Fadul, J. A. 2008. The Butterflies that Rizal Chased, Collected, and Studied. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-430-32369-3
* Heppner, J. B. 1998. Classification of Lepidoptera. Holarctic Lepidoptera, Suppl. 1.
* Pyle, R. M. 1992. Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. Houghton Mifflin. First published, 1984. ISBN 0-395-61629-8
* Nemos, F. ca. 1895. Europas bekannteste Schmetterlinge. Beschreibung der wichtigsten Arten und Anleitung zur Kenntnis und zum Sammeln der Schmetterlinge und Raupen Oestergaard Verlag, Berlin, (pdf 77MB)
*Peña, C., N. Waklberg, E. Weingartner, U. Kodandaramaiah, S. Nylin, A. V. L. Freitas, and A. V. Z. Brower. 2006. Higher level phylogeny of Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) based on DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:29-49.
*Stevens, M. 2005. The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera. Biological Reviews 80:573-588.
*Monteiro, A. and N. E. Pierce. 2001. Phylogeny of Bicyclus (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) inferred from COI, COII, and EF-1 alpha gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:264-281.
* Butterflies of North America, Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman (2003)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The East, Jeffrey Glassberg (1999)
* Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jeffrey Glassberg (2001)
* A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies, Paul Opler (1994)
* A Field Guide to Western Butterflies, Paul Opler (1999)
* Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths, Paul Opler (1994)
* Las Mariposas de Machu Picchu by Gerardo Lamas (2003)
* The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland by Jim Asher (Editor), et al.
* Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Richard Lewington
* Butterflies of Britain and Europe (Collins Wildlife Trust Guides) by Michael Chinery
* Butterflies of Europe by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington (2001)
* Butterflies of Europe New Field Guide and Key by Tristan Lafranchis (2004)
* Butterflies of Lebanon by Torben B. Larsen. Beirut. (1974)
* The butterflies of Saudi Arabia and its neighbours. by Torben B. Laren (Stacey intl.) (1984)
* The butterflies of Egypt by Torben B. Larsen (Apollo Books, Denmark). (1990)
* Field Guide to Butterlies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (2005)
* The butterflies of Kenya and their natural history by Torben B. Larsen (OUP) (1991)
* Butterflies of Sikkim Himalaya and their Natural History by Meena Haribal (1994).
* Butterflies of Peninsular India by Krushnamegh Kunte, Universities Press (2005).
* Butterflies of the Indian Region by Col M. A. Wynter-Blyth, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India (1957).
* A Guide to Common Butterflies of Singapore by Steven Neo Say Hian (Singapore Science Centre)
* Butterflies of West Malaysia and Singapore by W.A.Fleming. (Longman Malaysia)
* The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula by A.S. Corbet and H. M. Pendlebury. (The Malayan Nature Society)
* Butterflies of West Africa (two vols.) by Torben B. Larsen. (Apollo Books, Denmark) (2005)
* Oxford Butterflies of India by Thomas Gray, I.D.Kehimkar, J Punetha, Oxford University Press (2008)
* The Royal Horticultural Society butterfly exhibition
* Papilionoidea on the Tree of Life Web project
* Butterflies on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
* Collodi Butterfly House Tuscany
* Butterflies and Moths of North America
* Butterflies of America
* Butterflies of Canada
* North American Butterfly Association (NABA)
* Butterflies and Moths in the Netherlands
* Insect and butterfly diversity of Pakistan
* Butterflies of the Philippines
* Butterflies of Southern India
* Butterflies of Sri Lanka
* Butterflies of Singapore
* Israel Insect World
* Singapore Butterfly Checklist
* Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan
* Butterflies of Morocco
* Butterflies of Indo-China Chiefly Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
* Butterflies of Southeastern Sulawesi
* Naturalis Butterflies of Sulawesi (Illustrated pdf)
* Butterflies of Thailand
* Butterflies of Mexico
* Literaturatenbank Free downloads
* BugGuide.net Many images of North American butterflies, many licensed via Creative Commons
* Butterfly Pictures and Information
* Butterfly of Brazil
* Reference quality large format photographs, common butterflies of North America
* Gallery of Florida Butterflies and Moths
* Butterfly Picture Gallery
* Photographs of most of the Butterflies in Southern California
* Butterflies of Southern Illinois
* Butterflies of France
* Butterfly Movies (Tree of Life)
* 1000+ photos of Massachusetts butterflies
* European butterfly pictures - common names and wildlife photography
* Online videos of Skippers of the Northeast-USA
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Cello | null | null | data/set2/a9 | Cello
The violoncello (abbreviated to cello, or 'cello, plural cellos or celliâthe c is , as in the ch in "check", thus "chel-lo") is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra.
Study of a three-quarter size cello.
The name Cello is an abbreviation of the Italian violoncello, which means "little violone", referring to the violone ("big viol"), the lowest-pitched instrument of the viol family, the group of string instruments that were superseded by the violin family. Thus, the name carries both an augmentative "-one" ("big") and a diminutive "-cello" ("little"). Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2 (two octaves below middle C) as the lowest string, followed by G2, D3, and A3. It is tuned the same way as the viola, only an octave lower.
The cello is most closely associated with European classical music, and has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. Welcome::. to Academic Journals Inc The instrument is a part of the standard orchestra and is the bass voice of the string quartet, as well as being part of many other chamber groups. A large number of concertos and sonatas have been written for the cello. The instrument is less common in popular music, but is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello has also recently appeared in major hip-hop and R & B performances, such as singers Rihanna and Ne-Yo's performance at the American Music Awards. The instrument has also been modified for Indian classical music by Nancy Lesh and Saskia Rao-de Haas.
Among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are J. S. Bach's six unaccompanied Suites. From the Classical era, the two concertos by Joseph Haydn in C major and D major stand out, as do the five sonatas for cello and pianoforte of Beethoven which span the important three periods of his compositional evolution. Romantic era repertoire includes the Schumann Concerto, the DvoÅák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Brahms. Compositions from the early 20th century include Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano and unaccompanied cello sonatas by Zoltán Kodály and Paul Hindemith. The cello's versatility made it popular with composers in the mid- to late twentieth century such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Britten, Ligeti and Dutilleux, encouraged by soloists who specialized in contemporary music (such as Siegfried Palm and Mstislav Rostropovich) commissioning from and collaborating with composers.
The violoncello da spalla (sometimes "violoncello piccolo da spalla" or "violoncello da span") was the first cello referred to in print (by Jambe de Fer in 1556). Delbanco, Nicholas. (January 1, 2001) Harper's Bazaar. The Countess of Stanlein Restored. (Violoncello owned by Bernard Greenhouse is restored). Volume 302; Issue 1808; Page 39. "Violone" means a larger "viola" (viol), while "-cello" in Italian is a diminutive and spalla means "shoulder" in Italian so that violoncello da spalla suggest a "little big violin" that may be held on the shoulder so that the player could perform while walking or that the early, short-necked instrument was hung across the shoulder by a strap. By the turn of the twentieth century, it had grown customary to abbreviate the name violoncello to 'cello, with the apostrophe indicating the six missing prefix letters. It now is acceptable to use the name "cello" without the apostrophe and as a full designation.
The cello is typically made from wood, although other materials such as carbon fiber or aluminum may be used. A traditional cello has a spruce top, with maple for the back, sides, and neck. Other woods, such as poplar willow, are sometimes used for the back and sides. Less expensive cellos frequently have tops and backs made of laminated wood.
The top and back are traditionally hand-carved, though less expensive cellos are often machine-produced. The sides, or ribs, are made by heating the wood and bending it around forms. The cello body has a wide top bout, narrow middle formed by two C-bouts, and wide bottom bout, with the bridge and sound holes just below the middle.
The top and back of the cello has decorative border inlay known as purfling. Purfling looks attractive, but is not just for decoration. If a cello is dropped or bumped against something so that damage occurs, the purfling can stop cracks from forming. A crack may form at the rim of the instrument, but will spread no further. Without purfling, cracks can spread up or down the top or back. Playing, traveling and the weather all affect the cello and can increase a crack if purfling is not in place. Less expensive instruments typically have the purfling painted on.
Cello manufacturer Luis & Clark constructs cellos from carbon fiber. Carbon fiber instruments are particularly suitable for outdoor playing because of the strength of the material and its resistance to humidity and temperature fluctuations.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) as well as German luthier G.A. Pfretzschner produced an untold number of aluminum cellos (in addition to aluminum double basses and violins). An advertisement published in N.Y. Music Service catalogue (1930) reads: "...made entirely of aluminum with the exception of the fingerboard. They have many advantages over the wood basses and violoncellos, as they cannot crack, split or warp and are made to last forever ... possessing a tone quality that is deep, resonant and responsive to the utmost degree. Violoncello $150."
Above the main body is the carved neck, which leads to a pegbox and the scroll. The neck, pegbox, and scroll are normally carved out of a single piece of wood. Attached to the neck and extending over the body of the instrument is the fingerboard. The nut is a raised piece of wood, where the fingerboard meets the pegbox, which the strings rest on. The pegbox houses four tuning pegs, one for each string. The pegs are used to tune the cello by either tightening or loosening the string. The scroll is a traditional part of the cello and all other members of the violin family. Ebony is usually used for the tuning pegs, fingerboard, and nut, but other hard woods, such as boxwood or rosewood, can be used.
Strings on a cello have cores made out of gut, metal, or synthetic materials, such as Perlon. Most modern strings used today are also wound with metallic materials like aluminum, titanium and chromium. Cellists may mix different types of strings on their instruments.
The tailpiece and endpin are found in the lower part of the cello. The tailpiece is traditionally made of ebony or another hard wood, but can also be made of plastic or steel. It attaches the strings to the lower end of the cello, and can have one or more fine tuners. The endpin or spike is made of wood, metal or rigid carbon fiber and supports the cello in playing position. In the Baroque period the cello was held between the calves. Around the 1830s, the Belgian cellist Auguste Adrien Servais introduced the endpin and propagated its use. Modern endpins are retractable and adjustable; older ones were removed when not in use. (The word "endpin" sometimes also refers to the button of wood located at this place in all instruments in the violin family, but this is usually called "tailpin".) The sharp tip of the cello's endpin is sometimes capped with a rubber tip that protects the tip from dulling and prevents the cello from slipping on the floor.
The bridge of a cello, with a mute
The bridge holds the strings above the cello and transfers their vibrations to the top of the instrument and the soundpost inside (see below). The bridge is not glued, but rather held in place by the tension of the strings. The f-holes, named for their shape, are located on either side of the bridge, and allow air to move in and out of the instrument as part of the sound-production process. The f-holes also act as access points to the interior of the cello for repairs or maintenance. Sometimes a small hose containing a water-soaked sponge, called a Dampit, is inserted through the f-holes, and serves as a humidifier.
Internally, the cello has two important features: a bass bar, which is glued to the underside of the top of the instrument, and a round wooden sound post, which is wedged between the top and bottom plates. The bass bar, found under the bass foot of the bridge, serves to support the cello's top and distribute the vibrations. The sound post, found under the treble side of the bridge, connects the back and front of the cello. Like the bridge, the sound post is not glued, but is kept in place by the tensions of the bridge and strings. Together, the bass bar and sound post transfer the strings' vibrations to the top (front) of the instrument (and to a lesser extent the back), acting as a diaphragm to produce the instrument's sound.
Cellos are constructed and repaired using hide glue, which is strong but reversible, allowing for disassembly when needed. Tops may be glued on with diluted glue, since some repairs call for the removal of the top. Theoretically, hide glue is weaker than the body's wood, so as the top or back shrinks side-to-side, the glue holding it will let go, avoiding a crack in the plate.
A cello bow.
Traditionally, bows are made from pernambuco or brazilwood. Both come from the same species of tree (Caesalpina echinata), but pernambuco, used for higher-quality bows, is the heartwood of the tree and is darker in color than brazilwood (which is sometimes stained to compensate). Pernambuco is a heavy, resinous wood with great elasticity which makes it an ideal wood for instrument bows.
Bows are also made from other materials, such as carbon-fiber-stronger than wood-and fiberglass(often used to make inexpensive, low-quality student bows). An average cello bow is 73 cm long (shorter than a violin or viola bow) 3 cm high (from the frog to the stick) and 1.5 cm wide. The frog of a cello bow typically has a rounded corner like that of a viola bow, but is wider. A cello bow is roughly 10 grams heavier than a viola bow, which in turn is roughly 10 grams heavier than a violin bow.
Bow hair is traditionally horsehair, though synthetic hair in varying colors is also used. Prior to playing, a musician-in this case a cellist-tightens the bow by turning a screw to pull the frog (the part of the bow under the hand) back, and increase the tension of the hair. Rosin is applied by the player to make the hairs sticky. Bows need to be re-haired periodically. Ideally a bow should be re-haired every year, but this is not in great practice because of cost.
The cello developed from the bass violin, first referred to by Jambe de Fer in 1556, which was originally a three-string instrument. The first instance of a composer specifying the bass violin may have been Gabrieli in Sacrae symphoniae, 1597. Monteverdi referred to the instrument as "basso de viola da braccio" in Orfeo (1607). Although the first bass violin, possibly invented by Amati as early as 1538, was most likely inspired by the viol, it was created to be used in consorts with the violin. The bass violin was actually often referred to as a "violone," or "large viola," as were the viols of the same period. Instruments that share features with both the bass violin and the viola de gamba appear in Italian art of the early 1500s...
The invention of wire-wound strings (fine wire around a thin gut core), around 1660 in Bologna, allowed for a finer bass sound than was possible with purely gut strings on such a short body. Bolognese makers exploited this new technology to create the cello, a somewhat smaller instrument suitable for solo repertoire due to both the timbre of the instrument and the fact that the smaller size made it easier to play virtuosic passages. This instrument had disadvantages as well, however. The cello's light sound was not as suitable for church and ensemble playing, so it had to be doubled by basses or violones.
Around 1700, Italian players popularized the cello in northern Europe, although the bass violin (basse de violon) continued to be used for another two decades in France. Many existing bass violins were literally cut down in size in order to convert them into cellos according to the smaller pattern cello as developed by Stradivari, who also made a number of old pattern large cello's (the 'Servais'). Cyr 1982 The bass violin remained the "most used" instrument in England as late as 1740, where the violoncello was still "not common." Grassineau 1740 The sizes, names, and tunings of the cello varied widely by geography and time. The size was not standardized until around 1750.
Despite similarities to the viola da gamba, the cello is actually part of the viola da braccio family, meaning "viol of the arm", which includes, among others, the violin and viola. Though paintings like Bruegel's "The Rustic Wedding" and de Fer in his Epitome Musical suggest that the bass violin had alternate playing positions, these were short-lived and the more practical and ergonomic a gamba position eventually replaced them entirely.
A cello strung with gut strings. Note the absence of fine-tuning pins on the tailpiece.
Baroque era cellos differed from the modern instrument in several ways. The neck has a different form and angle which matches the baroque bass-bar and stringing. Modern cellos have an endpin at the bottom to support the instrument (and transmit some of the sound through the floor), while Baroque cellos are held only by the calves of the player. Modern bows curve in and are held at the frog; Baroque bows curve out and are held closer to the bow's point of balance. Modern strings normally have a metal core, although some use a synthetic core; Baroque strings are made of gut, with the G and C strings wire-wound. Modern cellos often have fine-tuners connecting the strings to the tailpiece, which make it much easier to tune the instrument, but such pins are rendered ineffective by the flexibility of the gut strings used on Baroque cellos. Overall, the modern instrument has much higher string tension than the Baroque cello, resulting in a louder, more projecting tone, with fewer overtones.
No educational works specifically devoted to the cello existed before the 18th century, and those that do exist contain little value to the performer beyond simple accounts of instrumental technique. The earliest cello manual is Michel Corrette's Méthode, thèorique et pratique pour apprendre en peu de temps le violoncelle dans sa perfection (Paris, 1741).
Seated Cellist
The cello is usually played while seated. Its weight is supported mainly by its endpin or spike, which rests on the floor. Sometimes, an endpin support is needed to prevent the endpin from slipping on smooth surfaces. The cello is steadied on the lower bout between the knees of the seated player, and on the upper bout against the upper chest. The neck of the cello is above the player's left shoulder, and the C-String tuning peg is just behind the left ear. The bow is drawn horizontally across the strings. In early times, female cellists sometimes played side-saddle, since it was considered improper for a lady to part her knees in public. A player's handedness does not alter the way the cello is held or used. In exceedingly rare cases the cello has been played in a mirror-image posture: this is usually because of a physical disability of one of the player's arms or hands which makes the required technique impossible for that side of the body. In such a situation, the player must decide whether or not to reverse the set-up of the cello (the string positions, bass-bar, sound post, fingerboard shape, and bridge carving are all asymmetrical).
The position of the left hand fingers along the strings determine the pitch of the note. The closer to the bridge that the string is depressed, the higher in pitch will be the resulting sound, because the vibrating string length has been shortened. In the neck positions (which use just less than half of the fingerboard, nearest the top of the instrument), the thumb rests on the back of the neck; in thumb position (a general name for notes on the remainder of the fingerboard) the thumb usually rests alongside the fingers on the string and the side of the thumb is used to play notes. The fingers are normally held curved with each knuckle bent, with the fingertips in contact with the string. If a finger is required on two (or more) strings at once to play perfect fifths (in double stops or chords) it is used flat. In slower, or more expressive playing, the contact point can move slightly away from the nail to the pad of the finger, allowing a fuller vibrato.
Vibrato is a small oscillation in the pitch of a note, usually considered expressive. It is created by a partial rotation of the upper arm at the shoulder joint, which translates into a linear oscillation of the lower arm. The fixed point of contact of the fingertip on the string absorbs this motion by rocking back and forth. It is this change in the attitude of the fingertip to the string which causes the pitch to vary. Vibrato is a key expressive device, and a well-developed vibrato technique is an essential element of a modern cellist's skill. In some styles of music, such as that of the Romantic period, vibrato may be used on almost every note. However, in other styles, such as Baroque repertoire, vibrato is used only rarely, as an ornament. In any case, the choice of whether to use vibrato, and how much, is normally a stylistic decision on the part of the player. Typically, the lower the pitch of the note played, the wider and slower the vibrato.
Harmonics played on the cello fall into two classes; natural and artificial. Natural harmonics are produced by lightly touching (but not depressing) the string with the finger at certain places, and then bowing (or, rarely, plucking) the string. For example, the halfway point of the string will produce a harmonic that is one octave above the unfingered (open) string. Natural harmonics only produce notes that are part of the harmonic series for the string on which they occur. Artificial harmonics (also called False harmonics), in which the player depresses the string fully with one finger while touching the same string lightly with another finger, can produce any notes above middle C. They usually appear with the touching note a perfect fourth above the stopped note, which produces a sound two octaves above the stopped note, although other intervals are available. All harmonics produce a distinctive flute-like sound, and are usually performed without vibrato.
Glissando ("sliding", in Italian) is an effect played by sliding the finger up or down the fingerboard without releasing the string. This causes the pitch to rise and fall smoothly, without separate, discernible steps.
In cello playing, the bow is much like the breath of a wind instrument player. Arguably, it is the major determinant in the expressiveness of the playing. The right hand holds the bow and controls the duration and character of the notes. The bow is drawn across the strings roughly halfway between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge, in a direction perpendicular to the strings. The bow is held with all five fingers of the right hand, the thumb opposite the fingers and closer to the cellist's body. The shape of the hand should resemble that of its relaxed state, with all fingers curved, including the thumb. The transmission of weight from the arm to the bow happens through the pronation (inward rotation) of the forearm, which pushes the index finger and to a lesser degree the middle finger onto the bow. The necessary counterforce is provided by the thumb. Depending upon the school of training, the other two fingers are used in various degrees to help maintain the angle of the bow to the string and are critical to controlling the bow when it is off the string. (See also spiccato).
In English, the terminology for bow direction (down and up) can be misleading. A downbow is drawn to the right of the player, and an upbow to the left. A downbow is drawn by first using the upper arm, then the forearm, then the wrist (turning slightly inward) in order to maintain a straight stroke. An upbow is drawn by moving first the forearm, then the upper arm, then the wrist (pushing slightly upward). The bow is mostly used perpendicular to the string being played. In order to perform string changes the whole arm is either lowered or lifted, with as little wrist movement as possible in order to maintain the angle to the string. However, flexibility of the wrist is necessary when changing the bow direction from up-bow to down-bow and vice versa. For very fast bow movements, the wrist is used to accomplish the horizontal movement of bow. For longer strokes, the arm is used as well as the wrist.
Tone production and volume of sound depend on a combination of several factors. The three most important ones are: bow speed, weight applied to the string, and point of contact of the bow hair with the string. A good player will be capable of a very even tone, and will counter the natural tendency to play with the most force with the part of the bow nearest to the frog or heel, and the least force near the tip. The closer to the bridge the string is bowed, the more projecting and brighter the tone, with the extreme (sul ponticello) producing a metallic, shimmery sound. If bowing closer to the fingerboard (sul tasto), the sound produced will be softer, more mellow, and less defined.
Double stops involve the playing of two notes at the same time. Two strings are fingered simultaneously, and the bow is drawn so as to sound them both at once. Triple and quadruple stops may also be played (in a "broken" fashion), but are difficult to sustain because of the change in slope of the bridge. To extend the technique in this area, Frances-Marie Uitti has invented a two-bow system: one bow plays above the strings and one below, allowing for sustained triple and quadruple stops. However, this technique is very rarely seen or used.
In pizzicato playing, the string is plucked directly with the fingers or thumb. Usually this is done with the right hand, while the bow is held away from the strings by the rest of the hand or (for extended passages) set down. A single string can be played pizzicato, or double, triple, or quadruple stops can be played. Occasionally, a player must bow one string with the right hand and simultaneously pluck another with the left. This is marked by a "+" above the note. Strumming of chords is also possible, in guitar fashion.
Col legno is the technique in which the player uses the wood rather than the hair of the bow on the strings; it takes two different forms, col legno battuto and col legno tratto. Col legno battuto is performed as a percussive technique with no sustaining of the sound. The much less common alternative is col legno tratto, wherein the wood is drawn across the string as the hair is in a normal bow stroke. Some players refuse to use this technique because of potential damage to the bow.
In spiccato playing, the strings are not "drawn" by the bow hair but struck by it, while still retaining some horizontal motion, to generate a more percussive, crisp sound. It may be performed by using the wrist to "dip" the bow into the strings. Spiccato is usually associated with lively playing. On a violin, spiccato bowing comes off the string, but on a cello, the wood of the bow may rise briskly up without the hair actually leaving the string. While playing spiccato, the bow is literally bouncing off the string. Cello players simply "dip" the bow into the string, and touch it very fast, and then lift the bow off the string.
In staccato, the player moves the bow a small distance and stops it on the string, making a short sound, the rest of the written duration being taken up by silence.
Legato is a technique where the notes are smoothly connected without accents or breaks.
Sul ponticello "on the bridge" refers to bowing closer to the bridge, while sul tasto "on the fingerboard" calls for bowing nearer the end of the fingerboard. Ponticello calls for more bow weight and slower bow speed, and produces a "harder" sound, with strong overtone content. Sul tasto, in extreme cases called "flautando," produces a more flute-like sound, with more emphasis on the fundamental frequency of the note, and softer overtones.
1/8 size cello with full size cello
Standard-sized cellos are referred to as "full-size". However, cellos come in smaller (fractional) sizes, from "seven-eighths" and "three-quarter" down to "one-sixteenth" sized cellos (e.g. 7/8, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16). The smaller-sized cellos are identical to standard cellos in construction, range, and usage, but are simply 'scaled-down' for the benefit of children and shorter adults. A "half-size" cello is not actually half the size of a "full-size", but only slightly smaller. Many smaller cellists prefer to play a "seven-eighths" cello as the hand stretches in the lower positions are less demanding. Although rare, cellos in sizes larger than four-fourths do exist. Cellists with unusually large hands may play a slightly larger than full-sized cello. Cellos made before approximately 1700 tended to be considerably larger than those made after that date, and than those made and commonly played today. Around 1680, string-making technology made lower pitches on shorter strings possible. The cellos of Stradivari, for example, can be clearly divided into two models, with the style made before 1702 characterized by larger instruments (of which only three examples are extant in their original size and configuration), and the style made during and after 1702, when Stradivari, presumably in response to the "new" type of strings, began making cellos of a smaller size. This later model is the one most commonly used by modern luthiers.
There are many accessories for the cello.
*Cases are used to protect the cello and bow (or multiple bows) when traveling and for safe storage. They are often made of carbon fiber, fiber-glass, and less commonly wood.
*Rosin, made from conifer resin, is applied to the bow hairs to increase the effectiveness of the friction, grip or bite, and allow proper sound production. Rosin may have additives to modify the friction such as beeswax, gold, silver or tin.
*Endpin stops or straps (tradenames include Rockstop and Black Hole) keep the cello from sliding if the end pin does not have a rubber piece on the end (used on wood floors) though in many cases a rubber piece will not suffice on even a wood floor. Many Cellists often use a square or rectangle of carpet that can be secured under the front two legs of the chair as an endpin stop. This is however less likely to be seen in a professional arena and more used in rehearsal or in private.Players might even use their shoe to keep the endpin in place
*Wolf tone eliminators are sometimes placed on cello strings between the tailpiece and the bridge in order to eliminate acoustic anomalies known as wolf tones or "wolfs".
*Mutes are used to change the sound of the cello by reducing overtones. Practice mutes (made of metal) significantly reduce the instrument's volume (they are also referred to as "hotel mutes"). The most common mute is a rubber disc with two holes to fit the two middle strings. It sits just after the bridge and has a flap that can be placed over the top of the bridge to mute the vibrations travelling down it to the sound post inside the cello. These are especially used due to their simplicity and can be taken off or put on very quickly due to the fact that they stay on the strings past the bridge, which don't vibrate.
*Metronomes provide a steady tempo by sounding out a certain number of beats per minute. They are adjustable to fit the tempo of the piece. Many models can also produce a tuning pitch of A4 (440 Hz), among others. These can, of course, be used for all instruments.
*Humidifiers are used to control and stabilize the humidity around and inside the cello and are popular with travelling cellists. Often placed inside the cello itself or inside the case. Some players will not use humidifiers inside their cellos because they have the potential to drip, which may cause damage to the cello
*Tuners are used to tune the instrument. A tuner helps by providing a reference pitch to tune to. Most musicians cannot memorize the exact sound of a pitch, so they need a reference pitch
Cellos are part of the standard symphony orchestra. Usually, the orchestra includes eight to twelve cellists. The cello section, in standard orchestral seating, is located on stage left (the audience's right) in the front, opposite the first violin section. However, some orchestras and conductors prefer switching the positioning of the viola and cello sections. The principal, or "first chair" cellist is the section leader, determining bowings for the section in conjunction with other string principals, and playing solos. Principal players always sit closest to the audience.
The cellos are a critical part of orchestral music; all symphonic works involve the cello section, and many pieces require cello soli or solos. Much of the time, cellos provide part of the harmony for the orchestra. On many occasions, the cello section will play the melody for a brief period of time, before returning to the harmony. There are also cello concertos, which are orchestral pieces in which a featured, solo cellist is accompanied by an entire orchestra.
There are numerous cello concertos - where a solo cello is accompanied by an orchestra - notably 25 by Vivaldi, 12 by Boccherini, 3 by C.P.E. Bach, 2 by Haydn, 2 by Saint-Saëns, 2 by DvoÅák, and one each by Schumann, Lalo and Elgar. Beethoven's Triple Concerto for Cello, Violin and Piano and Brahms' Double Concerto for Cello and Violin are also part of the concertante repertoire although in both cases the cello shares solo duties with at least one other instrument. Moreover, several composers wrote large-scale pieces for cello and orchestra, which are concertos in all but name. The most important are Strauss' tone poem Don Quixote, Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Bloch's Schelomo and Bruch's Kol Nidrei.
In the 20th century, the cello repertoire grew. This was due to the influence of virtuoso cellist Mstislav Rostropovich who inspired, commissioned and/or premiered dozens of new works. Among these, Prokofiev's Symphonia Concertante, Britten's Cello Symphony and the concertos of Shostakovich, LutosÅawski and Dutilleux have already become part of the standard repertoire. In addition, Hindemith, Barber, Honegger, Villa-Lobos, Myaskovsky, Walton, Glass, Rodrigo, Arnold, Penderecki and Ligeti also wrote major concertos for other cellists (notably Gregor Piatigorsky, Siegfried Palm and Julian Lloyd Webber).
Cellists Julian Lloyd Webber (left) and Mstislav Rostropovich
There are also many sonatas for cello and piano. Those written by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Britten are the most famous.
Finally, there are several unaccompanied pieces for cello, most importantly J.S. Bach's six Unaccompanied Suites for Cello (arguably the most important cello pieces), Zoltán Kodály's Sonata for Solo Cello and Britten's three Unaccompanied Suites for Cello. Other notable examples include Dutilleux' Trois Strophes sur le Nom de Sacher, Berio's Les Mots Sont Allés (both part of a series of twelve compositions for solo cello commissioned by Rostropovich for Swiss conductor Paul Sacher's 70th birthday), Ligeti and Carter's sonatas and Xenakis' Nomos Alpha and Kottos.
The cello is a member of the traditional string quartet as well as string quintets, sextet or trios and other mixed ensembles.
There are also pieces written for two, three, four or more cellos; this type of ensemble is also called a "cello choir" and its sound is familiar from the introduction to Rossini's William Tell Overture as well as Zaccharias' prayer scene in Verdi's Nabucco. As a self-sufficient ensemble, its most famous repertoire is Villa-Lobos' first of his Bachianas Brasileiras for cello ensemble (the fifth is for soprano and 8 cellos). Another example is Boulez' Messagesquisse for 7 cellos. The Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (or "the Twelve" as they have since taken to being called) specialize in this repertoire and have commissioned many works, including arrangements of well-known popular songs.
Though the cello is less common in popular music than in classical music, it is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello is rarely part of a group's standard lineup (though like its cousin the violin it is becoming more common in mainstream pop).
In the 1960s, artists such as the Beatles and Cher used the cello in popular music, in songs such as "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)," "Eleanor Rigby" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the 1970s, the Electric Light Orchestra enjoyed great commercial success taking inspiration from so-called "Beatlesque" arrangements, adding the cello (and violin) to the standard rock combo line-up and in 1978 the UK based rock band, Colosseum II, collaborated with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber on the recording Variations. Most notably, Pink Floyd included a cello solo in their 1970 epic instrumental Atom Heart Mother. Bass guitarist Mike Rutherford of Genesis was originally a cellist and included some cello parts in their Foxtrot album.
Established non-traditional cello groups include Apocalyptica, a group of Finnish cellists best known for their versions of Metallica songs, Rasputina, a group of two female cellists committed to an intricate cello style intermingled with Gothic music, Von Cello, a cello fronted rock power trio, and Break of Reality who mix elements of classical music with the more modern rock and metal genre. These groups are examples of a style that has become known as cello rock. The crossover string quartet bond also includes a cellist. Silenzium and Vivacello are Russian (Novosibirsk) groups playing rock and metal and having more and more popularity in Siberia.
More recent bands using the cello are Aerosmith, Nirvana, Oasis, Murder by Death, Cursive, and OneRepublic. So-called "chamber pop" artists like Kronos Quartet, The Vitamin String Quartet and Margot and the Nuclear So and So's have also recently made cello common in modern alternative rock. Heavy metal band System of a Down has also made use of the cello's rich sound. The indie rock band The Stiletto Formal are known for using a cello as a major staple of their sound, and the orch-rock group,The Polyphonic Spree, which has pioneered the use of stringed and symphonic instruments, employs the cello in very creative ways for many of their "psycadelic-esque" melodies.
Pop star Richard Marx uses a cello in some of his studio recordings, such as "One Thing Left" and "In This All Alone."
Post-rock bands and other avant-garde groups commonly feature strings; cellos and violins over violas and contrabasses.
Modern musical theatre pieces like Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, Duncan Sheik's Spring Awakening, Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins, and Ricky Ian Gordon's My Life with Albertine use small string ensembles (including solo cellos) to a prominent extent.
The cello can also be used in bluegrass and folk music, with notable players including Ben Sollee of the Sparrow Quartet and the "Cajun cellist" Sean Grissom.
The cello and the double bass are now also used in some modern Chinese orchestras .
In jazz, bassists Oscar Pettiford and Harry Babasin were among the first to use the cello as a solo instrument; both tuned their instrument in fourths, an octave above the double bass. Fred Katz (who was not a bassist) was one of the first notable jazz cellists to use the instrument's standard tuning and arco technique. Contemporary jazz cellists include Abdul Wadud, Diedre Murray, Ron Carter, Dave Holland, David Darling, Lucio Amanti, Akua Dixon, Ernst Reijseger, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Vincent Courtois, Jean-Charles Capon, and Erik Friedlander.
Cellos are made by luthiers, specialists in building and repairing stringed instruments, ranging from guitars to violins. The following luthiers are notable for the cellos they have produced:
*Nicolò Amati and others in the Amati family
*William Forster
*Nicolò Gagliano
*Matteo Goffriller
*Giovanni Battista Guadagnini
*Giuseppe Guarneri
*Domenico Montagnana
*Giovanni Battista Rogeri
*Francesco Ruggieri
*Stefano Scarampella
*Antonio Stradivari
*David Tecchler
*Carlo Giuseppe Testore
*Jean Baptiste Vuillaume
A person who plays the cello is called a cellist, not a "celloist." For a list of notable cellists, see the list of cellists. See also .
Specific instruments are, or become, famous, for a variety of reasons. An instrument's notability may arise from its age, the fame of its maker, its physical appearance, its acoustic properties, and its use by notable performers. The most famous instruments are generally known for all of these things. The most highly prized instruments are now collector's items, and are priced beyond the reach of most musicians. These instruments are typically owned by some kind of organization or investment group, which loans the instrument to a performer for his or her use. (For example, the Davidov Stradivarius, which is currently in the possession of one of the most widely-known living cellists, Yo-Yo Ma, is actually owned by the Vuitton Foundation.
Some notable cellos:
*the "King", by Andrea Amati, is one of the oldest known cellos, built between 1538 and 1560. It is in the collection of the National Music Museum in South Dakota. National Music Museum page
*Servais Stradivarius is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
*Davidov Stradivarius, played by Jacqueline du Pré, currently played by Yo-Yo Ma
*Barjansky Stradivarius, played by Julian Lloyd Webber
*Bonjour Stradivarius, played by Soo Bae
*Paganini-Ladenburg Stradivarius, played by Clive Greensmith of the Tokyo String Quartet
*Duport Stradivarius, played by Mstislav Rostropovich
*Piatti Stradivarius, 1720, played by Carlos Prieto
* Brahms guitar
* Electric cello
* List of solo cello pieces
* List of compositions for cello and piano
* List of compositions for cello and orchestra
* Double Concerto for Violin and Cello
* Triple concerto for violin, cello, and piano
* String instrument repertoire
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* Apocalyptica
*Stephen Bonta. "Violoncello", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed January 28 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
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* The Internet Cello Society: an online community of cellists; includes several forums.
* Sources for the prescribed sheet music for the ABRSM practical Cello exams.
* Cello Teacher's Friend : A place for cellists to share ideas.
* cellist.nl: An international register of professional cellists, teachers, and students.
* Cello History: A brief history of the cello
* A Cello Teacher Training Manual And Syllabus
* Bowed Radio (podcast focusing on new music for bowed string instruments)
* Elgar Cello Concerto Performance
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Cello | null | null | data/set2/a9 | Cello
The violoncello (abbreviated to cello, or 'cello, plural cellos or celliâthe c is , as in the ch in "check", thus "chel-lo") is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra.
Study of a three-quarter size cello.
The name Cello is an abbreviation of the Italian violoncello, which means "little violone", referring to the violone ("big viol"), the lowest-pitched instrument of the viol family, the group of string instruments that were superseded by the violin family. Thus, the name carries both an augmentative "-one" ("big") and a diminutive "-cello" ("little"). Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2 (two octaves below middle C) as the lowest string, followed by G2, D3, and A3. It is tuned the same way as the viola, only an octave lower.
The cello is most closely associated with European classical music, and has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. Welcome::. to Academic Journals Inc The instrument is a part of the standard orchestra and is the bass voice of the string quartet, as well as being part of many other chamber groups. A large number of concertos and sonatas have been written for the cello. The instrument is less common in popular music, but is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello has also recently appeared in major hip-hop and R & B performances, such as singers Rihanna and Ne-Yo's performance at the American Music Awards. The instrument has also been modified for Indian classical music by Nancy Lesh and Saskia Rao-de Haas.
Among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are J. S. Bach's six unaccompanied Suites. From the Classical era, the two concertos by Joseph Haydn in C major and D major stand out, as do the five sonatas for cello and pianoforte of Beethoven which span the important three periods of his compositional evolution. Romantic era repertoire includes the Schumann Concerto, the DvoÅák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Brahms. Compositions from the early 20th century include Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano and unaccompanied cello sonatas by Zoltán Kodály and Paul Hindemith. The cello's versatility made it popular with composers in the mid- to late twentieth century such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Britten, Ligeti and Dutilleux, encouraged by soloists who specialized in contemporary music (such as Siegfried Palm and Mstislav Rostropovich) commissioning from and collaborating with composers.
The violoncello da spalla (sometimes "violoncello piccolo da spalla" or "violoncello da span") was the first cello referred to in print (by Jambe de Fer in 1556). Delbanco, Nicholas. (January 1, 2001) Harper's Bazaar. The Countess of Stanlein Restored. (Violoncello owned by Bernard Greenhouse is restored). Volume 302; Issue 1808; Page 39. "Violone" means a larger "viola" (viol), while "-cello" in Italian is a diminutive and spalla means "shoulder" in Italian so that violoncello da spalla suggest a "little big violin" that may be held on the shoulder so that the player could perform while walking or that the early, short-necked instrument was hung across the shoulder by a strap. By the turn of the twentieth century, it had grown customary to abbreviate the name violoncello to 'cello, with the apostrophe indicating the six missing prefix letters. It now is acceptable to use the name "cello" without the apostrophe and as a full designation.
The cello is typically made from wood, although other materials such as carbon fiber or aluminum may be used. A traditional cello has a spruce top, with maple for the back, sides, and neck. Other woods, such as poplar willow, are sometimes used for the back and sides. Less expensive cellos frequently have tops and backs made of laminated wood.
The top and back are traditionally hand-carved, though less expensive cellos are often machine-produced. The sides, or ribs, are made by heating the wood and bending it around forms. The cello body has a wide top bout, narrow middle formed by two C-bouts, and wide bottom bout, with the bridge and sound holes just below the middle.
The top and back of the cello has decorative border inlay known as purfling. Purfling looks attractive, but is not just for decoration. If a cello is dropped or bumped against something so that damage occurs, the purfling can stop cracks from forming. A crack may form at the rim of the instrument, but will spread no further. Without purfling, cracks can spread up or down the top or back. Playing, traveling and the weather all affect the cello and can increase a crack if purfling is not in place. Less expensive instruments typically have the purfling painted on.
Cello manufacturer Luis & Clark constructs cellos from carbon fiber. Carbon fiber instruments are particularly suitable for outdoor playing because of the strength of the material and its resistance to humidity and temperature fluctuations.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) as well as German luthier G.A. Pfretzschner produced an untold number of aluminum cellos (in addition to aluminum double basses and violins). An advertisement published in N.Y. Music Service catalogue (1930) reads: "...made entirely of aluminum with the exception of the fingerboard. They have many advantages over the wood basses and violoncellos, as they cannot crack, split or warp and are made to last forever ... possessing a tone quality that is deep, resonant and responsive to the utmost degree. Violoncello $150."
Above the main body is the carved neck, which leads to a pegbox and the scroll. The neck, pegbox, and scroll are normally carved out of a single piece of wood. Attached to the neck and extending over the body of the instrument is the fingerboard. The nut is a raised piece of wood, where the fingerboard meets the pegbox, which the strings rest on. The pegbox houses four tuning pegs, one for each string. The pegs are used to tune the cello by either tightening or loosening the string. The scroll is a traditional part of the cello and all other members of the violin family. Ebony is usually used for the tuning pegs, fingerboard, and nut, but other hard woods, such as boxwood or rosewood, can be used.
Strings on a cello have cores made out of gut, metal, or synthetic materials, such as Perlon. Most modern strings used today are also wound with metallic materials like aluminum, titanium and chromium. Cellists may mix different types of strings on their instruments.
The tailpiece and endpin are found in the lower part of the cello. The tailpiece is traditionally made of ebony or another hard wood, but can also be made of plastic or steel. It attaches the strings to the lower end of the cello, and can have one or more fine tuners. The endpin or spike is made of wood, metal or rigid carbon fiber and supports the cello in playing position. In the Baroque period the cello was held between the calves. Around the 1830s, the Belgian cellist Auguste Adrien Servais introduced the endpin and propagated its use. Modern endpins are retractable and adjustable; older ones were removed when not in use. (The word "endpin" sometimes also refers to the button of wood located at this place in all instruments in the violin family, but this is usually called "tailpin".) The sharp tip of the cello's endpin is sometimes capped with a rubber tip that protects the tip from dulling and prevents the cello from slipping on the floor.
The bridge of a cello, with a mute
The bridge holds the strings above the cello and transfers their vibrations to the top of the instrument and the soundpost inside (see below). The bridge is not glued, but rather held in place by the tension of the strings. The f-holes, named for their shape, are located on either side of the bridge, and allow air to move in and out of the instrument as part of the sound-production process. The f-holes also act as access points to the interior of the cello for repairs or maintenance. Sometimes a small hose containing a water-soaked sponge, called a Dampit, is inserted through the f-holes, and serves as a humidifier.
Internally, the cello has two important features: a bass bar, which is glued to the underside of the top of the instrument, and a round wooden sound post, which is wedged between the top and bottom plates. The bass bar, found under the bass foot of the bridge, serves to support the cello's top and distribute the vibrations. The sound post, found under the treble side of the bridge, connects the back and front of the cello. Like the bridge, the sound post is not glued, but is kept in place by the tensions of the bridge and strings. Together, the bass bar and sound post transfer the strings' vibrations to the top (front) of the instrument (and to a lesser extent the back), acting as a diaphragm to produce the instrument's sound.
Cellos are constructed and repaired using hide glue, which is strong but reversible, allowing for disassembly when needed. Tops may be glued on with diluted glue, since some repairs call for the removal of the top. Theoretically, hide glue is weaker than the body's wood, so as the top or back shrinks side-to-side, the glue holding it will let go, avoiding a crack in the plate.
A cello bow.
Traditionally, bows are made from pernambuco or brazilwood. Both come from the same species of tree (Caesalpina echinata), but pernambuco, used for higher-quality bows, is the heartwood of the tree and is darker in color than brazilwood (which is sometimes stained to compensate). Pernambuco is a heavy, resinous wood with great elasticity which makes it an ideal wood for instrument bows.
Bows are also made from other materials, such as carbon-fiber-stronger than wood-and fiberglass(often used to make inexpensive, low-quality student bows). An average cello bow is 73 cm long (shorter than a violin or viola bow) 3 cm high (from the frog to the stick) and 1.5 cm wide. The frog of a cello bow typically has a rounded corner like that of a viola bow, but is wider. A cello bow is roughly 10 grams heavier than a viola bow, which in turn is roughly 10 grams heavier than a violin bow.
Bow hair is traditionally horsehair, though synthetic hair in varying colors is also used. Prior to playing, a musician-in this case a cellist-tightens the bow by turning a screw to pull the frog (the part of the bow under the hand) back, and increase the tension of the hair. Rosin is applied by the player to make the hairs sticky. Bows need to be re-haired periodically. Ideally a bow should be re-haired every year, but this is not in great practice because of cost.
The cello developed from the bass violin, first referred to by Jambe de Fer in 1556, which was originally a three-string instrument. The first instance of a composer specifying the bass violin may have been Gabrieli in Sacrae symphoniae, 1597. Monteverdi referred to the instrument as "basso de viola da braccio" in Orfeo (1607). Although the first bass violin, possibly invented by Amati as early as 1538, was most likely inspired by the viol, it was created to be used in consorts with the violin. The bass violin was actually often referred to as a "violone," or "large viola," as were the viols of the same period. Instruments that share features with both the bass violin and the viola de gamba appear in Italian art of the early 1500s...
The invention of wire-wound strings (fine wire around a thin gut core), around 1660 in Bologna, allowed for a finer bass sound than was possible with purely gut strings on such a short body. Bolognese makers exploited this new technology to create the cello, a somewhat smaller instrument suitable for solo repertoire due to both the timbre of the instrument and the fact that the smaller size made it easier to play virtuosic passages. This instrument had disadvantages as well, however. The cello's light sound was not as suitable for church and ensemble playing, so it had to be doubled by basses or violones.
Around 1700, Italian players popularized the cello in northern Europe, although the bass violin (basse de violon) continued to be used for another two decades in France. Many existing bass violins were literally cut down in size in order to convert them into cellos according to the smaller pattern cello as developed by Stradivari, who also made a number of old pattern large cello's (the 'Servais'). Cyr 1982 The bass violin remained the "most used" instrument in England as late as 1740, where the violoncello was still "not common." Grassineau 1740 The sizes, names, and tunings of the cello varied widely by geography and time. The size was not standardized until around 1750.
Despite similarities to the viola da gamba, the cello is actually part of the viola da braccio family, meaning "viol of the arm", which includes, among others, the violin and viola. Though paintings like Bruegel's "The Rustic Wedding" and de Fer in his Epitome Musical suggest that the bass violin had alternate playing positions, these were short-lived and the more practical and ergonomic a gamba position eventually replaced them entirely.
A cello strung with gut strings. Note the absence of fine-tuning pins on the tailpiece.
Baroque era cellos differed from the modern instrument in several ways. The neck has a different form and angle which matches the baroque bass-bar and stringing. Modern cellos have an endpin at the bottom to support the instrument (and transmit some of the sound through the floor), while Baroque cellos are held only by the calves of the player. Modern bows curve in and are held at the frog; Baroque bows curve out and are held closer to the bow's point of balance. Modern strings normally have a metal core, although some use a synthetic core; Baroque strings are made of gut, with the G and C strings wire-wound. Modern cellos often have fine-tuners connecting the strings to the tailpiece, which make it much easier to tune the instrument, but such pins are rendered ineffective by the flexibility of the gut strings used on Baroque cellos. Overall, the modern instrument has much higher string tension than the Baroque cello, resulting in a louder, more projecting tone, with fewer overtones.
No educational works specifically devoted to the cello existed before the 18th century, and those that do exist contain little value to the performer beyond simple accounts of instrumental technique. The earliest cello manual is Michel Corrette's Méthode, thèorique et pratique pour apprendre en peu de temps le violoncelle dans sa perfection (Paris, 1741).
Seated Cellist
The cello is usually played while seated. Its weight is supported mainly by its endpin or spike, which rests on the floor. Sometimes, an endpin support is needed to prevent the endpin from slipping on smooth surfaces. The cello is steadied on the lower bout between the knees of the seated player, and on the upper bout against the upper chest. The neck of the cello is above the player's left shoulder, and the C-String tuning peg is just behind the left ear. The bow is drawn horizontally across the strings. In early times, female cellists sometimes played side-saddle, since it was considered improper for a lady to part her knees in public. A player's handedness does not alter the way the cello is held or used. In exceedingly rare cases the cello has been played in a mirror-image posture: this is usually because of a physical disability of one of the player's arms or hands which makes the required technique impossible for that side of the body. In such a situation, the player must decide whether or not to reverse the set-up of the cello (the string positions, bass-bar, sound post, fingerboard shape, and bridge carving are all asymmetrical).
The position of the left hand fingers along the strings determine the pitch of the note. The closer to the bridge that the string is depressed, the higher in pitch will be the resulting sound, because the vibrating string length has been shortened. In the neck positions (which use just less than half of the fingerboard, nearest the top of the instrument), the thumb rests on the back of the neck; in thumb position (a general name for notes on the remainder of the fingerboard) the thumb usually rests alongside the fingers on the string and the side of the thumb is used to play notes. The fingers are normally held curved with each knuckle bent, with the fingertips in contact with the string. If a finger is required on two (or more) strings at once to play perfect fifths (in double stops or chords) it is used flat. In slower, or more expressive playing, the contact point can move slightly away from the nail to the pad of the finger, allowing a fuller vibrato.
Vibrato is a small oscillation in the pitch of a note, usually considered expressive. It is created by a partial rotation of the upper arm at the shoulder joint, which translates into a linear oscillation of the lower arm. The fixed point of contact of the fingertip on the string absorbs this motion by rocking back and forth. It is this change in the attitude of the fingertip to the string which causes the pitch to vary. Vibrato is a key expressive device, and a well-developed vibrato technique is an essential element of a modern cellist's skill. In some styles of music, such as that of the Romantic period, vibrato may be used on almost every note. However, in other styles, such as Baroque repertoire, vibrato is used only rarely, as an ornament. In any case, the choice of whether to use vibrato, and how much, is normally a stylistic decision on the part of the player. Typically, the lower the pitch of the note played, the wider and slower the vibrato.
Harmonics played on the cello fall into two classes; natural and artificial. Natural harmonics are produced by lightly touching (but not depressing) the string with the finger at certain places, and then bowing (or, rarely, plucking) the string. For example, the halfway point of the string will produce a harmonic that is one octave above the unfingered (open) string. Natural harmonics only produce notes that are part of the harmonic series for the string on which they occur. Artificial harmonics (also called False harmonics), in which the player depresses the string fully with one finger while touching the same string lightly with another finger, can produce any notes above middle C. They usually appear with the touching note a perfect fourth above the stopped note, which produces a sound two octaves above the stopped note, although other intervals are available. All harmonics produce a distinctive flute-like sound, and are usually performed without vibrato.
Glissando ("sliding", in Italian) is an effect played by sliding the finger up or down the fingerboard without releasing the string. This causes the pitch to rise and fall smoothly, without separate, discernible steps.
In cello playing, the bow is much like the breath of a wind instrument player. Arguably, it is the major determinant in the expressiveness of the playing. The right hand holds the bow and controls the duration and character of the notes. The bow is drawn across the strings roughly halfway between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge, in a direction perpendicular to the strings. The bow is held with all five fingers of the right hand, the thumb opposite the fingers and closer to the cellist's body. The shape of the hand should resemble that of its relaxed state, with all fingers curved, including the thumb. The transmission of weight from the arm to the bow happens through the pronation (inward rotation) of the forearm, which pushes the index finger and to a lesser degree the middle finger onto the bow. The necessary counterforce is provided by the thumb. Depending upon the school of training, the other two fingers are used in various degrees to help maintain the angle of the bow to the string and are critical to controlling the bow when it is off the string. (See also spiccato).
In English, the terminology for bow direction (down and up) can be misleading. A downbow is drawn to the right of the player, and an upbow to the left. A downbow is drawn by first using the upper arm, then the forearm, then the wrist (turning slightly inward) in order to maintain a straight stroke. An upbow is drawn by moving first the forearm, then the upper arm, then the wrist (pushing slightly upward). The bow is mostly used perpendicular to the string being played. In order to perform string changes the whole arm is either lowered or lifted, with as little wrist movement as possible in order to maintain the angle to the string. However, flexibility of the wrist is necessary when changing the bow direction from up-bow to down-bow and vice versa. For very fast bow movements, the wrist is used to accomplish the horizontal movement of bow. For longer strokes, the arm is used as well as the wrist.
Tone production and volume of sound depend on a combination of several factors. The three most important ones are: bow speed, weight applied to the string, and point of contact of the bow hair with the string. A good player will be capable of a very even tone, and will counter the natural tendency to play with the most force with the part of the bow nearest to the frog or heel, and the least force near the tip. The closer to the bridge the string is bowed, the more projecting and brighter the tone, with the extreme (sul ponticello) producing a metallic, shimmery sound. If bowing closer to the fingerboard (sul tasto), the sound produced will be softer, more mellow, and less defined.
Double stops involve the playing of two notes at the same time. Two strings are fingered simultaneously, and the bow is drawn so as to sound them both at once. Triple and quadruple stops may also be played (in a "broken" fashion), but are difficult to sustain because of the change in slope of the bridge. To extend the technique in this area, Frances-Marie Uitti has invented a two-bow system: one bow plays above the strings and one below, allowing for sustained triple and quadruple stops. However, this technique is very rarely seen or used.
In pizzicato playing, the string is plucked directly with the fingers or thumb. Usually this is done with the right hand, while the bow is held away from the strings by the rest of the hand or (for extended passages) set down. A single string can be played pizzicato, or double, triple, or quadruple stops can be played. Occasionally, a player must bow one string with the right hand and simultaneously pluck another with the left. This is marked by a "+" above the note. Strumming of chords is also possible, in guitar fashion.
Col legno is the technique in which the player uses the wood rather than the hair of the bow on the strings; it takes two different forms, col legno battuto and col legno tratto. Col legno battuto is performed as a percussive technique with no sustaining of the sound. The much less common alternative is col legno tratto, wherein the wood is drawn across the string as the hair is in a normal bow stroke. Some players refuse to use this technique because of potential damage to the bow.
In spiccato playing, the strings are not "drawn" by the bow hair but struck by it, while still retaining some horizontal motion, to generate a more percussive, crisp sound. It may be performed by using the wrist to "dip" the bow into the strings. Spiccato is usually associated with lively playing. On a violin, spiccato bowing comes off the string, but on a cello, the wood of the bow may rise briskly up without the hair actually leaving the string. While playing spiccato, the bow is literally bouncing off the string. Cello players simply "dip" the bow into the string, and touch it very fast, and then lift the bow off the string.
In staccato, the player moves the bow a small distance and stops it on the string, making a short sound, the rest of the written duration being taken up by silence.
Legato is a technique where the notes are smoothly connected without accents or breaks.
Sul ponticello "on the bridge" refers to bowing closer to the bridge, while sul tasto "on the fingerboard" calls for bowing nearer the end of the fingerboard. Ponticello calls for more bow weight and slower bow speed, and produces a "harder" sound, with strong overtone content. Sul tasto, in extreme cases called "flautando," produces a more flute-like sound, with more emphasis on the fundamental frequency of the note, and softer overtones.
1/8 size cello with full size cello
Standard-sized cellos are referred to as "full-size". However, cellos come in smaller (fractional) sizes, from "seven-eighths" and "three-quarter" down to "one-sixteenth" sized cellos (e.g. 7/8, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16). The smaller-sized cellos are identical to standard cellos in construction, range, and usage, but are simply 'scaled-down' for the benefit of children and shorter adults. A "half-size" cello is not actually half the size of a "full-size", but only slightly smaller. Many smaller cellists prefer to play a "seven-eighths" cello as the hand stretches in the lower positions are less demanding. Although rare, cellos in sizes larger than four-fourths do exist. Cellists with unusually large hands may play a slightly larger than full-sized cello. Cellos made before approximately 1700 tended to be considerably larger than those made after that date, and than those made and commonly played today. Around 1680, string-making technology made lower pitches on shorter strings possible. The cellos of Stradivari, for example, can be clearly divided into two models, with the style made before 1702 characterized by larger instruments (of which only three examples are extant in their original size and configuration), and the style made during and after 1702, when Stradivari, presumably in response to the "new" type of strings, began making cellos of a smaller size. This later model is the one most commonly used by modern luthiers.
There are many accessories for the cello.
*Cases are used to protect the cello and bow (or multiple bows) when traveling and for safe storage. They are often made of carbon fiber, fiber-glass, and less commonly wood.
*Rosin, made from conifer resin, is applied to the bow hairs to increase the effectiveness of the friction, grip or bite, and allow proper sound production. Rosin may have additives to modify the friction such as beeswax, gold, silver or tin.
*Endpin stops or straps (tradenames include Rockstop and Black Hole) keep the cello from sliding if the end pin does not have a rubber piece on the end (used on wood floors) though in many cases a rubber piece will not suffice on even a wood floor. Many Cellists often use a square or rectangle of carpet that can be secured under the front two legs of the chair as an endpin stop. This is however less likely to be seen in a professional arena and more used in rehearsal or in private.Players might even use their shoe to keep the endpin in place
*Wolf tone eliminators are sometimes placed on cello strings between the tailpiece and the bridge in order to eliminate acoustic anomalies known as wolf tones or "wolfs".
*Mutes are used to change the sound of the cello by reducing overtones. Practice mutes (made of metal) significantly reduce the instrument's volume (they are also referred to as "hotel mutes"). The most common mute is a rubber disc with two holes to fit the two middle strings. It sits just after the bridge and has a flap that can be placed over the top of the bridge to mute the vibrations travelling down it to the sound post inside the cello. These are especially used due to their simplicity and can be taken off or put on very quickly due to the fact that they stay on the strings past the bridge, which don't vibrate.
*Metronomes provide a steady tempo by sounding out a certain number of beats per minute. They are adjustable to fit the tempo of the piece. Many models can also produce a tuning pitch of A4 (440 Hz), among others. These can, of course, be used for all instruments.
*Humidifiers are used to control and stabilize the humidity around and inside the cello and are popular with travelling cellists. Often placed inside the cello itself or inside the case. Some players will not use humidifiers inside their cellos because they have the potential to drip, which may cause damage to the cello
*Tuners are used to tune the instrument. A tuner helps by providing a reference pitch to tune to. Most musicians cannot memorize the exact sound of a pitch, so they need a reference pitch
Cellos are part of the standard symphony orchestra. Usually, the orchestra includes eight to twelve cellists. The cello section, in standard orchestral seating, is located on stage left (the audience's right) in the front, opposite the first violin section. However, some orchestras and conductors prefer switching the positioning of the viola and cello sections. The principal, or "first chair" cellist is the section leader, determining bowings for the section in conjunction with other string principals, and playing solos. Principal players always sit closest to the audience.
The cellos are a critical part of orchestral music; all symphonic works involve the cello section, and many pieces require cello soli or solos. Much of the time, cellos provide part of the harmony for the orchestra. On many occasions, the cello section will play the melody for a brief period of time, before returning to the harmony. There are also cello concertos, which are orchestral pieces in which a featured, solo cellist is accompanied by an entire orchestra.
There are numerous cello concertos - where a solo cello is accompanied by an orchestra - notably 25 by Vivaldi, 12 by Boccherini, 3 by C.P.E. Bach, 2 by Haydn, 2 by Saint-Saëns, 2 by DvoÅák, and one each by Schumann, Lalo and Elgar. Beethoven's Triple Concerto for Cello, Violin and Piano and Brahms' Double Concerto for Cello and Violin are also part of the concertante repertoire although in both cases the cello shares solo duties with at least one other instrument. Moreover, several composers wrote large-scale pieces for cello and orchestra, which are concertos in all but name. The most important are Strauss' tone poem Don Quixote, Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Bloch's Schelomo and Bruch's Kol Nidrei.
In the 20th century, the cello repertoire grew. This was due to the influence of virtuoso cellist Mstislav Rostropovich who inspired, commissioned and/or premiered dozens of new works. Among these, Prokofiev's Symphonia Concertante, Britten's Cello Symphony and the concertos of Shostakovich, LutosÅawski and Dutilleux have already become part of the standard repertoire. In addition, Hindemith, Barber, Honegger, Villa-Lobos, Myaskovsky, Walton, Glass, Rodrigo, Arnold, Penderecki and Ligeti also wrote major concertos for other cellists (notably Gregor Piatigorsky, Siegfried Palm and Julian Lloyd Webber).
Cellists Julian Lloyd Webber (left) and Mstislav Rostropovich
There are also many sonatas for cello and piano. Those written by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Britten are the most famous.
Finally, there are several unaccompanied pieces for cello, most importantly J.S. Bach's six Unaccompanied Suites for Cello (arguably the most important cello pieces), Zoltán Kodály's Sonata for Solo Cello and Britten's three Unaccompanied Suites for Cello. Other notable examples include Dutilleux' Trois Strophes sur le Nom de Sacher, Berio's Les Mots Sont Allés (both part of a series of twelve compositions for solo cello commissioned by Rostropovich for Swiss conductor Paul Sacher's 70th birthday), Ligeti and Carter's sonatas and Xenakis' Nomos Alpha and Kottos.
The cello is a member of the traditional string quartet as well as string quintets, sextet or trios and other mixed ensembles.
There are also pieces written for two, three, four or more cellos; this type of ensemble is also called a "cello choir" and its sound is familiar from the introduction to Rossini's William Tell Overture as well as Zaccharias' prayer scene in Verdi's Nabucco. As a self-sufficient ensemble, its most famous repertoire is Villa-Lobos' first of his Bachianas Brasileiras for cello ensemble (the fifth is for soprano and 8 cellos). Another example is Boulez' Messagesquisse for 7 cellos. The Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (or "the Twelve" as they have since taken to being called) specialize in this repertoire and have commissioned many works, including arrangements of well-known popular songs.
Though the cello is less common in popular music than in classical music, it is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello is rarely part of a group's standard lineup (though like its cousin the violin it is becoming more common in mainstream pop).
In the 1960s, artists such as the Beatles and Cher used the cello in popular music, in songs such as "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)," "Eleanor Rigby" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the 1970s, the Electric Light Orchestra enjoyed great commercial success taking inspiration from so-called "Beatlesque" arrangements, adding the cello (and violin) to the standard rock combo line-up and in 1978 the UK based rock band, Colosseum II, collaborated with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber on the recording Variations. Most notably, Pink Floyd included a cello solo in their 1970 epic instrumental Atom Heart Mother. Bass guitarist Mike Rutherford of Genesis was originally a cellist and included some cello parts in their Foxtrot album.
Established non-traditional cello groups include Apocalyptica, a group of Finnish cellists best known for their versions of Metallica songs, Rasputina, a group of two female cellists committed to an intricate cello style intermingled with Gothic music, Von Cello, a cello fronted rock power trio, and Break of Reality who mix elements of classical music with the more modern rock and metal genre. These groups are examples of a style that has become known as cello rock. The crossover string quartet bond also includes a cellist. Silenzium and Vivacello are Russian (Novosibirsk) groups playing rock and metal and having more and more popularity in Siberia.
More recent bands using the cello are Aerosmith, Nirvana, Oasis, Murder by Death, Cursive, and OneRepublic. So-called "chamber pop" artists like Kronos Quartet, The Vitamin String Quartet and Margot and the Nuclear So and So's have also recently made cello common in modern alternative rock. Heavy metal band System of a Down has also made use of the cello's rich sound. The indie rock band The Stiletto Formal are known for using a cello as a major staple of their sound, and the orch-rock group,The Polyphonic Spree, which has pioneered the use of stringed and symphonic instruments, employs the cello in very creative ways for many of their "psycadelic-esque" melodies.
Pop star Richard Marx uses a cello in some of his studio recordings, such as "One Thing Left" and "In This All Alone."
Post-rock bands and other avant-garde groups commonly feature strings; cellos and violins over violas and contrabasses.
Modern musical theatre pieces like Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, Duncan Sheik's Spring Awakening, Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins, and Ricky Ian Gordon's My Life with Albertine use small string ensembles (including solo cellos) to a prominent extent.
The cello can also be used in bluegrass and folk music, with notable players including Ben Sollee of the Sparrow Quartet and the "Cajun cellist" Sean Grissom.
The cello and the double bass are now also used in some modern Chinese orchestras .
In jazz, bassists Oscar Pettiford and Harry Babasin were among the first to use the cello as a solo instrument; both tuned their instrument in fourths, an octave above the double bass. Fred Katz (who was not a bassist) was one of the first notable jazz cellists to use the instrument's standard tuning and arco technique. Contemporary jazz cellists include Abdul Wadud, Diedre Murray, Ron Carter, Dave Holland, David Darling, Lucio Amanti, Akua Dixon, Ernst Reijseger, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Vincent Courtois, Jean-Charles Capon, and Erik Friedlander.
Cellos are made by luthiers, specialists in building and repairing stringed instruments, ranging from guitars to violins. The following luthiers are notable for the cellos they have produced:
*Nicolò Amati and others in the Amati family
*William Forster
*Nicolò Gagliano
*Matteo Goffriller
*Giovanni Battista Guadagnini
*Giuseppe Guarneri
*Domenico Montagnana
*Giovanni Battista Rogeri
*Francesco Ruggieri
*Stefano Scarampella
*Antonio Stradivari
*David Tecchler
*Carlo Giuseppe Testore
*Jean Baptiste Vuillaume
A person who plays the cello is called a cellist, not a "celloist." For a list of notable cellists, see the list of cellists. See also .
Specific instruments are, or become, famous, for a variety of reasons. An instrument's notability may arise from its age, the fame of its maker, its physical appearance, its acoustic properties, and its use by notable performers. The most famous instruments are generally known for all of these things. The most highly prized instruments are now collector's items, and are priced beyond the reach of most musicians. These instruments are typically owned by some kind of organization or investment group, which loans the instrument to a performer for his or her use. (For example, the Davidov Stradivarius, which is currently in the possession of one of the most widely-known living cellists, Yo-Yo Ma, is actually owned by the Vuitton Foundation.
Some notable cellos:
*the "King", by Andrea Amati, is one of the oldest known cellos, built between 1538 and 1560. It is in the collection of the National Music Museum in South Dakota. National Music Museum page
*Servais Stradivarius is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
*Davidov Stradivarius, played by Jacqueline du Pré, currently played by Yo-Yo Ma
*Barjansky Stradivarius, played by Julian Lloyd Webber
*Bonjour Stradivarius, played by Soo Bae
*Paganini-Ladenburg Stradivarius, played by Clive Greensmith of the Tokyo String Quartet
*Duport Stradivarius, played by Mstislav Rostropovich
*Piatti Stradivarius, 1720, played by Carlos Prieto
* Brahms guitar
* Electric cello
* List of solo cello pieces
* List of compositions for cello and piano
* List of compositions for cello and orchestra
* Double Concerto for Violin and Cello
* Triple concerto for violin, cello, and piano
* String instrument repertoire
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* Apocalyptica
*Stephen Bonta. "Violoncello", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed January 28 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
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* The Internet Cello Society: an online community of cellists; includes several forums.
* Sources for the prescribed sheet music for the ABRSM practical Cello exams.
* Cello Teacher's Friend : A place for cellists to share ideas.
* cellist.nl: An international register of professional cellists, teachers, and students.
* Cello History: A brief history of the cello
* A Cello Teacher Training Manual And Syllabus
* Bowed Radio (podcast focusing on new music for bowed string instruments)
* Elgar Cello Concerto Performance
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Cello | null | null | data/set2/a9 | Cello
The violoncello (abbreviated to cello, or 'cello, plural cellos or celliâthe c is , as in the ch in "check", thus "chel-lo") is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra.
Study of a three-quarter size cello.
The name Cello is an abbreviation of the Italian violoncello, which means "little violone", referring to the violone ("big viol"), the lowest-pitched instrument of the viol family, the group of string instruments that were superseded by the violin family. Thus, the name carries both an augmentative "-one" ("big") and a diminutive "-cello" ("little"). Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2 (two octaves below middle C) as the lowest string, followed by G2, D3, and A3. It is tuned the same way as the viola, only an octave lower.
The cello is most closely associated with European classical music, and has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. Welcome::. to Academic Journals Inc The instrument is a part of the standard orchestra and is the bass voice of the string quartet, as well as being part of many other chamber groups. A large number of concertos and sonatas have been written for the cello. The instrument is less common in popular music, but is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello has also recently appeared in major hip-hop and R & B performances, such as singers Rihanna and Ne-Yo's performance at the American Music Awards. The instrument has also been modified for Indian classical music by Nancy Lesh and Saskia Rao-de Haas.
Among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are J. S. Bach's six unaccompanied Suites. From the Classical era, the two concertos by Joseph Haydn in C major and D major stand out, as do the five sonatas for cello and pianoforte of Beethoven which span the important three periods of his compositional evolution. Romantic era repertoire includes the Schumann Concerto, the DvoÅák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Brahms. Compositions from the early 20th century include Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano and unaccompanied cello sonatas by Zoltán Kodály and Paul Hindemith. The cello's versatility made it popular with composers in the mid- to late twentieth century such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Britten, Ligeti and Dutilleux, encouraged by soloists who specialized in contemporary music (such as Siegfried Palm and Mstislav Rostropovich) commissioning from and collaborating with composers.
The violoncello da spalla (sometimes "violoncello piccolo da spalla" or "violoncello da span") was the first cello referred to in print (by Jambe de Fer in 1556). Delbanco, Nicholas. (January 1, 2001) Harper's Bazaar. The Countess of Stanlein Restored. (Violoncello owned by Bernard Greenhouse is restored). Volume 302; Issue 1808; Page 39. "Violone" means a larger "viola" (viol), while "-cello" in Italian is a diminutive and spalla means "shoulder" in Italian so that violoncello da spalla suggest a "little big violin" that may be held on the shoulder so that the player could perform while walking or that the early, short-necked instrument was hung across the shoulder by a strap. By the turn of the twentieth century, it had grown customary to abbreviate the name violoncello to 'cello, with the apostrophe indicating the six missing prefix letters. It now is acceptable to use the name "cello" without the apostrophe and as a full designation.
The cello is typically made from wood, although other materials such as carbon fiber or aluminum may be used. A traditional cello has a spruce top, with maple for the back, sides, and neck. Other woods, such as poplar willow, are sometimes used for the back and sides. Less expensive cellos frequently have tops and backs made of laminated wood.
The top and back are traditionally hand-carved, though less expensive cellos are often machine-produced. The sides, or ribs, are made by heating the wood and bending it around forms. The cello body has a wide top bout, narrow middle formed by two C-bouts, and wide bottom bout, with the bridge and sound holes just below the middle.
The top and back of the cello has decorative border inlay known as purfling. Purfling looks attractive, but is not just for decoration. If a cello is dropped or bumped against something so that damage occurs, the purfling can stop cracks from forming. A crack may form at the rim of the instrument, but will spread no further. Without purfling, cracks can spread up or down the top or back. Playing, traveling and the weather all affect the cello and can increase a crack if purfling is not in place. Less expensive instruments typically have the purfling painted on.
Cello manufacturer Luis & Clark constructs cellos from carbon fiber. Carbon fiber instruments are particularly suitable for outdoor playing because of the strength of the material and its resistance to humidity and temperature fluctuations.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) as well as German luthier G.A. Pfretzschner produced an untold number of aluminum cellos (in addition to aluminum double basses and violins). An advertisement published in N.Y. Music Service catalogue (1930) reads: "...made entirely of aluminum with the exception of the fingerboard. They have many advantages over the wood basses and violoncellos, as they cannot crack, split or warp and are made to last forever ... possessing a tone quality that is deep, resonant and responsive to the utmost degree. Violoncello $150."
Above the main body is the carved neck, which leads to a pegbox and the scroll. The neck, pegbox, and scroll are normally carved out of a single piece of wood. Attached to the neck and extending over the body of the instrument is the fingerboard. The nut is a raised piece of wood, where the fingerboard meets the pegbox, which the strings rest on. The pegbox houses four tuning pegs, one for each string. The pegs are used to tune the cello by either tightening or loosening the string. The scroll is a traditional part of the cello and all other members of the violin family. Ebony is usually used for the tuning pegs, fingerboard, and nut, but other hard woods, such as boxwood or rosewood, can be used.
Strings on a cello have cores made out of gut, metal, or synthetic materials, such as Perlon. Most modern strings used today are also wound with metallic materials like aluminum, titanium and chromium. Cellists may mix different types of strings on their instruments.
The tailpiece and endpin are found in the lower part of the cello. The tailpiece is traditionally made of ebony or another hard wood, but can also be made of plastic or steel. It attaches the strings to the lower end of the cello, and can have one or more fine tuners. The endpin or spike is made of wood, metal or rigid carbon fiber and supports the cello in playing position. In the Baroque period the cello was held between the calves. Around the 1830s, the Belgian cellist Auguste Adrien Servais introduced the endpin and propagated its use. Modern endpins are retractable and adjustable; older ones were removed when not in use. (The word "endpin" sometimes also refers to the button of wood located at this place in all instruments in the violin family, but this is usually called "tailpin".) The sharp tip of the cello's endpin is sometimes capped with a rubber tip that protects the tip from dulling and prevents the cello from slipping on the floor.
The bridge of a cello, with a mute
The bridge holds the strings above the cello and transfers their vibrations to the top of the instrument and the soundpost inside (see below). The bridge is not glued, but rather held in place by the tension of the strings. The f-holes, named for their shape, are located on either side of the bridge, and allow air to move in and out of the instrument as part of the sound-production process. The f-holes also act as access points to the interior of the cello for repairs or maintenance. Sometimes a small hose containing a water-soaked sponge, called a Dampit, is inserted through the f-holes, and serves as a humidifier.
Internally, the cello has two important features: a bass bar, which is glued to the underside of the top of the instrument, and a round wooden sound post, which is wedged between the top and bottom plates. The bass bar, found under the bass foot of the bridge, serves to support the cello's top and distribute the vibrations. The sound post, found under the treble side of the bridge, connects the back and front of the cello. Like the bridge, the sound post is not glued, but is kept in place by the tensions of the bridge and strings. Together, the bass bar and sound post transfer the strings' vibrations to the top (front) of the instrument (and to a lesser extent the back), acting as a diaphragm to produce the instrument's sound.
Cellos are constructed and repaired using hide glue, which is strong but reversible, allowing for disassembly when needed. Tops may be glued on with diluted glue, since some repairs call for the removal of the top. Theoretically, hide glue is weaker than the body's wood, so as the top or back shrinks side-to-side, the glue holding it will let go, avoiding a crack in the plate.
A cello bow.
Traditionally, bows are made from pernambuco or brazilwood. Both come from the same species of tree (Caesalpina echinata), but pernambuco, used for higher-quality bows, is the heartwood of the tree and is darker in color than brazilwood (which is sometimes stained to compensate). Pernambuco is a heavy, resinous wood with great elasticity which makes it an ideal wood for instrument bows.
Bows are also made from other materials, such as carbon-fiber-stronger than wood-and fiberglass(often used to make inexpensive, low-quality student bows). An average cello bow is 73 cm long (shorter than a violin or viola bow) 3 cm high (from the frog to the stick) and 1.5 cm wide. The frog of a cello bow typically has a rounded corner like that of a viola bow, but is wider. A cello bow is roughly 10 grams heavier than a viola bow, which in turn is roughly 10 grams heavier than a violin bow.
Bow hair is traditionally horsehair, though synthetic hair in varying colors is also used. Prior to playing, a musician-in this case a cellist-tightens the bow by turning a screw to pull the frog (the part of the bow under the hand) back, and increase the tension of the hair. Rosin is applied by the player to make the hairs sticky. Bows need to be re-haired periodically. Ideally a bow should be re-haired every year, but this is not in great practice because of cost.
The cello developed from the bass violin, first referred to by Jambe de Fer in 1556, which was originally a three-string instrument. The first instance of a composer specifying the bass violin may have been Gabrieli in Sacrae symphoniae, 1597. Monteverdi referred to the instrument as "basso de viola da braccio" in Orfeo (1607). Although the first bass violin, possibly invented by Amati as early as 1538, was most likely inspired by the viol, it was created to be used in consorts with the violin. The bass violin was actually often referred to as a "violone," or "large viola," as were the viols of the same period. Instruments that share features with both the bass violin and the viola de gamba appear in Italian art of the early 1500s...
The invention of wire-wound strings (fine wire around a thin gut core), around 1660 in Bologna, allowed for a finer bass sound than was possible with purely gut strings on such a short body. Bolognese makers exploited this new technology to create the cello, a somewhat smaller instrument suitable for solo repertoire due to both the timbre of the instrument and the fact that the smaller size made it easier to play virtuosic passages. This instrument had disadvantages as well, however. The cello's light sound was not as suitable for church and ensemble playing, so it had to be doubled by basses or violones.
Around 1700, Italian players popularized the cello in northern Europe, although the bass violin (basse de violon) continued to be used for another two decades in France. Many existing bass violins were literally cut down in size in order to convert them into cellos according to the smaller pattern cello as developed by Stradivari, who also made a number of old pattern large cello's (the 'Servais'). Cyr 1982 The bass violin remained the "most used" instrument in England as late as 1740, where the violoncello was still "not common." Grassineau 1740 The sizes, names, and tunings of the cello varied widely by geography and time. The size was not standardized until around 1750.
Despite similarities to the viola da gamba, the cello is actually part of the viola da braccio family, meaning "viol of the arm", which includes, among others, the violin and viola. Though paintings like Bruegel's "The Rustic Wedding" and de Fer in his Epitome Musical suggest that the bass violin had alternate playing positions, these were short-lived and the more practical and ergonomic a gamba position eventually replaced them entirely.
A cello strung with gut strings. Note the absence of fine-tuning pins on the tailpiece.
Baroque era cellos differed from the modern instrument in several ways. The neck has a different form and angle which matches the baroque bass-bar and stringing. Modern cellos have an endpin at the bottom to support the instrument (and transmit some of the sound through the floor), while Baroque cellos are held only by the calves of the player. Modern bows curve in and are held at the frog; Baroque bows curve out and are held closer to the bow's point of balance. Modern strings normally have a metal core, although some use a synthetic core; Baroque strings are made of gut, with the G and C strings wire-wound. Modern cellos often have fine-tuners connecting the strings to the tailpiece, which make it much easier to tune the instrument, but such pins are rendered ineffective by the flexibility of the gut strings used on Baroque cellos. Overall, the modern instrument has much higher string tension than the Baroque cello, resulting in a louder, more projecting tone, with fewer overtones.
No educational works specifically devoted to the cello existed before the 18th century, and those that do exist contain little value to the performer beyond simple accounts of instrumental technique. The earliest cello manual is Michel Corrette's Méthode, thèorique et pratique pour apprendre en peu de temps le violoncelle dans sa perfection (Paris, 1741).
Seated Cellist
The cello is usually played while seated. Its weight is supported mainly by its endpin or spike, which rests on the floor. Sometimes, an endpin support is needed to prevent the endpin from slipping on smooth surfaces. The cello is steadied on the lower bout between the knees of the seated player, and on the upper bout against the upper chest. The neck of the cello is above the player's left shoulder, and the C-String tuning peg is just behind the left ear. The bow is drawn horizontally across the strings. In early times, female cellists sometimes played side-saddle, since it was considered improper for a lady to part her knees in public. A player's handedness does not alter the way the cello is held or used. In exceedingly rare cases the cello has been played in a mirror-image posture: this is usually because of a physical disability of one of the player's arms or hands which makes the required technique impossible for that side of the body. In such a situation, the player must decide whether or not to reverse the set-up of the cello (the string positions, bass-bar, sound post, fingerboard shape, and bridge carving are all asymmetrical).
The position of the left hand fingers along the strings determine the pitch of the note. The closer to the bridge that the string is depressed, the higher in pitch will be the resulting sound, because the vibrating string length has been shortened. In the neck positions (which use just less than half of the fingerboard, nearest the top of the instrument), the thumb rests on the back of the neck; in thumb position (a general name for notes on the remainder of the fingerboard) the thumb usually rests alongside the fingers on the string and the side of the thumb is used to play notes. The fingers are normally held curved with each knuckle bent, with the fingertips in contact with the string. If a finger is required on two (or more) strings at once to play perfect fifths (in double stops or chords) it is used flat. In slower, or more expressive playing, the contact point can move slightly away from the nail to the pad of the finger, allowing a fuller vibrato.
Vibrato is a small oscillation in the pitch of a note, usually considered expressive. It is created by a partial rotation of the upper arm at the shoulder joint, which translates into a linear oscillation of the lower arm. The fixed point of contact of the fingertip on the string absorbs this motion by rocking back and forth. It is this change in the attitude of the fingertip to the string which causes the pitch to vary. Vibrato is a key expressive device, and a well-developed vibrato technique is an essential element of a modern cellist's skill. In some styles of music, such as that of the Romantic period, vibrato may be used on almost every note. However, in other styles, such as Baroque repertoire, vibrato is used only rarely, as an ornament. In any case, the choice of whether to use vibrato, and how much, is normally a stylistic decision on the part of the player. Typically, the lower the pitch of the note played, the wider and slower the vibrato.
Harmonics played on the cello fall into two classes; natural and artificial. Natural harmonics are produced by lightly touching (but not depressing) the string with the finger at certain places, and then bowing (or, rarely, plucking) the string. For example, the halfway point of the string will produce a harmonic that is one octave above the unfingered (open) string. Natural harmonics only produce notes that are part of the harmonic series for the string on which they occur. Artificial harmonics (also called False harmonics), in which the player depresses the string fully with one finger while touching the same string lightly with another finger, can produce any notes above middle C. They usually appear with the touching note a perfect fourth above the stopped note, which produces a sound two octaves above the stopped note, although other intervals are available. All harmonics produce a distinctive flute-like sound, and are usually performed without vibrato.
Glissando ("sliding", in Italian) is an effect played by sliding the finger up or down the fingerboard without releasing the string. This causes the pitch to rise and fall smoothly, without separate, discernible steps.
In cello playing, the bow is much like the breath of a wind instrument player. Arguably, it is the major determinant in the expressiveness of the playing. The right hand holds the bow and controls the duration and character of the notes. The bow is drawn across the strings roughly halfway between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge, in a direction perpendicular to the strings. The bow is held with all five fingers of the right hand, the thumb opposite the fingers and closer to the cellist's body. The shape of the hand should resemble that of its relaxed state, with all fingers curved, including the thumb. The transmission of weight from the arm to the bow happens through the pronation (inward rotation) of the forearm, which pushes the index finger and to a lesser degree the middle finger onto the bow. The necessary counterforce is provided by the thumb. Depending upon the school of training, the other two fingers are used in various degrees to help maintain the angle of the bow to the string and are critical to controlling the bow when it is off the string. (See also spiccato).
In English, the terminology for bow direction (down and up) can be misleading. A downbow is drawn to the right of the player, and an upbow to the left. A downbow is drawn by first using the upper arm, then the forearm, then the wrist (turning slightly inward) in order to maintain a straight stroke. An upbow is drawn by moving first the forearm, then the upper arm, then the wrist (pushing slightly upward). The bow is mostly used perpendicular to the string being played. In order to perform string changes the whole arm is either lowered or lifted, with as little wrist movement as possible in order to maintain the angle to the string. However, flexibility of the wrist is necessary when changing the bow direction from up-bow to down-bow and vice versa. For very fast bow movements, the wrist is used to accomplish the horizontal movement of bow. For longer strokes, the arm is used as well as the wrist.
Tone production and volume of sound depend on a combination of several factors. The three most important ones are: bow speed, weight applied to the string, and point of contact of the bow hair with the string. A good player will be capable of a very even tone, and will counter the natural tendency to play with the most force with the part of the bow nearest to the frog or heel, and the least force near the tip. The closer to the bridge the string is bowed, the more projecting and brighter the tone, with the extreme (sul ponticello) producing a metallic, shimmery sound. If bowing closer to the fingerboard (sul tasto), the sound produced will be softer, more mellow, and less defined.
Double stops involve the playing of two notes at the same time. Two strings are fingered simultaneously, and the bow is drawn so as to sound them both at once. Triple and quadruple stops may also be played (in a "broken" fashion), but are difficult to sustain because of the change in slope of the bridge. To extend the technique in this area, Frances-Marie Uitti has invented a two-bow system: one bow plays above the strings and one below, allowing for sustained triple and quadruple stops. However, this technique is very rarely seen or used.
In pizzicato playing, the string is plucked directly with the fingers or thumb. Usually this is done with the right hand, while the bow is held away from the strings by the rest of the hand or (for extended passages) set down. A single string can be played pizzicato, or double, triple, or quadruple stops can be played. Occasionally, a player must bow one string with the right hand and simultaneously pluck another with the left. This is marked by a "+" above the note. Strumming of chords is also possible, in guitar fashion.
Col legno is the technique in which the player uses the wood rather than the hair of the bow on the strings; it takes two different forms, col legno battuto and col legno tratto. Col legno battuto is performed as a percussive technique with no sustaining of the sound. The much less common alternative is col legno tratto, wherein the wood is drawn across the string as the hair is in a normal bow stroke. Some players refuse to use this technique because of potential damage to the bow.
In spiccato playing, the strings are not "drawn" by the bow hair but struck by it, while still retaining some horizontal motion, to generate a more percussive, crisp sound. It may be performed by using the wrist to "dip" the bow into the strings. Spiccato is usually associated with lively playing. On a violin, spiccato bowing comes off the string, but on a cello, the wood of the bow may rise briskly up without the hair actually leaving the string. While playing spiccato, the bow is literally bouncing off the string. Cello players simply "dip" the bow into the string, and touch it very fast, and then lift the bow off the string.
In staccato, the player moves the bow a small distance and stops it on the string, making a short sound, the rest of the written duration being taken up by silence.
Legato is a technique where the notes are smoothly connected without accents or breaks.
Sul ponticello "on the bridge" refers to bowing closer to the bridge, while sul tasto "on the fingerboard" calls for bowing nearer the end of the fingerboard. Ponticello calls for more bow weight and slower bow speed, and produces a "harder" sound, with strong overtone content. Sul tasto, in extreme cases called "flautando," produces a more flute-like sound, with more emphasis on the fundamental frequency of the note, and softer overtones.
1/8 size cello with full size cello
Standard-sized cellos are referred to as "full-size". However, cellos come in smaller (fractional) sizes, from "seven-eighths" and "three-quarter" down to "one-sixteenth" sized cellos (e.g. 7/8, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16). The smaller-sized cellos are identical to standard cellos in construction, range, and usage, but are simply 'scaled-down' for the benefit of children and shorter adults. A "half-size" cello is not actually half the size of a "full-size", but only slightly smaller. Many smaller cellists prefer to play a "seven-eighths" cello as the hand stretches in the lower positions are less demanding. Although rare, cellos in sizes larger than four-fourths do exist. Cellists with unusually large hands may play a slightly larger than full-sized cello. Cellos made before approximately 1700 tended to be considerably larger than those made after that date, and than those made and commonly played today. Around 1680, string-making technology made lower pitches on shorter strings possible. The cellos of Stradivari, for example, can be clearly divided into two models, with the style made before 1702 characterized by larger instruments (of which only three examples are extant in their original size and configuration), and the style made during and after 1702, when Stradivari, presumably in response to the "new" type of strings, began making cellos of a smaller size. This later model is the one most commonly used by modern luthiers.
There are many accessories for the cello.
*Cases are used to protect the cello and bow (or multiple bows) when traveling and for safe storage. They are often made of carbon fiber, fiber-glass, and less commonly wood.
*Rosin, made from conifer resin, is applied to the bow hairs to increase the effectiveness of the friction, grip or bite, and allow proper sound production. Rosin may have additives to modify the friction such as beeswax, gold, silver or tin.
*Endpin stops or straps (tradenames include Rockstop and Black Hole) keep the cello from sliding if the end pin does not have a rubber piece on the end (used on wood floors) though in many cases a rubber piece will not suffice on even a wood floor. Many Cellists often use a square or rectangle of carpet that can be secured under the front two legs of the chair as an endpin stop. This is however less likely to be seen in a professional arena and more used in rehearsal or in private.Players might even use their shoe to keep the endpin in place
*Wolf tone eliminators are sometimes placed on cello strings between the tailpiece and the bridge in order to eliminate acoustic anomalies known as wolf tones or "wolfs".
*Mutes are used to change the sound of the cello by reducing overtones. Practice mutes (made of metal) significantly reduce the instrument's volume (they are also referred to as "hotel mutes"). The most common mute is a rubber disc with two holes to fit the two middle strings. It sits just after the bridge and has a flap that can be placed over the top of the bridge to mute the vibrations travelling down it to the sound post inside the cello. These are especially used due to their simplicity and can be taken off or put on very quickly due to the fact that they stay on the strings past the bridge, which don't vibrate.
*Metronomes provide a steady tempo by sounding out a certain number of beats per minute. They are adjustable to fit the tempo of the piece. Many models can also produce a tuning pitch of A4 (440 Hz), among others. These can, of course, be used for all instruments.
*Humidifiers are used to control and stabilize the humidity around and inside the cello and are popular with travelling cellists. Often placed inside the cello itself or inside the case. Some players will not use humidifiers inside their cellos because they have the potential to drip, which may cause damage to the cello
*Tuners are used to tune the instrument. A tuner helps by providing a reference pitch to tune to. Most musicians cannot memorize the exact sound of a pitch, so they need a reference pitch
Cellos are part of the standard symphony orchestra. Usually, the orchestra includes eight to twelve cellists. The cello section, in standard orchestral seating, is located on stage left (the audience's right) in the front, opposite the first violin section. However, some orchestras and conductors prefer switching the positioning of the viola and cello sections. The principal, or "first chair" cellist is the section leader, determining bowings for the section in conjunction with other string principals, and playing solos. Principal players always sit closest to the audience.
The cellos are a critical part of orchestral music; all symphonic works involve the cello section, and many pieces require cello soli or solos. Much of the time, cellos provide part of the harmony for the orchestra. On many occasions, the cello section will play the melody for a brief period of time, before returning to the harmony. There are also cello concertos, which are orchestral pieces in which a featured, solo cellist is accompanied by an entire orchestra.
There are numerous cello concertos - where a solo cello is accompanied by an orchestra - notably 25 by Vivaldi, 12 by Boccherini, 3 by C.P.E. Bach, 2 by Haydn, 2 by Saint-Saëns, 2 by DvoÅák, and one each by Schumann, Lalo and Elgar. Beethoven's Triple Concerto for Cello, Violin and Piano and Brahms' Double Concerto for Cello and Violin are also part of the concertante repertoire although in both cases the cello shares solo duties with at least one other instrument. Moreover, several composers wrote large-scale pieces for cello and orchestra, which are concertos in all but name. The most important are Strauss' tone poem Don Quixote, Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Bloch's Schelomo and Bruch's Kol Nidrei.
In the 20th century, the cello repertoire grew. This was due to the influence of virtuoso cellist Mstislav Rostropovich who inspired, commissioned and/or premiered dozens of new works. Among these, Prokofiev's Symphonia Concertante, Britten's Cello Symphony and the concertos of Shostakovich, LutosÅawski and Dutilleux have already become part of the standard repertoire. In addition, Hindemith, Barber, Honegger, Villa-Lobos, Myaskovsky, Walton, Glass, Rodrigo, Arnold, Penderecki and Ligeti also wrote major concertos for other cellists (notably Gregor Piatigorsky, Siegfried Palm and Julian Lloyd Webber).
Cellists Julian Lloyd Webber (left) and Mstislav Rostropovich
There are also many sonatas for cello and piano. Those written by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Britten are the most famous.
Finally, there are several unaccompanied pieces for cello, most importantly J.S. Bach's six Unaccompanied Suites for Cello (arguably the most important cello pieces), Zoltán Kodály's Sonata for Solo Cello and Britten's three Unaccompanied Suites for Cello. Other notable examples include Dutilleux' Trois Strophes sur le Nom de Sacher, Berio's Les Mots Sont Allés (both part of a series of twelve compositions for solo cello commissioned by Rostropovich for Swiss conductor Paul Sacher's 70th birthday), Ligeti and Carter's sonatas and Xenakis' Nomos Alpha and Kottos.
The cello is a member of the traditional string quartet as well as string quintets, sextet or trios and other mixed ensembles.
There are also pieces written for two, three, four or more cellos; this type of ensemble is also called a "cello choir" and its sound is familiar from the introduction to Rossini's William Tell Overture as well as Zaccharias' prayer scene in Verdi's Nabucco. As a self-sufficient ensemble, its most famous repertoire is Villa-Lobos' first of his Bachianas Brasileiras for cello ensemble (the fifth is for soprano and 8 cellos). Another example is Boulez' Messagesquisse for 7 cellos. The Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (or "the Twelve" as they have since taken to being called) specialize in this repertoire and have commissioned many works, including arrangements of well-known popular songs.
Though the cello is less common in popular music than in classical music, it is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello is rarely part of a group's standard lineup (though like its cousin the violin it is becoming more common in mainstream pop).
In the 1960s, artists such as the Beatles and Cher used the cello in popular music, in songs such as "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)," "Eleanor Rigby" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the 1970s, the Electric Light Orchestra enjoyed great commercial success taking inspiration from so-called "Beatlesque" arrangements, adding the cello (and violin) to the standard rock combo line-up and in 1978 the UK based rock band, Colosseum II, collaborated with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber on the recording Variations. Most notably, Pink Floyd included a cello solo in their 1970 epic instrumental Atom Heart Mother. Bass guitarist Mike Rutherford of Genesis was originally a cellist and included some cello parts in their Foxtrot album.
Established non-traditional cello groups include Apocalyptica, a group of Finnish cellists best known for their versions of Metallica songs, Rasputina, a group of two female cellists committed to an intricate cello style intermingled with Gothic music, Von Cello, a cello fronted rock power trio, and Break of Reality who mix elements of classical music with the more modern rock and metal genre. These groups are examples of a style that has become known as cello rock. The crossover string quartet bond also includes a cellist. Silenzium and Vivacello are Russian (Novosibirsk) groups playing rock and metal and having more and more popularity in Siberia.
More recent bands using the cello are Aerosmith, Nirvana, Oasis, Murder by Death, Cursive, and OneRepublic. So-called "chamber pop" artists like Kronos Quartet, The Vitamin String Quartet and Margot and the Nuclear So and So's have also recently made cello common in modern alternative rock. Heavy metal band System of a Down has also made use of the cello's rich sound. The indie rock band The Stiletto Formal are known for using a cello as a major staple of their sound, and the orch-rock group,The Polyphonic Spree, which has pioneered the use of stringed and symphonic instruments, employs the cello in very creative ways for many of their "psycadelic-esque" melodies.
Pop star Richard Marx uses a cello in some of his studio recordings, such as "One Thing Left" and "In This All Alone."
Post-rock bands and other avant-garde groups commonly feature strings; cellos and violins over violas and contrabasses.
Modern musical theatre pieces like Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, Duncan Sheik's Spring Awakening, Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins, and Ricky Ian Gordon's My Life with Albertine use small string ensembles (including solo cellos) to a prominent extent.
The cello can also be used in bluegrass and folk music, with notable players including Ben Sollee of the Sparrow Quartet and the "Cajun cellist" Sean Grissom.
The cello and the double bass are now also used in some modern Chinese orchestras .
In jazz, bassists Oscar Pettiford and Harry Babasin were among the first to use the cello as a solo instrument; both tuned their instrument in fourths, an octave above the double bass. Fred Katz (who was not a bassist) was one of the first notable jazz cellists to use the instrument's standard tuning and arco technique. Contemporary jazz cellists include Abdul Wadud, Diedre Murray, Ron Carter, Dave Holland, David Darling, Lucio Amanti, Akua Dixon, Ernst Reijseger, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Vincent Courtois, Jean-Charles Capon, and Erik Friedlander.
Cellos are made by luthiers, specialists in building and repairing stringed instruments, ranging from guitars to violins. The following luthiers are notable for the cellos they have produced:
*Nicolò Amati and others in the Amati family
*William Forster
*Nicolò Gagliano
*Matteo Goffriller
*Giovanni Battista Guadagnini
*Giuseppe Guarneri
*Domenico Montagnana
*Giovanni Battista Rogeri
*Francesco Ruggieri
*Stefano Scarampella
*Antonio Stradivari
*David Tecchler
*Carlo Giuseppe Testore
*Jean Baptiste Vuillaume
A person who plays the cello is called a cellist, not a "celloist." For a list of notable cellists, see the list of cellists. See also .
Specific instruments are, or become, famous, for a variety of reasons. An instrument's notability may arise from its age, the fame of its maker, its physical appearance, its acoustic properties, and its use by notable performers. The most famous instruments are generally known for all of these things. The most highly prized instruments are now collector's items, and are priced beyond the reach of most musicians. These instruments are typically owned by some kind of organization or investment group, which loans the instrument to a performer for his or her use. (For example, the Davidov Stradivarius, which is currently in the possession of one of the most widely-known living cellists, Yo-Yo Ma, is actually owned by the Vuitton Foundation.
Some notable cellos:
*the "King", by Andrea Amati, is one of the oldest known cellos, built between 1538 and 1560. It is in the collection of the National Music Museum in South Dakota. National Music Museum page
*Servais Stradivarius is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
*Davidov Stradivarius, played by Jacqueline du Pré, currently played by Yo-Yo Ma
*Barjansky Stradivarius, played by Julian Lloyd Webber
*Bonjour Stradivarius, played by Soo Bae
*Paganini-Ladenburg Stradivarius, played by Clive Greensmith of the Tokyo String Quartet
*Duport Stradivarius, played by Mstislav Rostropovich
*Piatti Stradivarius, 1720, played by Carlos Prieto
* Brahms guitar
* Electric cello
* List of solo cello pieces
* List of compositions for cello and piano
* List of compositions for cello and orchestra
* Double Concerto for Violin and Cello
* Triple concerto for violin, cello, and piano
* String instrument repertoire
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* Apocalyptica
*Stephen Bonta. "Violoncello", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed January 28 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
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* The Internet Cello Society: an online community of cellists; includes several forums.
* Sources for the prescribed sheet music for the ABRSM practical Cello exams.
* Cello Teacher's Friend : A place for cellists to share ideas.
* cellist.nl: An international register of professional cellists, teachers, and students.
* Cello History: A brief history of the cello
* A Cello Teacher Training Manual And Syllabus
* Bowed Radio (podcast focusing on new music for bowed string instruments)
* Elgar Cello Concerto Performance
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Cello | null | null | data/set2/a9 | Cello
The violoncello (abbreviated to cello, or 'cello, plural cellos or celliâthe c is , as in the ch in "check", thus "chel-lo") is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra.
Study of a three-quarter size cello.
The name Cello is an abbreviation of the Italian violoncello, which means "little violone", referring to the violone ("big viol"), the lowest-pitched instrument of the viol family, the group of string instruments that were superseded by the violin family. Thus, the name carries both an augmentative "-one" ("big") and a diminutive "-cello" ("little"). Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2 (two octaves below middle C) as the lowest string, followed by G2, D3, and A3. It is tuned the same way as the viola, only an octave lower.
The cello is most closely associated with European classical music, and has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. Welcome::. to Academic Journals Inc The instrument is a part of the standard orchestra and is the bass voice of the string quartet, as well as being part of many other chamber groups. A large number of concertos and sonatas have been written for the cello. The instrument is less common in popular music, but is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello has also recently appeared in major hip-hop and R & B performances, such as singers Rihanna and Ne-Yo's performance at the American Music Awards. The instrument has also been modified for Indian classical music by Nancy Lesh and Saskia Rao-de Haas.
Among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are J. S. Bach's six unaccompanied Suites. From the Classical era, the two concertos by Joseph Haydn in C major and D major stand out, as do the five sonatas for cello and pianoforte of Beethoven which span the important three periods of his compositional evolution. Romantic era repertoire includes the Schumann Concerto, the DvoÅák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Brahms. Compositions from the early 20th century include Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano and unaccompanied cello sonatas by Zoltán Kodály and Paul Hindemith. The cello's versatility made it popular with composers in the mid- to late twentieth century such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Britten, Ligeti and Dutilleux, encouraged by soloists who specialized in contemporary music (such as Siegfried Palm and Mstislav Rostropovich) commissioning from and collaborating with composers.
The violoncello da spalla (sometimes "violoncello piccolo da spalla" or "violoncello da span") was the first cello referred to in print (by Jambe de Fer in 1556). Delbanco, Nicholas. (January 1, 2001) Harper's Bazaar. The Countess of Stanlein Restored. (Violoncello owned by Bernard Greenhouse is restored). Volume 302; Issue 1808; Page 39. "Violone" means a larger "viola" (viol), while "-cello" in Italian is a diminutive and spalla means "shoulder" in Italian so that violoncello da spalla suggest a "little big violin" that may be held on the shoulder so that the player could perform while walking or that the early, short-necked instrument was hung across the shoulder by a strap. By the turn of the twentieth century, it had grown customary to abbreviate the name violoncello to 'cello, with the apostrophe indicating the six missing prefix letters. It now is acceptable to use the name "cello" without the apostrophe and as a full designation.
The cello is typically made from wood, although other materials such as carbon fiber or aluminum may be used. A traditional cello has a spruce top, with maple for the back, sides, and neck. Other woods, such as poplar willow, are sometimes used for the back and sides. Less expensive cellos frequently have tops and backs made of laminated wood.
The top and back are traditionally hand-carved, though less expensive cellos are often machine-produced. The sides, or ribs, are made by heating the wood and bending it around forms. The cello body has a wide top bout, narrow middle formed by two C-bouts, and wide bottom bout, with the bridge and sound holes just below the middle.
The top and back of the cello has decorative border inlay known as purfling. Purfling looks attractive, but is not just for decoration. If a cello is dropped or bumped against something so that damage occurs, the purfling can stop cracks from forming. A crack may form at the rim of the instrument, but will spread no further. Without purfling, cracks can spread up or down the top or back. Playing, traveling and the weather all affect the cello and can increase a crack if purfling is not in place. Less expensive instruments typically have the purfling painted on.
Cello manufacturer Luis & Clark constructs cellos from carbon fiber. Carbon fiber instruments are particularly suitable for outdoor playing because of the strength of the material and its resistance to humidity and temperature fluctuations.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) as well as German luthier G.A. Pfretzschner produced an untold number of aluminum cellos (in addition to aluminum double basses and violins). An advertisement published in N.Y. Music Service catalogue (1930) reads: "...made entirely of aluminum with the exception of the fingerboard. They have many advantages over the wood basses and violoncellos, as they cannot crack, split or warp and are made to last forever ... possessing a tone quality that is deep, resonant and responsive to the utmost degree. Violoncello $150."
Above the main body is the carved neck, which leads to a pegbox and the scroll. The neck, pegbox, and scroll are normally carved out of a single piece of wood. Attached to the neck and extending over the body of the instrument is the fingerboard. The nut is a raised piece of wood, where the fingerboard meets the pegbox, which the strings rest on. The pegbox houses four tuning pegs, one for each string. The pegs are used to tune the cello by either tightening or loosening the string. The scroll is a traditional part of the cello and all other members of the violin family. Ebony is usually used for the tuning pegs, fingerboard, and nut, but other hard woods, such as boxwood or rosewood, can be used.
Strings on a cello have cores made out of gut, metal, or synthetic materials, such as Perlon. Most modern strings used today are also wound with metallic materials like aluminum, titanium and chromium. Cellists may mix different types of strings on their instruments.
The tailpiece and endpin are found in the lower part of the cello. The tailpiece is traditionally made of ebony or another hard wood, but can also be made of plastic or steel. It attaches the strings to the lower end of the cello, and can have one or more fine tuners. The endpin or spike is made of wood, metal or rigid carbon fiber and supports the cello in playing position. In the Baroque period the cello was held between the calves. Around the 1830s, the Belgian cellist Auguste Adrien Servais introduced the endpin and propagated its use. Modern endpins are retractable and adjustable; older ones were removed when not in use. (The word "endpin" sometimes also refers to the button of wood located at this place in all instruments in the violin family, but this is usually called "tailpin".) The sharp tip of the cello's endpin is sometimes capped with a rubber tip that protects the tip from dulling and prevents the cello from slipping on the floor.
The bridge of a cello, with a mute
The bridge holds the strings above the cello and transfers their vibrations to the top of the instrument and the soundpost inside (see below). The bridge is not glued, but rather held in place by the tension of the strings. The f-holes, named for their shape, are located on either side of the bridge, and allow air to move in and out of the instrument as part of the sound-production process. The f-holes also act as access points to the interior of the cello for repairs or maintenance. Sometimes a small hose containing a water-soaked sponge, called a Dampit, is inserted through the f-holes, and serves as a humidifier.
Internally, the cello has two important features: a bass bar, which is glued to the underside of the top of the instrument, and a round wooden sound post, which is wedged between the top and bottom plates. The bass bar, found under the bass foot of the bridge, serves to support the cello's top and distribute the vibrations. The sound post, found under the treble side of the bridge, connects the back and front of the cello. Like the bridge, the sound post is not glued, but is kept in place by the tensions of the bridge and strings. Together, the bass bar and sound post transfer the strings' vibrations to the top (front) of the instrument (and to a lesser extent the back), acting as a diaphragm to produce the instrument's sound.
Cellos are constructed and repaired using hide glue, which is strong but reversible, allowing for disassembly when needed. Tops may be glued on with diluted glue, since some repairs call for the removal of the top. Theoretically, hide glue is weaker than the body's wood, so as the top or back shrinks side-to-side, the glue holding it will let go, avoiding a crack in the plate.
A cello bow.
Traditionally, bows are made from pernambuco or brazilwood. Both come from the same species of tree (Caesalpina echinata), but pernambuco, used for higher-quality bows, is the heartwood of the tree and is darker in color than brazilwood (which is sometimes stained to compensate). Pernambuco is a heavy, resinous wood with great elasticity which makes it an ideal wood for instrument bows.
Bows are also made from other materials, such as carbon-fiber-stronger than wood-and fiberglass(often used to make inexpensive, low-quality student bows). An average cello bow is 73 cm long (shorter than a violin or viola bow) 3 cm high (from the frog to the stick) and 1.5 cm wide. The frog of a cello bow typically has a rounded corner like that of a viola bow, but is wider. A cello bow is roughly 10 grams heavier than a viola bow, which in turn is roughly 10 grams heavier than a violin bow.
Bow hair is traditionally horsehair, though synthetic hair in varying colors is also used. Prior to playing, a musician-in this case a cellist-tightens the bow by turning a screw to pull the frog (the part of the bow under the hand) back, and increase the tension of the hair. Rosin is applied by the player to make the hairs sticky. Bows need to be re-haired periodically. Ideally a bow should be re-haired every year, but this is not in great practice because of cost.
The cello developed from the bass violin, first referred to by Jambe de Fer in 1556, which was originally a three-string instrument. The first instance of a composer specifying the bass violin may have been Gabrieli in Sacrae symphoniae, 1597. Monteverdi referred to the instrument as "basso de viola da braccio" in Orfeo (1607). Although the first bass violin, possibly invented by Amati as early as 1538, was most likely inspired by the viol, it was created to be used in consorts with the violin. The bass violin was actually often referred to as a "violone," or "large viola," as were the viols of the same period. Instruments that share features with both the bass violin and the viola de gamba appear in Italian art of the early 1500s...
The invention of wire-wound strings (fine wire around a thin gut core), around 1660 in Bologna, allowed for a finer bass sound than was possible with purely gut strings on such a short body. Bolognese makers exploited this new technology to create the cello, a somewhat smaller instrument suitable for solo repertoire due to both the timbre of the instrument and the fact that the smaller size made it easier to play virtuosic passages. This instrument had disadvantages as well, however. The cello's light sound was not as suitable for church and ensemble playing, so it had to be doubled by basses or violones.
Around 1700, Italian players popularized the cello in northern Europe, although the bass violin (basse de violon) continued to be used for another two decades in France. Many existing bass violins were literally cut down in size in order to convert them into cellos according to the smaller pattern cello as developed by Stradivari, who also made a number of old pattern large cello's (the 'Servais'). Cyr 1982 The bass violin remained the "most used" instrument in England as late as 1740, where the violoncello was still "not common." Grassineau 1740 The sizes, names, and tunings of the cello varied widely by geography and time. The size was not standardized until around 1750.
Despite similarities to the viola da gamba, the cello is actually part of the viola da braccio family, meaning "viol of the arm", which includes, among others, the violin and viola. Though paintings like Bruegel's "The Rustic Wedding" and de Fer in his Epitome Musical suggest that the bass violin had alternate playing positions, these were short-lived and the more practical and ergonomic a gamba position eventually replaced them entirely.
A cello strung with gut strings. Note the absence of fine-tuning pins on the tailpiece.
Baroque era cellos differed from the modern instrument in several ways. The neck has a different form and angle which matches the baroque bass-bar and stringing. Modern cellos have an endpin at the bottom to support the instrument (and transmit some of the sound through the floor), while Baroque cellos are held only by the calves of the player. Modern bows curve in and are held at the frog; Baroque bows curve out and are held closer to the bow's point of balance. Modern strings normally have a metal core, although some use a synthetic core; Baroque strings are made of gut, with the G and C strings wire-wound. Modern cellos often have fine-tuners connecting the strings to the tailpiece, which make it much easier to tune the instrument, but such pins are rendered ineffective by the flexibility of the gut strings used on Baroque cellos. Overall, the modern instrument has much higher string tension than the Baroque cello, resulting in a louder, more projecting tone, with fewer overtones.
No educational works specifically devoted to the cello existed before the 18th century, and those that do exist contain little value to the performer beyond simple accounts of instrumental technique. The earliest cello manual is Michel Corrette's Méthode, thèorique et pratique pour apprendre en peu de temps le violoncelle dans sa perfection (Paris, 1741).
Seated Cellist
The cello is usually played while seated. Its weight is supported mainly by its endpin or spike, which rests on the floor. Sometimes, an endpin support is needed to prevent the endpin from slipping on smooth surfaces. The cello is steadied on the lower bout between the knees of the seated player, and on the upper bout against the upper chest. The neck of the cello is above the player's left shoulder, and the C-String tuning peg is just behind the left ear. The bow is drawn horizontally across the strings. In early times, female cellists sometimes played side-saddle, since it was considered improper for a lady to part her knees in public. A player's handedness does not alter the way the cello is held or used. In exceedingly rare cases the cello has been played in a mirror-image posture: this is usually because of a physical disability of one of the player's arms or hands which makes the required technique impossible for that side of the body. In such a situation, the player must decide whether or not to reverse the set-up of the cello (the string positions, bass-bar, sound post, fingerboard shape, and bridge carving are all asymmetrical).
The position of the left hand fingers along the strings determine the pitch of the note. The closer to the bridge that the string is depressed, the higher in pitch will be the resulting sound, because the vibrating string length has been shortened. In the neck positions (which use just less than half of the fingerboard, nearest the top of the instrument), the thumb rests on the back of the neck; in thumb position (a general name for notes on the remainder of the fingerboard) the thumb usually rests alongside the fingers on the string and the side of the thumb is used to play notes. The fingers are normally held curved with each knuckle bent, with the fingertips in contact with the string. If a finger is required on two (or more) strings at once to play perfect fifths (in double stops or chords) it is used flat. In slower, or more expressive playing, the contact point can move slightly away from the nail to the pad of the finger, allowing a fuller vibrato.
Vibrato is a small oscillation in the pitch of a note, usually considered expressive. It is created by a partial rotation of the upper arm at the shoulder joint, which translates into a linear oscillation of the lower arm. The fixed point of contact of the fingertip on the string absorbs this motion by rocking back and forth. It is this change in the attitude of the fingertip to the string which causes the pitch to vary. Vibrato is a key expressive device, and a well-developed vibrato technique is an essential element of a modern cellist's skill. In some styles of music, such as that of the Romantic period, vibrato may be used on almost every note. However, in other styles, such as Baroque repertoire, vibrato is used only rarely, as an ornament. In any case, the choice of whether to use vibrato, and how much, is normally a stylistic decision on the part of the player. Typically, the lower the pitch of the note played, the wider and slower the vibrato.
Harmonics played on the cello fall into two classes; natural and artificial. Natural harmonics are produced by lightly touching (but not depressing) the string with the finger at certain places, and then bowing (or, rarely, plucking) the string. For example, the halfway point of the string will produce a harmonic that is one octave above the unfingered (open) string. Natural harmonics only produce notes that are part of the harmonic series for the string on which they occur. Artificial harmonics (also called False harmonics), in which the player depresses the string fully with one finger while touching the same string lightly with another finger, can produce any notes above middle C. They usually appear with the touching note a perfect fourth above the stopped note, which produces a sound two octaves above the stopped note, although other intervals are available. All harmonics produce a distinctive flute-like sound, and are usually performed without vibrato.
Glissando ("sliding", in Italian) is an effect played by sliding the finger up or down the fingerboard without releasing the string. This causes the pitch to rise and fall smoothly, without separate, discernible steps.
In cello playing, the bow is much like the breath of a wind instrument player. Arguably, it is the major determinant in the expressiveness of the playing. The right hand holds the bow and controls the duration and character of the notes. The bow is drawn across the strings roughly halfway between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge, in a direction perpendicular to the strings. The bow is held with all five fingers of the right hand, the thumb opposite the fingers and closer to the cellist's body. The shape of the hand should resemble that of its relaxed state, with all fingers curved, including the thumb. The transmission of weight from the arm to the bow happens through the pronation (inward rotation) of the forearm, which pushes the index finger and to a lesser degree the middle finger onto the bow. The necessary counterforce is provided by the thumb. Depending upon the school of training, the other two fingers are used in various degrees to help maintain the angle of the bow to the string and are critical to controlling the bow when it is off the string. (See also spiccato).
In English, the terminology for bow direction (down and up) can be misleading. A downbow is drawn to the right of the player, and an upbow to the left. A downbow is drawn by first using the upper arm, then the forearm, then the wrist (turning slightly inward) in order to maintain a straight stroke. An upbow is drawn by moving first the forearm, then the upper arm, then the wrist (pushing slightly upward). The bow is mostly used perpendicular to the string being played. In order to perform string changes the whole arm is either lowered or lifted, with as little wrist movement as possible in order to maintain the angle to the string. However, flexibility of the wrist is necessary when changing the bow direction from up-bow to down-bow and vice versa. For very fast bow movements, the wrist is used to accomplish the horizontal movement of bow. For longer strokes, the arm is used as well as the wrist.
Tone production and volume of sound depend on a combination of several factors. The three most important ones are: bow speed, weight applied to the string, and point of contact of the bow hair with the string. A good player will be capable of a very even tone, and will counter the natural tendency to play with the most force with the part of the bow nearest to the frog or heel, and the least force near the tip. The closer to the bridge the string is bowed, the more projecting and brighter the tone, with the extreme (sul ponticello) producing a metallic, shimmery sound. If bowing closer to the fingerboard (sul tasto), the sound produced will be softer, more mellow, and less defined.
Double stops involve the playing of two notes at the same time. Two strings are fingered simultaneously, and the bow is drawn so as to sound them both at once. Triple and quadruple stops may also be played (in a "broken" fashion), but are difficult to sustain because of the change in slope of the bridge. To extend the technique in this area, Frances-Marie Uitti has invented a two-bow system: one bow plays above the strings and one below, allowing for sustained triple and quadruple stops. However, this technique is very rarely seen or used.
In pizzicato playing, the string is plucked directly with the fingers or thumb. Usually this is done with the right hand, while the bow is held away from the strings by the rest of the hand or (for extended passages) set down. A single string can be played pizzicato, or double, triple, or quadruple stops can be played. Occasionally, a player must bow one string with the right hand and simultaneously pluck another with the left. This is marked by a "+" above the note. Strumming of chords is also possible, in guitar fashion.
Col legno is the technique in which the player uses the wood rather than the hair of the bow on the strings; it takes two different forms, col legno battuto and col legno tratto. Col legno battuto is performed as a percussive technique with no sustaining of the sound. The much less common alternative is col legno tratto, wherein the wood is drawn across the string as the hair is in a normal bow stroke. Some players refuse to use this technique because of potential damage to the bow.
In spiccato playing, the strings are not "drawn" by the bow hair but struck by it, while still retaining some horizontal motion, to generate a more percussive, crisp sound. It may be performed by using the wrist to "dip" the bow into the strings. Spiccato is usually associated with lively playing. On a violin, spiccato bowing comes off the string, but on a cello, the wood of the bow may rise briskly up without the hair actually leaving the string. While playing spiccato, the bow is literally bouncing off the string. Cello players simply "dip" the bow into the string, and touch it very fast, and then lift the bow off the string.
In staccato, the player moves the bow a small distance and stops it on the string, making a short sound, the rest of the written duration being taken up by silence.
Legato is a technique where the notes are smoothly connected without accents or breaks.
Sul ponticello "on the bridge" refers to bowing closer to the bridge, while sul tasto "on the fingerboard" calls for bowing nearer the end of the fingerboard. Ponticello calls for more bow weight and slower bow speed, and produces a "harder" sound, with strong overtone content. Sul tasto, in extreme cases called "flautando," produces a more flute-like sound, with more emphasis on the fundamental frequency of the note, and softer overtones.
1/8 size cello with full size cello
Standard-sized cellos are referred to as "full-size". However, cellos come in smaller (fractional) sizes, from "seven-eighths" and "three-quarter" down to "one-sixteenth" sized cellos (e.g. 7/8, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16). The smaller-sized cellos are identical to standard cellos in construction, range, and usage, but are simply 'scaled-down' for the benefit of children and shorter adults. A "half-size" cello is not actually half the size of a "full-size", but only slightly smaller. Many smaller cellists prefer to play a "seven-eighths" cello as the hand stretches in the lower positions are less demanding. Although rare, cellos in sizes larger than four-fourths do exist. Cellists with unusually large hands may play a slightly larger than full-sized cello. Cellos made before approximately 1700 tended to be considerably larger than those made after that date, and than those made and commonly played today. Around 1680, string-making technology made lower pitches on shorter strings possible. The cellos of Stradivari, for example, can be clearly divided into two models, with the style made before 1702 characterized by larger instruments (of which only three examples are extant in their original size and configuration), and the style made during and after 1702, when Stradivari, presumably in response to the "new" type of strings, began making cellos of a smaller size. This later model is the one most commonly used by modern luthiers.
There are many accessories for the cello.
*Cases are used to protect the cello and bow (or multiple bows) when traveling and for safe storage. They are often made of carbon fiber, fiber-glass, and less commonly wood.
*Rosin, made from conifer resin, is applied to the bow hairs to increase the effectiveness of the friction, grip or bite, and allow proper sound production. Rosin may have additives to modify the friction such as beeswax, gold, silver or tin.
*Endpin stops or straps (tradenames include Rockstop and Black Hole) keep the cello from sliding if the end pin does not have a rubber piece on the end (used on wood floors) though in many cases a rubber piece will not suffice on even a wood floor. Many Cellists often use a square or rectangle of carpet that can be secured under the front two legs of the chair as an endpin stop. This is however less likely to be seen in a professional arena and more used in rehearsal or in private.Players might even use their shoe to keep the endpin in place
*Wolf tone eliminators are sometimes placed on cello strings between the tailpiece and the bridge in order to eliminate acoustic anomalies known as wolf tones or "wolfs".
*Mutes are used to change the sound of the cello by reducing overtones. Practice mutes (made of metal) significantly reduce the instrument's volume (they are also referred to as "hotel mutes"). The most common mute is a rubber disc with two holes to fit the two middle strings. It sits just after the bridge and has a flap that can be placed over the top of the bridge to mute the vibrations travelling down it to the sound post inside the cello. These are especially used due to their simplicity and can be taken off or put on very quickly due to the fact that they stay on the strings past the bridge, which don't vibrate.
*Metronomes provide a steady tempo by sounding out a certain number of beats per minute. They are adjustable to fit the tempo of the piece. Many models can also produce a tuning pitch of A4 (440 Hz), among others. These can, of course, be used for all instruments.
*Humidifiers are used to control and stabilize the humidity around and inside the cello and are popular with travelling cellists. Often placed inside the cello itself or inside the case. Some players will not use humidifiers inside their cellos because they have the potential to drip, which may cause damage to the cello
*Tuners are used to tune the instrument. A tuner helps by providing a reference pitch to tune to. Most musicians cannot memorize the exact sound of a pitch, so they need a reference pitch
Cellos are part of the standard symphony orchestra. Usually, the orchestra includes eight to twelve cellists. The cello section, in standard orchestral seating, is located on stage left (the audience's right) in the front, opposite the first violin section. However, some orchestras and conductors prefer switching the positioning of the viola and cello sections. The principal, or "first chair" cellist is the section leader, determining bowings for the section in conjunction with other string principals, and playing solos. Principal players always sit closest to the audience.
The cellos are a critical part of orchestral music; all symphonic works involve the cello section, and many pieces require cello soli or solos. Much of the time, cellos provide part of the harmony for the orchestra. On many occasions, the cello section will play the melody for a brief period of time, before returning to the harmony. There are also cello concertos, which are orchestral pieces in which a featured, solo cellist is accompanied by an entire orchestra.
There are numerous cello concertos - where a solo cello is accompanied by an orchestra - notably 25 by Vivaldi, 12 by Boccherini, 3 by C.P.E. Bach, 2 by Haydn, 2 by Saint-Saëns, 2 by DvoÅák, and one each by Schumann, Lalo and Elgar. Beethoven's Triple Concerto for Cello, Violin and Piano and Brahms' Double Concerto for Cello and Violin are also part of the concertante repertoire although in both cases the cello shares solo duties with at least one other instrument. Moreover, several composers wrote large-scale pieces for cello and orchestra, which are concertos in all but name. The most important are Strauss' tone poem Don Quixote, Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Bloch's Schelomo and Bruch's Kol Nidrei.
In the 20th century, the cello repertoire grew. This was due to the influence of virtuoso cellist Mstislav Rostropovich who inspired, commissioned and/or premiered dozens of new works. Among these, Prokofiev's Symphonia Concertante, Britten's Cello Symphony and the concertos of Shostakovich, LutosÅawski and Dutilleux have already become part of the standard repertoire. In addition, Hindemith, Barber, Honegger, Villa-Lobos, Myaskovsky, Walton, Glass, Rodrigo, Arnold, Penderecki and Ligeti also wrote major concertos for other cellists (notably Gregor Piatigorsky, Siegfried Palm and Julian Lloyd Webber).
Cellists Julian Lloyd Webber (left) and Mstislav Rostropovich
There are also many sonatas for cello and piano. Those written by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Britten are the most famous.
Finally, there are several unaccompanied pieces for cello, most importantly J.S. Bach's six Unaccompanied Suites for Cello (arguably the most important cello pieces), Zoltán Kodály's Sonata for Solo Cello and Britten's three Unaccompanied Suites for Cello. Other notable examples include Dutilleux' Trois Strophes sur le Nom de Sacher, Berio's Les Mots Sont Allés (both part of a series of twelve compositions for solo cello commissioned by Rostropovich for Swiss conductor Paul Sacher's 70th birthday), Ligeti and Carter's sonatas and Xenakis' Nomos Alpha and Kottos.
The cello is a member of the traditional string quartet as well as string quintets, sextet or trios and other mixed ensembles.
There are also pieces written for two, three, four or more cellos; this type of ensemble is also called a "cello choir" and its sound is familiar from the introduction to Rossini's William Tell Overture as well as Zaccharias' prayer scene in Verdi's Nabucco. As a self-sufficient ensemble, its most famous repertoire is Villa-Lobos' first of his Bachianas Brasileiras for cello ensemble (the fifth is for soprano and 8 cellos). Another example is Boulez' Messagesquisse for 7 cellos. The Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (or "the Twelve" as they have since taken to being called) specialize in this repertoire and have commissioned many works, including arrangements of well-known popular songs.
Though the cello is less common in popular music than in classical music, it is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello is rarely part of a group's standard lineup (though like its cousin the violin it is becoming more common in mainstream pop).
In the 1960s, artists such as the Beatles and Cher used the cello in popular music, in songs such as "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)," "Eleanor Rigby" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the 1970s, the Electric Light Orchestra enjoyed great commercial success taking inspiration from so-called "Beatlesque" arrangements, adding the cello (and violin) to the standard rock combo line-up and in 1978 the UK based rock band, Colosseum II, collaborated with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber on the recording Variations. Most notably, Pink Floyd included a cello solo in their 1970 epic instrumental Atom Heart Mother. Bass guitarist Mike Rutherford of Genesis was originally a cellist and included some cello parts in their Foxtrot album.
Established non-traditional cello groups include Apocalyptica, a group of Finnish cellists best known for their versions of Metallica songs, Rasputina, a group of two female cellists committed to an intricate cello style intermingled with Gothic music, Von Cello, a cello fronted rock power trio, and Break of Reality who mix elements of classical music with the more modern rock and metal genre. These groups are examples of a style that has become known as cello rock. The crossover string quartet bond also includes a cellist. Silenzium and Vivacello are Russian (Novosibirsk) groups playing rock and metal and having more and more popularity in Siberia.
More recent bands using the cello are Aerosmith, Nirvana, Oasis, Murder by Death, Cursive, and OneRepublic. So-called "chamber pop" artists like Kronos Quartet, The Vitamin String Quartet and Margot and the Nuclear So and So's have also recently made cello common in modern alternative rock. Heavy metal band System of a Down has also made use of the cello's rich sound. The indie rock band The Stiletto Formal are known for using a cello as a major staple of their sound, and the orch-rock group,The Polyphonic Spree, which has pioneered the use of stringed and symphonic instruments, employs the cello in very creative ways for many of their "psycadelic-esque" melodies.
Pop star Richard Marx uses a cello in some of his studio recordings, such as "One Thing Left" and "In This All Alone."
Post-rock bands and other avant-garde groups commonly feature strings; cellos and violins over violas and contrabasses.
Modern musical theatre pieces like Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, Duncan Sheik's Spring Awakening, Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins, and Ricky Ian Gordon's My Life with Albertine use small string ensembles (including solo cellos) to a prominent extent.
The cello can also be used in bluegrass and folk music, with notable players including Ben Sollee of the Sparrow Quartet and the "Cajun cellist" Sean Grissom.
The cello and the double bass are now also used in some modern Chinese orchestras .
In jazz, bassists Oscar Pettiford and Harry Babasin were among the first to use the cello as a solo instrument; both tuned their instrument in fourths, an octave above the double bass. Fred Katz (who was not a bassist) was one of the first notable jazz cellists to use the instrument's standard tuning and arco technique. Contemporary jazz cellists include Abdul Wadud, Diedre Murray, Ron Carter, Dave Holland, David Darling, Lucio Amanti, Akua Dixon, Ernst Reijseger, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Vincent Courtois, Jean-Charles Capon, and Erik Friedlander.
Cellos are made by luthiers, specialists in building and repairing stringed instruments, ranging from guitars to violins. The following luthiers are notable for the cellos they have produced:
*Nicolò Amati and others in the Amati family
*William Forster
*Nicolò Gagliano
*Matteo Goffriller
*Giovanni Battista Guadagnini
*Giuseppe Guarneri
*Domenico Montagnana
*Giovanni Battista Rogeri
*Francesco Ruggieri
*Stefano Scarampella
*Antonio Stradivari
*David Tecchler
*Carlo Giuseppe Testore
*Jean Baptiste Vuillaume
A person who plays the cello is called a cellist, not a "celloist." For a list of notable cellists, see the list of cellists. See also .
Specific instruments are, or become, famous, for a variety of reasons. An instrument's notability may arise from its age, the fame of its maker, its physical appearance, its acoustic properties, and its use by notable performers. The most famous instruments are generally known for all of these things. The most highly prized instruments are now collector's items, and are priced beyond the reach of most musicians. These instruments are typically owned by some kind of organization or investment group, which loans the instrument to a performer for his or her use. (For example, the Davidov Stradivarius, which is currently in the possession of one of the most widely-known living cellists, Yo-Yo Ma, is actually owned by the Vuitton Foundation.
Some notable cellos:
*the "King", by Andrea Amati, is one of the oldest known cellos, built between 1538 and 1560. It is in the collection of the National Music Museum in South Dakota. National Music Museum page
*Servais Stradivarius is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
*Davidov Stradivarius, played by Jacqueline du Pré, currently played by Yo-Yo Ma
*Barjansky Stradivarius, played by Julian Lloyd Webber
*Bonjour Stradivarius, played by Soo Bae
*Paganini-Ladenburg Stradivarius, played by Clive Greensmith of the Tokyo String Quartet
*Duport Stradivarius, played by Mstislav Rostropovich
*Piatti Stradivarius, 1720, played by Carlos Prieto
* Brahms guitar
* Electric cello
* List of solo cello pieces
* List of compositions for cello and piano
* List of compositions for cello and orchestra
* Double Concerto for Violin and Cello
* Triple concerto for violin, cello, and piano
* String instrument repertoire
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* Apocalyptica
*Stephen Bonta. "Violoncello", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed January 28 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
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* The Internet Cello Society: an online community of cellists; includes several forums.
* Sources for the prescribed sheet music for the ABRSM practical Cello exams.
* Cello Teacher's Friend : A place for cellists to share ideas.
* cellist.nl: An international register of professional cellists, teachers, and students.
* Cello History: A brief history of the cello
* A Cello Teacher Training Manual And Syllabus
* Bowed Radio (podcast focusing on new music for bowed string instruments)
* Elgar Cello Concerto Performance
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Cello | null | null | data/set2/a9 | Cello
The violoncello (abbreviated to cello, or 'cello, plural cellos or celliâthe c is , as in the ch in "check", thus "chel-lo") is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra.
Study of a three-quarter size cello.
The name Cello is an abbreviation of the Italian violoncello, which means "little violone", referring to the violone ("big viol"), the lowest-pitched instrument of the viol family, the group of string instruments that were superseded by the violin family. Thus, the name carries both an augmentative "-one" ("big") and a diminutive "-cello" ("little"). Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2 (two octaves below middle C) as the lowest string, followed by G2, D3, and A3. It is tuned the same way as the viola, only an octave lower.
The cello is most closely associated with European classical music, and has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. Welcome::. to Academic Journals Inc The instrument is a part of the standard orchestra and is the bass voice of the string quartet, as well as being part of many other chamber groups. A large number of concertos and sonatas have been written for the cello. The instrument is less common in popular music, but is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello has also recently appeared in major hip-hop and R & B performances, such as singers Rihanna and Ne-Yo's performance at the American Music Awards. The instrument has also been modified for Indian classical music by Nancy Lesh and Saskia Rao-de Haas.
Among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are J. S. Bach's six unaccompanied Suites. From the Classical era, the two concertos by Joseph Haydn in C major and D major stand out, as do the five sonatas for cello and pianoforte of Beethoven which span the important three periods of his compositional evolution. Romantic era repertoire includes the Schumann Concerto, the DvoÅák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Brahms. Compositions from the early 20th century include Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano and unaccompanied cello sonatas by Zoltán Kodály and Paul Hindemith. The cello's versatility made it popular with composers in the mid- to late twentieth century such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Britten, Ligeti and Dutilleux, encouraged by soloists who specialized in contemporary music (such as Siegfried Palm and Mstislav Rostropovich) commissioning from and collaborating with composers.
The violoncello da spalla (sometimes "violoncello piccolo da spalla" or "violoncello da span") was the first cello referred to in print (by Jambe de Fer in 1556). Delbanco, Nicholas. (January 1, 2001) Harper's Bazaar. The Countess of Stanlein Restored. (Violoncello owned by Bernard Greenhouse is restored). Volume 302; Issue 1808; Page 39. "Violone" means a larger "viola" (viol), while "-cello" in Italian is a diminutive and spalla means "shoulder" in Italian so that violoncello da spalla suggest a "little big violin" that may be held on the shoulder so that the player could perform while walking or that the early, short-necked instrument was hung across the shoulder by a strap. By the turn of the twentieth century, it had grown customary to abbreviate the name violoncello to 'cello, with the apostrophe indicating the six missing prefix letters. It now is acceptable to use the name "cello" without the apostrophe and as a full designation.
The cello is typically made from wood, although other materials such as carbon fiber or aluminum may be used. A traditional cello has a spruce top, with maple for the back, sides, and neck. Other woods, such as poplar willow, are sometimes used for the back and sides. Less expensive cellos frequently have tops and backs made of laminated wood.
The top and back are traditionally hand-carved, though less expensive cellos are often machine-produced. The sides, or ribs, are made by heating the wood and bending it around forms. The cello body has a wide top bout, narrow middle formed by two C-bouts, and wide bottom bout, with the bridge and sound holes just below the middle.
The top and back of the cello has decorative border inlay known as purfling. Purfling looks attractive, but is not just for decoration. If a cello is dropped or bumped against something so that damage occurs, the purfling can stop cracks from forming. A crack may form at the rim of the instrument, but will spread no further. Without purfling, cracks can spread up or down the top or back. Playing, traveling and the weather all affect the cello and can increase a crack if purfling is not in place. Less expensive instruments typically have the purfling painted on.
Cello manufacturer Luis & Clark constructs cellos from carbon fiber. Carbon fiber instruments are particularly suitable for outdoor playing because of the strength of the material and its resistance to humidity and temperature fluctuations.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) as well as German luthier G.A. Pfretzschner produced an untold number of aluminum cellos (in addition to aluminum double basses and violins). An advertisement published in N.Y. Music Service catalogue (1930) reads: "...made entirely of aluminum with the exception of the fingerboard. They have many advantages over the wood basses and violoncellos, as they cannot crack, split or warp and are made to last forever ... possessing a tone quality that is deep, resonant and responsive to the utmost degree. Violoncello $150."
Above the main body is the carved neck, which leads to a pegbox and the scroll. The neck, pegbox, and scroll are normally carved out of a single piece of wood. Attached to the neck and extending over the body of the instrument is the fingerboard. The nut is a raised piece of wood, where the fingerboard meets the pegbox, which the strings rest on. The pegbox houses four tuning pegs, one for each string. The pegs are used to tune the cello by either tightening or loosening the string. The scroll is a traditional part of the cello and all other members of the violin family. Ebony is usually used for the tuning pegs, fingerboard, and nut, but other hard woods, such as boxwood or rosewood, can be used.
Strings on a cello have cores made out of gut, metal, or synthetic materials, such as Perlon. Most modern strings used today are also wound with metallic materials like aluminum, titanium and chromium. Cellists may mix different types of strings on their instruments.
The tailpiece and endpin are found in the lower part of the cello. The tailpiece is traditionally made of ebony or another hard wood, but can also be made of plastic or steel. It attaches the strings to the lower end of the cello, and can have one or more fine tuners. The endpin or spike is made of wood, metal or rigid carbon fiber and supports the cello in playing position. In the Baroque period the cello was held between the calves. Around the 1830s, the Belgian cellist Auguste Adrien Servais introduced the endpin and propagated its use. Modern endpins are retractable and adjustable; older ones were removed when not in use. (The word "endpin" sometimes also refers to the button of wood located at this place in all instruments in the violin family, but this is usually called "tailpin".) The sharp tip of the cello's endpin is sometimes capped with a rubber tip that protects the tip from dulling and prevents the cello from slipping on the floor.
The bridge of a cello, with a mute
The bridge holds the strings above the cello and transfers their vibrations to the top of the instrument and the soundpost inside (see below). The bridge is not glued, but rather held in place by the tension of the strings. The f-holes, named for their shape, are located on either side of the bridge, and allow air to move in and out of the instrument as part of the sound-production process. The f-holes also act as access points to the interior of the cello for repairs or maintenance. Sometimes a small hose containing a water-soaked sponge, called a Dampit, is inserted through the f-holes, and serves as a humidifier.
Internally, the cello has two important features: a bass bar, which is glued to the underside of the top of the instrument, and a round wooden sound post, which is wedged between the top and bottom plates. The bass bar, found under the bass foot of the bridge, serves to support the cello's top and distribute the vibrations. The sound post, found under the treble side of the bridge, connects the back and front of the cello. Like the bridge, the sound post is not glued, but is kept in place by the tensions of the bridge and strings. Together, the bass bar and sound post transfer the strings' vibrations to the top (front) of the instrument (and to a lesser extent the back), acting as a diaphragm to produce the instrument's sound.
Cellos are constructed and repaired using hide glue, which is strong but reversible, allowing for disassembly when needed. Tops may be glued on with diluted glue, since some repairs call for the removal of the top. Theoretically, hide glue is weaker than the body's wood, so as the top or back shrinks side-to-side, the glue holding it will let go, avoiding a crack in the plate.
A cello bow.
Traditionally, bows are made from pernambuco or brazilwood. Both come from the same species of tree (Caesalpina echinata), but pernambuco, used for higher-quality bows, is the heartwood of the tree and is darker in color than brazilwood (which is sometimes stained to compensate). Pernambuco is a heavy, resinous wood with great elasticity which makes it an ideal wood for instrument bows.
Bows are also made from other materials, such as carbon-fiber-stronger than wood-and fiberglass(often used to make inexpensive, low-quality student bows). An average cello bow is 73 cm long (shorter than a violin or viola bow) 3 cm high (from the frog to the stick) and 1.5 cm wide. The frog of a cello bow typically has a rounded corner like that of a viola bow, but is wider. A cello bow is roughly 10 grams heavier than a viola bow, which in turn is roughly 10 grams heavier than a violin bow.
Bow hair is traditionally horsehair, though synthetic hair in varying colors is also used. Prior to playing, a musician-in this case a cellist-tightens the bow by turning a screw to pull the frog (the part of the bow under the hand) back, and increase the tension of the hair. Rosin is applied by the player to make the hairs sticky. Bows need to be re-haired periodically. Ideally a bow should be re-haired every year, but this is not in great practice because of cost.
The cello developed from the bass violin, first referred to by Jambe de Fer in 1556, which was originally a three-string instrument. The first instance of a composer specifying the bass violin may have been Gabrieli in Sacrae symphoniae, 1597. Monteverdi referred to the instrument as "basso de viola da braccio" in Orfeo (1607). Although the first bass violin, possibly invented by Amati as early as 1538, was most likely inspired by the viol, it was created to be used in consorts with the violin. The bass violin was actually often referred to as a "violone," or "large viola," as were the viols of the same period. Instruments that share features with both the bass violin and the viola de gamba appear in Italian art of the early 1500s...
The invention of wire-wound strings (fine wire around a thin gut core), around 1660 in Bologna, allowed for a finer bass sound than was possible with purely gut strings on such a short body. Bolognese makers exploited this new technology to create the cello, a somewhat smaller instrument suitable for solo repertoire due to both the timbre of the instrument and the fact that the smaller size made it easier to play virtuosic passages. This instrument had disadvantages as well, however. The cello's light sound was not as suitable for church and ensemble playing, so it had to be doubled by basses or violones.
Around 1700, Italian players popularized the cello in northern Europe, although the bass violin (basse de violon) continued to be used for another two decades in France. Many existing bass violins were literally cut down in size in order to convert them into cellos according to the smaller pattern cello as developed by Stradivari, who also made a number of old pattern large cello's (the 'Servais'). Cyr 1982 The bass violin remained the "most used" instrument in England as late as 1740, where the violoncello was still "not common." Grassineau 1740 The sizes, names, and tunings of the cello varied widely by geography and time. The size was not standardized until around 1750.
Despite similarities to the viola da gamba, the cello is actually part of the viola da braccio family, meaning "viol of the arm", which includes, among others, the violin and viola. Though paintings like Bruegel's "The Rustic Wedding" and de Fer in his Epitome Musical suggest that the bass violin had alternate playing positions, these were short-lived and the more practical and ergonomic a gamba position eventually replaced them entirely.
A cello strung with gut strings. Note the absence of fine-tuning pins on the tailpiece.
Baroque era cellos differed from the modern instrument in several ways. The neck has a different form and angle which matches the baroque bass-bar and stringing. Modern cellos have an endpin at the bottom to support the instrument (and transmit some of the sound through the floor), while Baroque cellos are held only by the calves of the player. Modern bows curve in and are held at the frog; Baroque bows curve out and are held closer to the bow's point of balance. Modern strings normally have a metal core, although some use a synthetic core; Baroque strings are made of gut, with the G and C strings wire-wound. Modern cellos often have fine-tuners connecting the strings to the tailpiece, which make it much easier to tune the instrument, but such pins are rendered ineffective by the flexibility of the gut strings used on Baroque cellos. Overall, the modern instrument has much higher string tension than the Baroque cello, resulting in a louder, more projecting tone, with fewer overtones.
No educational works specifically devoted to the cello existed before the 18th century, and those that do exist contain little value to the performer beyond simple accounts of instrumental technique. The earliest cello manual is Michel Corrette's Méthode, thèorique et pratique pour apprendre en peu de temps le violoncelle dans sa perfection (Paris, 1741).
Seated Cellist
The cello is usually played while seated. Its weight is supported mainly by its endpin or spike, which rests on the floor. Sometimes, an endpin support is needed to prevent the endpin from slipping on smooth surfaces. The cello is steadied on the lower bout between the knees of the seated player, and on the upper bout against the upper chest. The neck of the cello is above the player's left shoulder, and the C-String tuning peg is just behind the left ear. The bow is drawn horizontally across the strings. In early times, female cellists sometimes played side-saddle, since it was considered improper for a lady to part her knees in public. A player's handedness does not alter the way the cello is held or used. In exceedingly rare cases the cello has been played in a mirror-image posture: this is usually because of a physical disability of one of the player's arms or hands which makes the required technique impossible for that side of the body. In such a situation, the player must decide whether or not to reverse the set-up of the cello (the string positions, bass-bar, sound post, fingerboard shape, and bridge carving are all asymmetrical).
The position of the left hand fingers along the strings determine the pitch of the note. The closer to the bridge that the string is depressed, the higher in pitch will be the resulting sound, because the vibrating string length has been shortened. In the neck positions (which use just less than half of the fingerboard, nearest the top of the instrument), the thumb rests on the back of the neck; in thumb position (a general name for notes on the remainder of the fingerboard) the thumb usually rests alongside the fingers on the string and the side of the thumb is used to play notes. The fingers are normally held curved with each knuckle bent, with the fingertips in contact with the string. If a finger is required on two (or more) strings at once to play perfect fifths (in double stops or chords) it is used flat. In slower, or more expressive playing, the contact point can move slightly away from the nail to the pad of the finger, allowing a fuller vibrato.
Vibrato is a small oscillation in the pitch of a note, usually considered expressive. It is created by a partial rotation of the upper arm at the shoulder joint, which translates into a linear oscillation of the lower arm. The fixed point of contact of the fingertip on the string absorbs this motion by rocking back and forth. It is this change in the attitude of the fingertip to the string which causes the pitch to vary. Vibrato is a key expressive device, and a well-developed vibrato technique is an essential element of a modern cellist's skill. In some styles of music, such as that of the Romantic period, vibrato may be used on almost every note. However, in other styles, such as Baroque repertoire, vibrato is used only rarely, as an ornament. In any case, the choice of whether to use vibrato, and how much, is normally a stylistic decision on the part of the player. Typically, the lower the pitch of the note played, the wider and slower the vibrato.
Harmonics played on the cello fall into two classes; natural and artificial. Natural harmonics are produced by lightly touching (but not depressing) the string with the finger at certain places, and then bowing (or, rarely, plucking) the string. For example, the halfway point of the string will produce a harmonic that is one octave above the unfingered (open) string. Natural harmonics only produce notes that are part of the harmonic series for the string on which they occur. Artificial harmonics (also called False harmonics), in which the player depresses the string fully with one finger while touching the same string lightly with another finger, can produce any notes above middle C. They usually appear with the touching note a perfect fourth above the stopped note, which produces a sound two octaves above the stopped note, although other intervals are available. All harmonics produce a distinctive flute-like sound, and are usually performed without vibrato.
Glissando ("sliding", in Italian) is an effect played by sliding the finger up or down the fingerboard without releasing the string. This causes the pitch to rise and fall smoothly, without separate, discernible steps.
In cello playing, the bow is much like the breath of a wind instrument player. Arguably, it is the major determinant in the expressiveness of the playing. The right hand holds the bow and controls the duration and character of the notes. The bow is drawn across the strings roughly halfway between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge, in a direction perpendicular to the strings. The bow is held with all five fingers of the right hand, the thumb opposite the fingers and closer to the cellist's body. The shape of the hand should resemble that of its relaxed state, with all fingers curved, including the thumb. The transmission of weight from the arm to the bow happens through the pronation (inward rotation) of the forearm, which pushes the index finger and to a lesser degree the middle finger onto the bow. The necessary counterforce is provided by the thumb. Depending upon the school of training, the other two fingers are used in various degrees to help maintain the angle of the bow to the string and are critical to controlling the bow when it is off the string. (See also spiccato).
In English, the terminology for bow direction (down and up) can be misleading. A downbow is drawn to the right of the player, and an upbow to the left. A downbow is drawn by first using the upper arm, then the forearm, then the wrist (turning slightly inward) in order to maintain a straight stroke. An upbow is drawn by moving first the forearm, then the upper arm, then the wrist (pushing slightly upward). The bow is mostly used perpendicular to the string being played. In order to perform string changes the whole arm is either lowered or lifted, with as little wrist movement as possible in order to maintain the angle to the string. However, flexibility of the wrist is necessary when changing the bow direction from up-bow to down-bow and vice versa. For very fast bow movements, the wrist is used to accomplish the horizontal movement of bow. For longer strokes, the arm is used as well as the wrist.
Tone production and volume of sound depend on a combination of several factors. The three most important ones are: bow speed, weight applied to the string, and point of contact of the bow hair with the string. A good player will be capable of a very even tone, and will counter the natural tendency to play with the most force with the part of the bow nearest to the frog or heel, and the least force near the tip. The closer to the bridge the string is bowed, the more projecting and brighter the tone, with the extreme (sul ponticello) producing a metallic, shimmery sound. If bowing closer to the fingerboard (sul tasto), the sound produced will be softer, more mellow, and less defined.
Double stops involve the playing of two notes at the same time. Two strings are fingered simultaneously, and the bow is drawn so as to sound them both at once. Triple and quadruple stops may also be played (in a "broken" fashion), but are difficult to sustain because of the change in slope of the bridge. To extend the technique in this area, Frances-Marie Uitti has invented a two-bow system: one bow plays above the strings and one below, allowing for sustained triple and quadruple stops. However, this technique is very rarely seen or used.
In pizzicato playing, the string is plucked directly with the fingers or thumb. Usually this is done with the right hand, while the bow is held away from the strings by the rest of the hand or (for extended passages) set down. A single string can be played pizzicato, or double, triple, or quadruple stops can be played. Occasionally, a player must bow one string with the right hand and simultaneously pluck another with the left. This is marked by a "+" above the note. Strumming of chords is also possible, in guitar fashion.
Col legno is the technique in which the player uses the wood rather than the hair of the bow on the strings; it takes two different forms, col legno battuto and col legno tratto. Col legno battuto is performed as a percussive technique with no sustaining of the sound. The much less common alternative is col legno tratto, wherein the wood is drawn across the string as the hair is in a normal bow stroke. Some players refuse to use this technique because of potential damage to the bow.
In spiccato playing, the strings are not "drawn" by the bow hair but struck by it, while still retaining some horizontal motion, to generate a more percussive, crisp sound. It may be performed by using the wrist to "dip" the bow into the strings. Spiccato is usually associated with lively playing. On a violin, spiccato bowing comes off the string, but on a cello, the wood of the bow may rise briskly up without the hair actually leaving the string. While playing spiccato, the bow is literally bouncing off the string. Cello players simply "dip" the bow into the string, and touch it very fast, and then lift the bow off the string.
In staccato, the player moves the bow a small distance and stops it on the string, making a short sound, the rest of the written duration being taken up by silence.
Legato is a technique where the notes are smoothly connected without accents or breaks.
Sul ponticello "on the bridge" refers to bowing closer to the bridge, while sul tasto "on the fingerboard" calls for bowing nearer the end of the fingerboard. Ponticello calls for more bow weight and slower bow speed, and produces a "harder" sound, with strong overtone content. Sul tasto, in extreme cases called "flautando," produces a more flute-like sound, with more emphasis on the fundamental frequency of the note, and softer overtones.
1/8 size cello with full size cello
Standard-sized cellos are referred to as "full-size". However, cellos come in smaller (fractional) sizes, from "seven-eighths" and "three-quarter" down to "one-sixteenth" sized cellos (e.g. 7/8, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16). The smaller-sized cellos are identical to standard cellos in construction, range, and usage, but are simply 'scaled-down' for the benefit of children and shorter adults. A "half-size" cello is not actually half the size of a "full-size", but only slightly smaller. Many smaller cellists prefer to play a "seven-eighths" cello as the hand stretches in the lower positions are less demanding. Although rare, cellos in sizes larger than four-fourths do exist. Cellists with unusually large hands may play a slightly larger than full-sized cello. Cellos made before approximately 1700 tended to be considerably larger than those made after that date, and than those made and commonly played today. Around 1680, string-making technology made lower pitches on shorter strings possible. The cellos of Stradivari, for example, can be clearly divided into two models, with the style made before 1702 characterized by larger instruments (of which only three examples are extant in their original size and configuration), and the style made during and after 1702, when Stradivari, presumably in response to the "new" type of strings, began making cellos of a smaller size. This later model is the one most commonly used by modern luthiers.
There are many accessories for the cello.
*Cases are used to protect the cello and bow (or multiple bows) when traveling and for safe storage. They are often made of carbon fiber, fiber-glass, and less commonly wood.
*Rosin, made from conifer resin, is applied to the bow hairs to increase the effectiveness of the friction, grip or bite, and allow proper sound production. Rosin may have additives to modify the friction such as beeswax, gold, silver or tin.
*Endpin stops or straps (tradenames include Rockstop and Black Hole) keep the cello from sliding if the end pin does not have a rubber piece on the end (used on wood floors) though in many cases a rubber piece will not suffice on even a wood floor. Many Cellists often use a square or rectangle of carpet that can be secured under the front two legs of the chair as an endpin stop. This is however less likely to be seen in a professional arena and more used in rehearsal or in private.Players might even use their shoe to keep the endpin in place
*Wolf tone eliminators are sometimes placed on cello strings between the tailpiece and the bridge in order to eliminate acoustic anomalies known as wolf tones or "wolfs".
*Mutes are used to change the sound of the cello by reducing overtones. Practice mutes (made of metal) significantly reduce the instrument's volume (they are also referred to as "hotel mutes"). The most common mute is a rubber disc with two holes to fit the two middle strings. It sits just after the bridge and has a flap that can be placed over the top of the bridge to mute the vibrations travelling down it to the sound post inside the cello. These are especially used due to their simplicity and can be taken off or put on very quickly due to the fact that they stay on the strings past the bridge, which don't vibrate.
*Metronomes provide a steady tempo by sounding out a certain number of beats per minute. They are adjustable to fit the tempo of the piece. Many models can also produce a tuning pitch of A4 (440 Hz), among others. These can, of course, be used for all instruments.
*Humidifiers are used to control and stabilize the humidity around and inside the cello and are popular with travelling cellists. Often placed inside the cello itself or inside the case. Some players will not use humidifiers inside their cellos because they have the potential to drip, which may cause damage to the cello
*Tuners are used to tune the instrument. A tuner helps by providing a reference pitch to tune to. Most musicians cannot memorize the exact sound of a pitch, so they need a reference pitch
Cellos are part of the standard symphony orchestra. Usually, the orchestra includes eight to twelve cellists. The cello section, in standard orchestral seating, is located on stage left (the audience's right) in the front, opposite the first violin section. However, some orchestras and conductors prefer switching the positioning of the viola and cello sections. The principal, or "first chair" cellist is the section leader, determining bowings for the section in conjunction with other string principals, and playing solos. Principal players always sit closest to the audience.
The cellos are a critical part of orchestral music; all symphonic works involve the cello section, and many pieces require cello soli or solos. Much of the time, cellos provide part of the harmony for the orchestra. On many occasions, the cello section will play the melody for a brief period of time, before returning to the harmony. There are also cello concertos, which are orchestral pieces in which a featured, solo cellist is accompanied by an entire orchestra.
There are numerous cello concertos - where a solo cello is accompanied by an orchestra - notably 25 by Vivaldi, 12 by Boccherini, 3 by C.P.E. Bach, 2 by Haydn, 2 by Saint-Saëns, 2 by DvoÅák, and one each by Schumann, Lalo and Elgar. Beethoven's Triple Concerto for Cello, Violin and Piano and Brahms' Double Concerto for Cello and Violin are also part of the concertante repertoire although in both cases the cello shares solo duties with at least one other instrument. Moreover, several composers wrote large-scale pieces for cello and orchestra, which are concertos in all but name. The most important are Strauss' tone poem Don Quixote, Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Bloch's Schelomo and Bruch's Kol Nidrei.
In the 20th century, the cello repertoire grew. This was due to the influence of virtuoso cellist Mstislav Rostropovich who inspired, commissioned and/or premiered dozens of new works. Among these, Prokofiev's Symphonia Concertante, Britten's Cello Symphony and the concertos of Shostakovich, LutosÅawski and Dutilleux have already become part of the standard repertoire. In addition, Hindemith, Barber, Honegger, Villa-Lobos, Myaskovsky, Walton, Glass, Rodrigo, Arnold, Penderecki and Ligeti also wrote major concertos for other cellists (notably Gregor Piatigorsky, Siegfried Palm and Julian Lloyd Webber).
Cellists Julian Lloyd Webber (left) and Mstislav Rostropovich
There are also many sonatas for cello and piano. Those written by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Britten are the most famous.
Finally, there are several unaccompanied pieces for cello, most importantly J.S. Bach's six Unaccompanied Suites for Cello (arguably the most important cello pieces), Zoltán Kodály's Sonata for Solo Cello and Britten's three Unaccompanied Suites for Cello. Other notable examples include Dutilleux' Trois Strophes sur le Nom de Sacher, Berio's Les Mots Sont Allés (both part of a series of twelve compositions for solo cello commissioned by Rostropovich for Swiss conductor Paul Sacher's 70th birthday), Ligeti and Carter's sonatas and Xenakis' Nomos Alpha and Kottos.
The cello is a member of the traditional string quartet as well as string quintets, sextet or trios and other mixed ensembles.
There are also pieces written for two, three, four or more cellos; this type of ensemble is also called a "cello choir" and its sound is familiar from the introduction to Rossini's William Tell Overture as well as Zaccharias' prayer scene in Verdi's Nabucco. As a self-sufficient ensemble, its most famous repertoire is Villa-Lobos' first of his Bachianas Brasileiras for cello ensemble (the fifth is for soprano and 8 cellos). Another example is Boulez' Messagesquisse for 7 cellos. The Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (or "the Twelve" as they have since taken to being called) specialize in this repertoire and have commissioned many works, including arrangements of well-known popular songs.
Though the cello is less common in popular music than in classical music, it is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello is rarely part of a group's standard lineup (though like its cousin the violin it is becoming more common in mainstream pop).
In the 1960s, artists such as the Beatles and Cher used the cello in popular music, in songs such as "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)," "Eleanor Rigby" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the 1970s, the Electric Light Orchestra enjoyed great commercial success taking inspiration from so-called "Beatlesque" arrangements, adding the cello (and violin) to the standard rock combo line-up and in 1978 the UK based rock band, Colosseum II, collaborated with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber on the recording Variations. Most notably, Pink Floyd included a cello solo in their 1970 epic instrumental Atom Heart Mother. Bass guitarist Mike Rutherford of Genesis was originally a cellist and included some cello parts in their Foxtrot album.
Established non-traditional cello groups include Apocalyptica, a group of Finnish cellists best known for their versions of Metallica songs, Rasputina, a group of two female cellists committed to an intricate cello style intermingled with Gothic music, Von Cello, a cello fronted rock power trio, and Break of Reality who mix elements of classical music with the more modern rock and metal genre. These groups are examples of a style that has become known as cello rock. The crossover string quartet bond also includes a cellist. Silenzium and Vivacello are Russian (Novosibirsk) groups playing rock and metal and having more and more popularity in Siberia.
More recent bands using the cello are Aerosmith, Nirvana, Oasis, Murder by Death, Cursive, and OneRepublic. So-called "chamber pop" artists like Kronos Quartet, The Vitamin String Quartet and Margot and the Nuclear So and So's have also recently made cello common in modern alternative rock. Heavy metal band System of a Down has also made use of the cello's rich sound. The indie rock band The Stiletto Formal are known for using a cello as a major staple of their sound, and the orch-rock group,The Polyphonic Spree, which has pioneered the use of stringed and symphonic instruments, employs the cello in very creative ways for many of their "psycadelic-esque" melodies.
Pop star Richard Marx uses a cello in some of his studio recordings, such as "One Thing Left" and "In This All Alone."
Post-rock bands and other avant-garde groups commonly feature strings; cellos and violins over violas and contrabasses.
Modern musical theatre pieces like Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, Duncan Sheik's Spring Awakening, Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins, and Ricky Ian Gordon's My Life with Albertine use small string ensembles (including solo cellos) to a prominent extent.
The cello can also be used in bluegrass and folk music, with notable players including Ben Sollee of the Sparrow Quartet and the "Cajun cellist" Sean Grissom.
The cello and the double bass are now also used in some modern Chinese orchestras .
In jazz, bassists Oscar Pettiford and Harry Babasin were among the first to use the cello as a solo instrument; both tuned their instrument in fourths, an octave above the double bass. Fred Katz (who was not a bassist) was one of the first notable jazz cellists to use the instrument's standard tuning and arco technique. Contemporary jazz cellists include Abdul Wadud, Diedre Murray, Ron Carter, Dave Holland, David Darling, Lucio Amanti, Akua Dixon, Ernst Reijseger, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Vincent Courtois, Jean-Charles Capon, and Erik Friedlander.
Cellos are made by luthiers, specialists in building and repairing stringed instruments, ranging from guitars to violins. The following luthiers are notable for the cellos they have produced:
*Nicolò Amati and others in the Amati family
*William Forster
*Nicolò Gagliano
*Matteo Goffriller
*Giovanni Battista Guadagnini
*Giuseppe Guarneri
*Domenico Montagnana
*Giovanni Battista Rogeri
*Francesco Ruggieri
*Stefano Scarampella
*Antonio Stradivari
*David Tecchler
*Carlo Giuseppe Testore
*Jean Baptiste Vuillaume
A person who plays the cello is called a cellist, not a "celloist." For a list of notable cellists, see the list of cellists. See also .
Specific instruments are, or become, famous, for a variety of reasons. An instrument's notability may arise from its age, the fame of its maker, its physical appearance, its acoustic properties, and its use by notable performers. The most famous instruments are generally known for all of these things. The most highly prized instruments are now collector's items, and are priced beyond the reach of most musicians. These instruments are typically owned by some kind of organization or investment group, which loans the instrument to a performer for his or her use. (For example, the Davidov Stradivarius, which is currently in the possession of one of the most widely-known living cellists, Yo-Yo Ma, is actually owned by the Vuitton Foundation.
Some notable cellos:
*the "King", by Andrea Amati, is one of the oldest known cellos, built between 1538 and 1560. It is in the collection of the National Music Museum in South Dakota. National Music Museum page
*Servais Stradivarius is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
*Davidov Stradivarius, played by Jacqueline du Pré, currently played by Yo-Yo Ma
*Barjansky Stradivarius, played by Julian Lloyd Webber
*Bonjour Stradivarius, played by Soo Bae
*Paganini-Ladenburg Stradivarius, played by Clive Greensmith of the Tokyo String Quartet
*Duport Stradivarius, played by Mstislav Rostropovich
*Piatti Stradivarius, 1720, played by Carlos Prieto
* Brahms guitar
* Electric cello
* List of solo cello pieces
* List of compositions for cello and piano
* List of compositions for cello and orchestra
* Double Concerto for Violin and Cello
* Triple concerto for violin, cello, and piano
* String instrument repertoire
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* Apocalyptica
*Stephen Bonta. "Violoncello", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed January 28 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
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* The Internet Cello Society: an online community of cellists; includes several forums.
* Sources for the prescribed sheet music for the ABRSM practical Cello exams.
* Cello Teacher's Friend : A place for cellists to share ideas.
* cellist.nl: An international register of professional cellists, teachers, and students.
* Cello History: A brief history of the cello
* A Cello Teacher Training Manual And Syllabus
* Bowed Radio (podcast focusing on new music for bowed string instruments)
* Elgar Cello Concerto Performance
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Cello | null | null | data/set2/a9 | Cello
The violoncello (abbreviated to cello, or 'cello, plural cellos or celliâthe c is , as in the ch in "check", thus "chel-lo") is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra.
Study of a three-quarter size cello.
The name Cello is an abbreviation of the Italian violoncello, which means "little violone", referring to the violone ("big viol"), the lowest-pitched instrument of the viol family, the group of string instruments that were superseded by the violin family. Thus, the name carries both an augmentative "-one" ("big") and a diminutive "-cello" ("little"). Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2 (two octaves below middle C) as the lowest string, followed by G2, D3, and A3. It is tuned the same way as the viola, only an octave lower.
The cello is most closely associated with European classical music, and has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. Welcome::. to Academic Journals Inc The instrument is a part of the standard orchestra and is the bass voice of the string quartet, as well as being part of many other chamber groups. A large number of concertos and sonatas have been written for the cello. The instrument is less common in popular music, but is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello has also recently appeared in major hip-hop and R & B performances, such as singers Rihanna and Ne-Yo's performance at the American Music Awards. The instrument has also been modified for Indian classical music by Nancy Lesh and Saskia Rao-de Haas.
Among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are J. S. Bach's six unaccompanied Suites. From the Classical era, the two concertos by Joseph Haydn in C major and D major stand out, as do the five sonatas for cello and pianoforte of Beethoven which span the important three periods of his compositional evolution. Romantic era repertoire includes the Schumann Concerto, the DvoÅák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Brahms. Compositions from the early 20th century include Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano and unaccompanied cello sonatas by Zoltán Kodály and Paul Hindemith. The cello's versatility made it popular with composers in the mid- to late twentieth century such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Britten, Ligeti and Dutilleux, encouraged by soloists who specialized in contemporary music (such as Siegfried Palm and Mstislav Rostropovich) commissioning from and collaborating with composers.
The violoncello da spalla (sometimes "violoncello piccolo da spalla" or "violoncello da span") was the first cello referred to in print (by Jambe de Fer in 1556). Delbanco, Nicholas. (January 1, 2001) Harper's Bazaar. The Countess of Stanlein Restored. (Violoncello owned by Bernard Greenhouse is restored). Volume 302; Issue 1808; Page 39. "Violone" means a larger "viola" (viol), while "-cello" in Italian is a diminutive and spalla means "shoulder" in Italian so that violoncello da spalla suggest a "little big violin" that may be held on the shoulder so that the player could perform while walking or that the early, short-necked instrument was hung across the shoulder by a strap. By the turn of the twentieth century, it had grown customary to abbreviate the name violoncello to 'cello, with the apostrophe indicating the six missing prefix letters. It now is acceptable to use the name "cello" without the apostrophe and as a full designation.
The cello is typically made from wood, although other materials such as carbon fiber or aluminum may be used. A traditional cello has a spruce top, with maple for the back, sides, and neck. Other woods, such as poplar willow, are sometimes used for the back and sides. Less expensive cellos frequently have tops and backs made of laminated wood.
The top and back are traditionally hand-carved, though less expensive cellos are often machine-produced. The sides, or ribs, are made by heating the wood and bending it around forms. The cello body has a wide top bout, narrow middle formed by two C-bouts, and wide bottom bout, with the bridge and sound holes just below the middle.
The top and back of the cello has decorative border inlay known as purfling. Purfling looks attractive, but is not just for decoration. If a cello is dropped or bumped against something so that damage occurs, the purfling can stop cracks from forming. A crack may form at the rim of the instrument, but will spread no further. Without purfling, cracks can spread up or down the top or back. Playing, traveling and the weather all affect the cello and can increase a crack if purfling is not in place. Less expensive instruments typically have the purfling painted on.
Cello manufacturer Luis & Clark constructs cellos from carbon fiber. Carbon fiber instruments are particularly suitable for outdoor playing because of the strength of the material and its resistance to humidity and temperature fluctuations.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) as well as German luthier G.A. Pfretzschner produced an untold number of aluminum cellos (in addition to aluminum double basses and violins). An advertisement published in N.Y. Music Service catalogue (1930) reads: "...made entirely of aluminum with the exception of the fingerboard. They have many advantages over the wood basses and violoncellos, as they cannot crack, split or warp and are made to last forever ... possessing a tone quality that is deep, resonant and responsive to the utmost degree. Violoncello $150."
Above the main body is the carved neck, which leads to a pegbox and the scroll. The neck, pegbox, and scroll are normally carved out of a single piece of wood. Attached to the neck and extending over the body of the instrument is the fingerboard. The nut is a raised piece of wood, where the fingerboard meets the pegbox, which the strings rest on. The pegbox houses four tuning pegs, one for each string. The pegs are used to tune the cello by either tightening or loosening the string. The scroll is a traditional part of the cello and all other members of the violin family. Ebony is usually used for the tuning pegs, fingerboard, and nut, but other hard woods, such as boxwood or rosewood, can be used.
Strings on a cello have cores made out of gut, metal, or synthetic materials, such as Perlon. Most modern strings used today are also wound with metallic materials like aluminum, titanium and chromium. Cellists may mix different types of strings on their instruments.
The tailpiece and endpin are found in the lower part of the cello. The tailpiece is traditionally made of ebony or another hard wood, but can also be made of plastic or steel. It attaches the strings to the lower end of the cello, and can have one or more fine tuners. The endpin or spike is made of wood, metal or rigid carbon fiber and supports the cello in playing position. In the Baroque period the cello was held between the calves. Around the 1830s, the Belgian cellist Auguste Adrien Servais introduced the endpin and propagated its use. Modern endpins are retractable and adjustable; older ones were removed when not in use. (The word "endpin" sometimes also refers to the button of wood located at this place in all instruments in the violin family, but this is usually called "tailpin".) The sharp tip of the cello's endpin is sometimes capped with a rubber tip that protects the tip from dulling and prevents the cello from slipping on the floor.
The bridge of a cello, with a mute
The bridge holds the strings above the cello and transfers their vibrations to the top of the instrument and the soundpost inside (see below). The bridge is not glued, but rather held in place by the tension of the strings. The f-holes, named for their shape, are located on either side of the bridge, and allow air to move in and out of the instrument as part of the sound-production process. The f-holes also act as access points to the interior of the cello for repairs or maintenance. Sometimes a small hose containing a water-soaked sponge, called a Dampit, is inserted through the f-holes, and serves as a humidifier.
Internally, the cello has two important features: a bass bar, which is glued to the underside of the top of the instrument, and a round wooden sound post, which is wedged between the top and bottom plates. The bass bar, found under the bass foot of the bridge, serves to support the cello's top and distribute the vibrations. The sound post, found under the treble side of the bridge, connects the back and front of the cello. Like the bridge, the sound post is not glued, but is kept in place by the tensions of the bridge and strings. Together, the bass bar and sound post transfer the strings' vibrations to the top (front) of the instrument (and to a lesser extent the back), acting as a diaphragm to produce the instrument's sound.
Cellos are constructed and repaired using hide glue, which is strong but reversible, allowing for disassembly when needed. Tops may be glued on with diluted glue, since some repairs call for the removal of the top. Theoretically, hide glue is weaker than the body's wood, so as the top or back shrinks side-to-side, the glue holding it will let go, avoiding a crack in the plate.
A cello bow.
Traditionally, bows are made from pernambuco or brazilwood. Both come from the same species of tree (Caesalpina echinata), but pernambuco, used for higher-quality bows, is the heartwood of the tree and is darker in color than brazilwood (which is sometimes stained to compensate). Pernambuco is a heavy, resinous wood with great elasticity which makes it an ideal wood for instrument bows.
Bows are also made from other materials, such as carbon-fiber-stronger than wood-and fiberglass(often used to make inexpensive, low-quality student bows). An average cello bow is 73 cm long (shorter than a violin or viola bow) 3 cm high (from the frog to the stick) and 1.5 cm wide. The frog of a cello bow typically has a rounded corner like that of a viola bow, but is wider. A cello bow is roughly 10 grams heavier than a viola bow, which in turn is roughly 10 grams heavier than a violin bow.
Bow hair is traditionally horsehair, though synthetic hair in varying colors is also used. Prior to playing, a musician-in this case a cellist-tightens the bow by turning a screw to pull the frog (the part of the bow under the hand) back, and increase the tension of the hair. Rosin is applied by the player to make the hairs sticky. Bows need to be re-haired periodically. Ideally a bow should be re-haired every year, but this is not in great practice because of cost.
The cello developed from the bass violin, first referred to by Jambe de Fer in 1556, which was originally a three-string instrument. The first instance of a composer specifying the bass violin may have been Gabrieli in Sacrae symphoniae, 1597. Monteverdi referred to the instrument as "basso de viola da braccio" in Orfeo (1607). Although the first bass violin, possibly invented by Amati as early as 1538, was most likely inspired by the viol, it was created to be used in consorts with the violin. The bass violin was actually often referred to as a "violone," or "large viola," as were the viols of the same period. Instruments that share features with both the bass violin and the viola de gamba appear in Italian art of the early 1500s...
The invention of wire-wound strings (fine wire around a thin gut core), around 1660 in Bologna, allowed for a finer bass sound than was possible with purely gut strings on such a short body. Bolognese makers exploited this new technology to create the cello, a somewhat smaller instrument suitable for solo repertoire due to both the timbre of the instrument and the fact that the smaller size made it easier to play virtuosic passages. This instrument had disadvantages as well, however. The cello's light sound was not as suitable for church and ensemble playing, so it had to be doubled by basses or violones.
Around 1700, Italian players popularized the cello in northern Europe, although the bass violin (basse de violon) continued to be used for another two decades in France. Many existing bass violins were literally cut down in size in order to convert them into cellos according to the smaller pattern cello as developed by Stradivari, who also made a number of old pattern large cello's (the 'Servais'). Cyr 1982 The bass violin remained the "most used" instrument in England as late as 1740, where the violoncello was still "not common." Grassineau 1740 The sizes, names, and tunings of the cello varied widely by geography and time. The size was not standardized until around 1750.
Despite similarities to the viola da gamba, the cello is actually part of the viola da braccio family, meaning "viol of the arm", which includes, among others, the violin and viola. Though paintings like Bruegel's "The Rustic Wedding" and de Fer in his Epitome Musical suggest that the bass violin had alternate playing positions, these were short-lived and the more practical and ergonomic a gamba position eventually replaced them entirely.
A cello strung with gut strings. Note the absence of fine-tuning pins on the tailpiece.
Baroque era cellos differed from the modern instrument in several ways. The neck has a different form and angle which matches the baroque bass-bar and stringing. Modern cellos have an endpin at the bottom to support the instrument (and transmit some of the sound through the floor), while Baroque cellos are held only by the calves of the player. Modern bows curve in and are held at the frog; Baroque bows curve out and are held closer to the bow's point of balance. Modern strings normally have a metal core, although some use a synthetic core; Baroque strings are made of gut, with the G and C strings wire-wound. Modern cellos often have fine-tuners connecting the strings to the tailpiece, which make it much easier to tune the instrument, but such pins are rendered ineffective by the flexibility of the gut strings used on Baroque cellos. Overall, the modern instrument has much higher string tension than the Baroque cello, resulting in a louder, more projecting tone, with fewer overtones.
No educational works specifically devoted to the cello existed before the 18th century, and those that do exist contain little value to the performer beyond simple accounts of instrumental technique. The earliest cello manual is Michel Corrette's Méthode, thèorique et pratique pour apprendre en peu de temps le violoncelle dans sa perfection (Paris, 1741).
Seated Cellist
The cello is usually played while seated. Its weight is supported mainly by its endpin or spike, which rests on the floor. Sometimes, an endpin support is needed to prevent the endpin from slipping on smooth surfaces. The cello is steadied on the lower bout between the knees of the seated player, and on the upper bout against the upper chest. The neck of the cello is above the player's left shoulder, and the C-String tuning peg is just behind the left ear. The bow is drawn horizontally across the strings. In early times, female cellists sometimes played side-saddle, since it was considered improper for a lady to part her knees in public. A player's handedness does not alter the way the cello is held or used. In exceedingly rare cases the cello has been played in a mirror-image posture: this is usually because of a physical disability of one of the player's arms or hands which makes the required technique impossible for that side of the body. In such a situation, the player must decide whether or not to reverse the set-up of the cello (the string positions, bass-bar, sound post, fingerboard shape, and bridge carving are all asymmetrical).
The position of the left hand fingers along the strings determine the pitch of the note. The closer to the bridge that the string is depressed, the higher in pitch will be the resulting sound, because the vibrating string length has been shortened. In the neck positions (which use just less than half of the fingerboard, nearest the top of the instrument), the thumb rests on the back of the neck; in thumb position (a general name for notes on the remainder of the fingerboard) the thumb usually rests alongside the fingers on the string and the side of the thumb is used to play notes. The fingers are normally held curved with each knuckle bent, with the fingertips in contact with the string. If a finger is required on two (or more) strings at once to play perfect fifths (in double stops or chords) it is used flat. In slower, or more expressive playing, the contact point can move slightly away from the nail to the pad of the finger, allowing a fuller vibrato.
Vibrato is a small oscillation in the pitch of a note, usually considered expressive. It is created by a partial rotation of the upper arm at the shoulder joint, which translates into a linear oscillation of the lower arm. The fixed point of contact of the fingertip on the string absorbs this motion by rocking back and forth. It is this change in the attitude of the fingertip to the string which causes the pitch to vary. Vibrato is a key expressive device, and a well-developed vibrato technique is an essential element of a modern cellist's skill. In some styles of music, such as that of the Romantic period, vibrato may be used on almost every note. However, in other styles, such as Baroque repertoire, vibrato is used only rarely, as an ornament. In any case, the choice of whether to use vibrato, and how much, is normally a stylistic decision on the part of the player. Typically, the lower the pitch of the note played, the wider and slower the vibrato.
Harmonics played on the cello fall into two classes; natural and artificial. Natural harmonics are produced by lightly touching (but not depressing) the string with the finger at certain places, and then bowing (or, rarely, plucking) the string. For example, the halfway point of the string will produce a harmonic that is one octave above the unfingered (open) string. Natural harmonics only produce notes that are part of the harmonic series for the string on which they occur. Artificial harmonics (also called False harmonics), in which the player depresses the string fully with one finger while touching the same string lightly with another finger, can produce any notes above middle C. They usually appear with the touching note a perfect fourth above the stopped note, which produces a sound two octaves above the stopped note, although other intervals are available. All harmonics produce a distinctive flute-like sound, and are usually performed without vibrato.
Glissando ("sliding", in Italian) is an effect played by sliding the finger up or down the fingerboard without releasing the string. This causes the pitch to rise and fall smoothly, without separate, discernible steps.
In cello playing, the bow is much like the breath of a wind instrument player. Arguably, it is the major determinant in the expressiveness of the playing. The right hand holds the bow and controls the duration and character of the notes. The bow is drawn across the strings roughly halfway between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge, in a direction perpendicular to the strings. The bow is held with all five fingers of the right hand, the thumb opposite the fingers and closer to the cellist's body. The shape of the hand should resemble that of its relaxed state, with all fingers curved, including the thumb. The transmission of weight from the arm to the bow happens through the pronation (inward rotation) of the forearm, which pushes the index finger and to a lesser degree the middle finger onto the bow. The necessary counterforce is provided by the thumb. Depending upon the school of training, the other two fingers are used in various degrees to help maintain the angle of the bow to the string and are critical to controlling the bow when it is off the string. (See also spiccato).
In English, the terminology for bow direction (down and up) can be misleading. A downbow is drawn to the right of the player, and an upbow to the left. A downbow is drawn by first using the upper arm, then the forearm, then the wrist (turning slightly inward) in order to maintain a straight stroke. An upbow is drawn by moving first the forearm, then the upper arm, then the wrist (pushing slightly upward). The bow is mostly used perpendicular to the string being played. In order to perform string changes the whole arm is either lowered or lifted, with as little wrist movement as possible in order to maintain the angle to the string. However, flexibility of the wrist is necessary when changing the bow direction from up-bow to down-bow and vice versa. For very fast bow movements, the wrist is used to accomplish the horizontal movement of bow. For longer strokes, the arm is used as well as the wrist.
Tone production and volume of sound depend on a combination of several factors. The three most important ones are: bow speed, weight applied to the string, and point of contact of the bow hair with the string. A good player will be capable of a very even tone, and will counter the natural tendency to play with the most force with the part of the bow nearest to the frog or heel, and the least force near the tip. The closer to the bridge the string is bowed, the more projecting and brighter the tone, with the extreme (sul ponticello) producing a metallic, shimmery sound. If bowing closer to the fingerboard (sul tasto), the sound produced will be softer, more mellow, and less defined.
Double stops involve the playing of two notes at the same time. Two strings are fingered simultaneously, and the bow is drawn so as to sound them both at once. Triple and quadruple stops may also be played (in a "broken" fashion), but are difficult to sustain because of the change in slope of the bridge. To extend the technique in this area, Frances-Marie Uitti has invented a two-bow system: one bow plays above the strings and one below, allowing for sustained triple and quadruple stops. However, this technique is very rarely seen or used.
In pizzicato playing, the string is plucked directly with the fingers or thumb. Usually this is done with the right hand, while the bow is held away from the strings by the rest of the hand or (for extended passages) set down. A single string can be played pizzicato, or double, triple, or quadruple stops can be played. Occasionally, a player must bow one string with the right hand and simultaneously pluck another with the left. This is marked by a "+" above the note. Strumming of chords is also possible, in guitar fashion.
Col legno is the technique in which the player uses the wood rather than the hair of the bow on the strings; it takes two different forms, col legno battuto and col legno tratto. Col legno battuto is performed as a percussive technique with no sustaining of the sound. The much less common alternative is col legno tratto, wherein the wood is drawn across the string as the hair is in a normal bow stroke. Some players refuse to use this technique because of potential damage to the bow.
In spiccato playing, the strings are not "drawn" by the bow hair but struck by it, while still retaining some horizontal motion, to generate a more percussive, crisp sound. It may be performed by using the wrist to "dip" the bow into the strings. Spiccato is usually associated with lively playing. On a violin, spiccato bowing comes off the string, but on a cello, the wood of the bow may rise briskly up without the hair actually leaving the string. While playing spiccato, the bow is literally bouncing off the string. Cello players simply "dip" the bow into the string, and touch it very fast, and then lift the bow off the string.
In staccato, the player moves the bow a small distance and stops it on the string, making a short sound, the rest of the written duration being taken up by silence.
Legato is a technique where the notes are smoothly connected without accents or breaks.
Sul ponticello "on the bridge" refers to bowing closer to the bridge, while sul tasto "on the fingerboard" calls for bowing nearer the end of the fingerboard. Ponticello calls for more bow weight and slower bow speed, and produces a "harder" sound, with strong overtone content. Sul tasto, in extreme cases called "flautando," produces a more flute-like sound, with more emphasis on the fundamental frequency of the note, and softer overtones.
1/8 size cello with full size cello
Standard-sized cellos are referred to as "full-size". However, cellos come in smaller (fractional) sizes, from "seven-eighths" and "three-quarter" down to "one-sixteenth" sized cellos (e.g. 7/8, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16). The smaller-sized cellos are identical to standard cellos in construction, range, and usage, but are simply 'scaled-down' for the benefit of children and shorter adults. A "half-size" cello is not actually half the size of a "full-size", but only slightly smaller. Many smaller cellists prefer to play a "seven-eighths" cello as the hand stretches in the lower positions are less demanding. Although rare, cellos in sizes larger than four-fourths do exist. Cellists with unusually large hands may play a slightly larger than full-sized cello. Cellos made before approximately 1700 tended to be considerably larger than those made after that date, and than those made and commonly played today. Around 1680, string-making technology made lower pitches on shorter strings possible. The cellos of Stradivari, for example, can be clearly divided into two models, with the style made before 1702 characterized by larger instruments (of which only three examples are extant in their original size and configuration), and the style made during and after 1702, when Stradivari, presumably in response to the "new" type of strings, began making cellos of a smaller size. This later model is the one most commonly used by modern luthiers.
There are many accessories for the cello.
*Cases are used to protect the cello and bow (or multiple bows) when traveling and for safe storage. They are often made of carbon fiber, fiber-glass, and less commonly wood.
*Rosin, made from conifer resin, is applied to the bow hairs to increase the effectiveness of the friction, grip or bite, and allow proper sound production. Rosin may have additives to modify the friction such as beeswax, gold, silver or tin.
*Endpin stops or straps (tradenames include Rockstop and Black Hole) keep the cello from sliding if the end pin does not have a rubber piece on the end (used on wood floors) though in many cases a rubber piece will not suffice on even a wood floor. Many Cellists often use a square or rectangle of carpet that can be secured under the front two legs of the chair as an endpin stop. This is however less likely to be seen in a professional arena and more used in rehearsal or in private.Players might even use their shoe to keep the endpin in place
*Wolf tone eliminators are sometimes placed on cello strings between the tailpiece and the bridge in order to eliminate acoustic anomalies known as wolf tones or "wolfs".
*Mutes are used to change the sound of the cello by reducing overtones. Practice mutes (made of metal) significantly reduce the instrument's volume (they are also referred to as "hotel mutes"). The most common mute is a rubber disc with two holes to fit the two middle strings. It sits just after the bridge and has a flap that can be placed over the top of the bridge to mute the vibrations travelling down it to the sound post inside the cello. These are especially used due to their simplicity and can be taken off or put on very quickly due to the fact that they stay on the strings past the bridge, which don't vibrate.
*Metronomes provide a steady tempo by sounding out a certain number of beats per minute. They are adjustable to fit the tempo of the piece. Many models can also produce a tuning pitch of A4 (440 Hz), among others. These can, of course, be used for all instruments.
*Humidifiers are used to control and stabilize the humidity around and inside the cello and are popular with travelling cellists. Often placed inside the cello itself or inside the case. Some players will not use humidifiers inside their cellos because they have the potential to drip, which may cause damage to the cello
*Tuners are used to tune the instrument. A tuner helps by providing a reference pitch to tune to. Most musicians cannot memorize the exact sound of a pitch, so they need a reference pitch
Cellos are part of the standard symphony orchestra. Usually, the orchestra includes eight to twelve cellists. The cello section, in standard orchestral seating, is located on stage left (the audience's right) in the front, opposite the first violin section. However, some orchestras and conductors prefer switching the positioning of the viola and cello sections. The principal, or "first chair" cellist is the section leader, determining bowings for the section in conjunction with other string principals, and playing solos. Principal players always sit closest to the audience.
The cellos are a critical part of orchestral music; all symphonic works involve the cello section, and many pieces require cello soli or solos. Much of the time, cellos provide part of the harmony for the orchestra. On many occasions, the cello section will play the melody for a brief period of time, before returning to the harmony. There are also cello concertos, which are orchestral pieces in which a featured, solo cellist is accompanied by an entire orchestra.
There are numerous cello concertos - where a solo cello is accompanied by an orchestra - notably 25 by Vivaldi, 12 by Boccherini, 3 by C.P.E. Bach, 2 by Haydn, 2 by Saint-Saëns, 2 by DvoÅák, and one each by Schumann, Lalo and Elgar. Beethoven's Triple Concerto for Cello, Violin and Piano and Brahms' Double Concerto for Cello and Violin are also part of the concertante repertoire although in both cases the cello shares solo duties with at least one other instrument. Moreover, several composers wrote large-scale pieces for cello and orchestra, which are concertos in all but name. The most important are Strauss' tone poem Don Quixote, Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Bloch's Schelomo and Bruch's Kol Nidrei.
In the 20th century, the cello repertoire grew. This was due to the influence of virtuoso cellist Mstislav Rostropovich who inspired, commissioned and/or premiered dozens of new works. Among these, Prokofiev's Symphonia Concertante, Britten's Cello Symphony and the concertos of Shostakovich, LutosÅawski and Dutilleux have already become part of the standard repertoire. In addition, Hindemith, Barber, Honegger, Villa-Lobos, Myaskovsky, Walton, Glass, Rodrigo, Arnold, Penderecki and Ligeti also wrote major concertos for other cellists (notably Gregor Piatigorsky, Siegfried Palm and Julian Lloyd Webber).
Cellists Julian Lloyd Webber (left) and Mstislav Rostropovich
There are also many sonatas for cello and piano. Those written by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Britten are the most famous.
Finally, there are several unaccompanied pieces for cello, most importantly J.S. Bach's six Unaccompanied Suites for Cello (arguably the most important cello pieces), Zoltán Kodály's Sonata for Solo Cello and Britten's three Unaccompanied Suites for Cello. Other notable examples include Dutilleux' Trois Strophes sur le Nom de Sacher, Berio's Les Mots Sont Allés (both part of a series of twelve compositions for solo cello commissioned by Rostropovich for Swiss conductor Paul Sacher's 70th birthday), Ligeti and Carter's sonatas and Xenakis' Nomos Alpha and Kottos.
The cello is a member of the traditional string quartet as well as string quintets, sextet or trios and other mixed ensembles.
There are also pieces written for two, three, four or more cellos; this type of ensemble is also called a "cello choir" and its sound is familiar from the introduction to Rossini's William Tell Overture as well as Zaccharias' prayer scene in Verdi's Nabucco. As a self-sufficient ensemble, its most famous repertoire is Villa-Lobos' first of his Bachianas Brasileiras for cello ensemble (the fifth is for soprano and 8 cellos). Another example is Boulez' Messagesquisse for 7 cellos. The Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (or "the Twelve" as they have since taken to being called) specialize in this repertoire and have commissioned many works, including arrangements of well-known popular songs.
Though the cello is less common in popular music than in classical music, it is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello is rarely part of a group's standard lineup (though like its cousin the violin it is becoming more common in mainstream pop).
In the 1960s, artists such as the Beatles and Cher used the cello in popular music, in songs such as "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)," "Eleanor Rigby" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the 1970s, the Electric Light Orchestra enjoyed great commercial success taking inspiration from so-called "Beatlesque" arrangements, adding the cello (and violin) to the standard rock combo line-up and in 1978 the UK based rock band, Colosseum II, collaborated with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber on the recording Variations. Most notably, Pink Floyd included a cello solo in their 1970 epic instrumental Atom Heart Mother. Bass guitarist Mike Rutherford of Genesis was originally a cellist and included some cello parts in their Foxtrot album.
Established non-traditional cello groups include Apocalyptica, a group of Finnish cellists best known for their versions of Metallica songs, Rasputina, a group of two female cellists committed to an intricate cello style intermingled with Gothic music, Von Cello, a cello fronted rock power trio, and Break of Reality who mix elements of classical music with the more modern rock and metal genre. These groups are examples of a style that has become known as cello rock. The crossover string quartet bond also includes a cellist. Silenzium and Vivacello are Russian (Novosibirsk) groups playing rock and metal and having more and more popularity in Siberia.
More recent bands using the cello are Aerosmith, Nirvana, Oasis, Murder by Death, Cursive, and OneRepublic. So-called "chamber pop" artists like Kronos Quartet, The Vitamin String Quartet and Margot and the Nuclear So and So's have also recently made cello common in modern alternative rock. Heavy metal band System of a Down has also made use of the cello's rich sound. The indie rock band The Stiletto Formal are known for using a cello as a major staple of their sound, and the orch-rock group,The Polyphonic Spree, which has pioneered the use of stringed and symphonic instruments, employs the cello in very creative ways for many of their "psycadelic-esque" melodies.
Pop star Richard Marx uses a cello in some of his studio recordings, such as "One Thing Left" and "In This All Alone."
Post-rock bands and other avant-garde groups commonly feature strings; cellos and violins over violas and contrabasses.
Modern musical theatre pieces like Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, Duncan Sheik's Spring Awakening, Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins, and Ricky Ian Gordon's My Life with Albertine use small string ensembles (including solo cellos) to a prominent extent.
The cello can also be used in bluegrass and folk music, with notable players including Ben Sollee of the Sparrow Quartet and the "Cajun cellist" Sean Grissom.
The cello and the double bass are now also used in some modern Chinese orchestras .
In jazz, bassists Oscar Pettiford and Harry Babasin were among the first to use the cello as a solo instrument; both tuned their instrument in fourths, an octave above the double bass. Fred Katz (who was not a bassist) was one of the first notable jazz cellists to use the instrument's standard tuning and arco technique. Contemporary jazz cellists include Abdul Wadud, Diedre Murray, Ron Carter, Dave Holland, David Darling, Lucio Amanti, Akua Dixon, Ernst Reijseger, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Vincent Courtois, Jean-Charles Capon, and Erik Friedlander.
Cellos are made by luthiers, specialists in building and repairing stringed instruments, ranging from guitars to violins. The following luthiers are notable for the cellos they have produced:
*Nicolò Amati and others in the Amati family
*William Forster
*Nicolò Gagliano
*Matteo Goffriller
*Giovanni Battista Guadagnini
*Giuseppe Guarneri
*Domenico Montagnana
*Giovanni Battista Rogeri
*Francesco Ruggieri
*Stefano Scarampella
*Antonio Stradivari
*David Tecchler
*Carlo Giuseppe Testore
*Jean Baptiste Vuillaume
A person who plays the cello is called a cellist, not a "celloist." For a list of notable cellists, see the list of cellists. See also .
Specific instruments are, or become, famous, for a variety of reasons. An instrument's notability may arise from its age, the fame of its maker, its physical appearance, its acoustic properties, and its use by notable performers. The most famous instruments are generally known for all of these things. The most highly prized instruments are now collector's items, and are priced beyond the reach of most musicians. These instruments are typically owned by some kind of organization or investment group, which loans the instrument to a performer for his or her use. (For example, the Davidov Stradivarius, which is currently in the possession of one of the most widely-known living cellists, Yo-Yo Ma, is actually owned by the Vuitton Foundation.
Some notable cellos:
*the "King", by Andrea Amati, is one of the oldest known cellos, built between 1538 and 1560. It is in the collection of the National Music Museum in South Dakota. National Music Museum page
*Servais Stradivarius is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
*Davidov Stradivarius, played by Jacqueline du Pré, currently played by Yo-Yo Ma
*Barjansky Stradivarius, played by Julian Lloyd Webber
*Bonjour Stradivarius, played by Soo Bae
*Paganini-Ladenburg Stradivarius, played by Clive Greensmith of the Tokyo String Quartet
*Duport Stradivarius, played by Mstislav Rostropovich
*Piatti Stradivarius, 1720, played by Carlos Prieto
* Brahms guitar
* Electric cello
* List of solo cello pieces
* List of compositions for cello and piano
* List of compositions for cello and orchestra
* Double Concerto for Violin and Cello
* Triple concerto for violin, cello, and piano
* String instrument repertoire
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* Apocalyptica
*Stephen Bonta. "Violoncello", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed January 28 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
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* The Internet Cello Society: an online community of cellists; includes several forums.
* Sources for the prescribed sheet music for the ABRSM practical Cello exams.
* Cello Teacher's Friend : A place for cellists to share ideas.
* cellist.nl: An international register of professional cellists, teachers, and students.
* Cello History: A brief history of the cello
* A Cello Teacher Training Manual And Syllabus
* Bowed Radio (podcast focusing on new music for bowed string instruments)
* Elgar Cello Concerto Performance
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Cello | null | null | data/set2/a9 | Cello
The violoncello (abbreviated to cello, or 'cello, plural cellos or celliâthe c is , as in the ch in "check", thus "chel-lo") is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra.
Study of a three-quarter size cello.
The name Cello is an abbreviation of the Italian violoncello, which means "little violone", referring to the violone ("big viol"), the lowest-pitched instrument of the viol family, the group of string instruments that were superseded by the violin family. Thus, the name carries both an augmentative "-one" ("big") and a diminutive "-cello" ("little"). Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2 (two octaves below middle C) as the lowest string, followed by G2, D3, and A3. It is tuned the same way as the viola, only an octave lower.
The cello is most closely associated with European classical music, and has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. Welcome::. to Academic Journals Inc The instrument is a part of the standard orchestra and is the bass voice of the string quartet, as well as being part of many other chamber groups. A large number of concertos and sonatas have been written for the cello. The instrument is less common in popular music, but is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello has also recently appeared in major hip-hop and R & B performances, such as singers Rihanna and Ne-Yo's performance at the American Music Awards. The instrument has also been modified for Indian classical music by Nancy Lesh and Saskia Rao-de Haas.
Among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are J. S. Bach's six unaccompanied Suites. From the Classical era, the two concertos by Joseph Haydn in C major and D major stand out, as do the five sonatas for cello and pianoforte of Beethoven which span the important three periods of his compositional evolution. Romantic era repertoire includes the Schumann Concerto, the DvoÅák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Brahms. Compositions from the early 20th century include Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano and unaccompanied cello sonatas by Zoltán Kodály and Paul Hindemith. The cello's versatility made it popular with composers in the mid- to late twentieth century such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Britten, Ligeti and Dutilleux, encouraged by soloists who specialized in contemporary music (such as Siegfried Palm and Mstislav Rostropovich) commissioning from and collaborating with composers.
The violoncello da spalla (sometimes "violoncello piccolo da spalla" or "violoncello da span") was the first cello referred to in print (by Jambe de Fer in 1556). Delbanco, Nicholas. (January 1, 2001) Harper's Bazaar. The Countess of Stanlein Restored. (Violoncello owned by Bernard Greenhouse is restored). Volume 302; Issue 1808; Page 39. "Violone" means a larger "viola" (viol), while "-cello" in Italian is a diminutive and spalla means "shoulder" in Italian so that violoncello da spalla suggest a "little big violin" that may be held on the shoulder so that the player could perform while walking or that the early, short-necked instrument was hung across the shoulder by a strap. By the turn of the twentieth century, it had grown customary to abbreviate the name violoncello to 'cello, with the apostrophe indicating the six missing prefix letters. It now is acceptable to use the name "cello" without the apostrophe and as a full designation.
The cello is typically made from wood, although other materials such as carbon fiber or aluminum may be used. A traditional cello has a spruce top, with maple for the back, sides, and neck. Other woods, such as poplar willow, are sometimes used for the back and sides. Less expensive cellos frequently have tops and backs made of laminated wood.
The top and back are traditionally hand-carved, though less expensive cellos are often machine-produced. The sides, or ribs, are made by heating the wood and bending it around forms. The cello body has a wide top bout, narrow middle formed by two C-bouts, and wide bottom bout, with the bridge and sound holes just below the middle.
The top and back of the cello has decorative border inlay known as purfling. Purfling looks attractive, but is not just for decoration. If a cello is dropped or bumped against something so that damage occurs, the purfling can stop cracks from forming. A crack may form at the rim of the instrument, but will spread no further. Without purfling, cracks can spread up or down the top or back. Playing, traveling and the weather all affect the cello and can increase a crack if purfling is not in place. Less expensive instruments typically have the purfling painted on.
Cello manufacturer Luis & Clark constructs cellos from carbon fiber. Carbon fiber instruments are particularly suitable for outdoor playing because of the strength of the material and its resistance to humidity and temperature fluctuations.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) as well as German luthier G.A. Pfretzschner produced an untold number of aluminum cellos (in addition to aluminum double basses and violins). An advertisement published in N.Y. Music Service catalogue (1930) reads: "...made entirely of aluminum with the exception of the fingerboard. They have many advantages over the wood basses and violoncellos, as they cannot crack, split or warp and are made to last forever ... possessing a tone quality that is deep, resonant and responsive to the utmost degree. Violoncello $150."
Above the main body is the carved neck, which leads to a pegbox and the scroll. The neck, pegbox, and scroll are normally carved out of a single piece of wood. Attached to the neck and extending over the body of the instrument is the fingerboard. The nut is a raised piece of wood, where the fingerboard meets the pegbox, which the strings rest on. The pegbox houses four tuning pegs, one for each string. The pegs are used to tune the cello by either tightening or loosening the string. The scroll is a traditional part of the cello and all other members of the violin family. Ebony is usually used for the tuning pegs, fingerboard, and nut, but other hard woods, such as boxwood or rosewood, can be used.
Strings on a cello have cores made out of gut, metal, or synthetic materials, such as Perlon. Most modern strings used today are also wound with metallic materials like aluminum, titanium and chromium. Cellists may mix different types of strings on their instruments.
The tailpiece and endpin are found in the lower part of the cello. The tailpiece is traditionally made of ebony or another hard wood, but can also be made of plastic or steel. It attaches the strings to the lower end of the cello, and can have one or more fine tuners. The endpin or spike is made of wood, metal or rigid carbon fiber and supports the cello in playing position. In the Baroque period the cello was held between the calves. Around the 1830s, the Belgian cellist Auguste Adrien Servais introduced the endpin and propagated its use. Modern endpins are retractable and adjustable; older ones were removed when not in use. (The word "endpin" sometimes also refers to the button of wood located at this place in all instruments in the violin family, but this is usually called "tailpin".) The sharp tip of the cello's endpin is sometimes capped with a rubber tip that protects the tip from dulling and prevents the cello from slipping on the floor.
The bridge of a cello, with a mute
The bridge holds the strings above the cello and transfers their vibrations to the top of the instrument and the soundpost inside (see below). The bridge is not glued, but rather held in place by the tension of the strings. The f-holes, named for their shape, are located on either side of the bridge, and allow air to move in and out of the instrument as part of the sound-production process. The f-holes also act as access points to the interior of the cello for repairs or maintenance. Sometimes a small hose containing a water-soaked sponge, called a Dampit, is inserted through the f-holes, and serves as a humidifier.
Internally, the cello has two important features: a bass bar, which is glued to the underside of the top of the instrument, and a round wooden sound post, which is wedged between the top and bottom plates. The bass bar, found under the bass foot of the bridge, serves to support the cello's top and distribute the vibrations. The sound post, found under the treble side of the bridge, connects the back and front of the cello. Like the bridge, the sound post is not glued, but is kept in place by the tensions of the bridge and strings. Together, the bass bar and sound post transfer the strings' vibrations to the top (front) of the instrument (and to a lesser extent the back), acting as a diaphragm to produce the instrument's sound.
Cellos are constructed and repaired using hide glue, which is strong but reversible, allowing for disassembly when needed. Tops may be glued on with diluted glue, since some repairs call for the removal of the top. Theoretically, hide glue is weaker than the body's wood, so as the top or back shrinks side-to-side, the glue holding it will let go, avoiding a crack in the plate.
A cello bow.
Traditionally, bows are made from pernambuco or brazilwood. Both come from the same species of tree (Caesalpina echinata), but pernambuco, used for higher-quality bows, is the heartwood of the tree and is darker in color than brazilwood (which is sometimes stained to compensate). Pernambuco is a heavy, resinous wood with great elasticity which makes it an ideal wood for instrument bows.
Bows are also made from other materials, such as carbon-fiber-stronger than wood-and fiberglass(often used to make inexpensive, low-quality student bows). An average cello bow is 73 cm long (shorter than a violin or viola bow) 3 cm high (from the frog to the stick) and 1.5 cm wide. The frog of a cello bow typically has a rounded corner like that of a viola bow, but is wider. A cello bow is roughly 10 grams heavier than a viola bow, which in turn is roughly 10 grams heavier than a violin bow.
Bow hair is traditionally horsehair, though synthetic hair in varying colors is also used. Prior to playing, a musician-in this case a cellist-tightens the bow by turning a screw to pull the frog (the part of the bow under the hand) back, and increase the tension of the hair. Rosin is applied by the player to make the hairs sticky. Bows need to be re-haired periodically. Ideally a bow should be re-haired every year, but this is not in great practice because of cost.
The cello developed from the bass violin, first referred to by Jambe de Fer in 1556, which was originally a three-string instrument. The first instance of a composer specifying the bass violin may have been Gabrieli in Sacrae symphoniae, 1597. Monteverdi referred to the instrument as "basso de viola da braccio" in Orfeo (1607). Although the first bass violin, possibly invented by Amati as early as 1538, was most likely inspired by the viol, it was created to be used in consorts with the violin. The bass violin was actually often referred to as a "violone," or "large viola," as were the viols of the same period. Instruments that share features with both the bass violin and the viola de gamba appear in Italian art of the early 1500s...
The invention of wire-wound strings (fine wire around a thin gut core), around 1660 in Bologna, allowed for a finer bass sound than was possible with purely gut strings on such a short body. Bolognese makers exploited this new technology to create the cello, a somewhat smaller instrument suitable for solo repertoire due to both the timbre of the instrument and the fact that the smaller size made it easier to play virtuosic passages. This instrument had disadvantages as well, however. The cello's light sound was not as suitable for church and ensemble playing, so it had to be doubled by basses or violones.
Around 1700, Italian players popularized the cello in northern Europe, although the bass violin (basse de violon) continued to be used for another two decades in France. Many existing bass violins were literally cut down in size in order to convert them into cellos according to the smaller pattern cello as developed by Stradivari, who also made a number of old pattern large cello's (the 'Servais'). Cyr 1982 The bass violin remained the "most used" instrument in England as late as 1740, where the violoncello was still "not common." Grassineau 1740 The sizes, names, and tunings of the cello varied widely by geography and time. The size was not standardized until around 1750.
Despite similarities to the viola da gamba, the cello is actually part of the viola da braccio family, meaning "viol of the arm", which includes, among others, the violin and viola. Though paintings like Bruegel's "The Rustic Wedding" and de Fer in his Epitome Musical suggest that the bass violin had alternate playing positions, these were short-lived and the more practical and ergonomic a gamba position eventually replaced them entirely.
A cello strung with gut strings. Note the absence of fine-tuning pins on the tailpiece.
Baroque era cellos differed from the modern instrument in several ways. The neck has a different form and angle which matches the baroque bass-bar and stringing. Modern cellos have an endpin at the bottom to support the instrument (and transmit some of the sound through the floor), while Baroque cellos are held only by the calves of the player. Modern bows curve in and are held at the frog; Baroque bows curve out and are held closer to the bow's point of balance. Modern strings normally have a metal core, although some use a synthetic core; Baroque strings are made of gut, with the G and C strings wire-wound. Modern cellos often have fine-tuners connecting the strings to the tailpiece, which make it much easier to tune the instrument, but such pins are rendered ineffective by the flexibility of the gut strings used on Baroque cellos. Overall, the modern instrument has much higher string tension than the Baroque cello, resulting in a louder, more projecting tone, with fewer overtones.
No educational works specifically devoted to the cello existed before the 18th century, and those that do exist contain little value to the performer beyond simple accounts of instrumental technique. The earliest cello manual is Michel Corrette's Méthode, thèorique et pratique pour apprendre en peu de temps le violoncelle dans sa perfection (Paris, 1741).
Seated Cellist
The cello is usually played while seated. Its weight is supported mainly by its endpin or spike, which rests on the floor. Sometimes, an endpin support is needed to prevent the endpin from slipping on smooth surfaces. The cello is steadied on the lower bout between the knees of the seated player, and on the upper bout against the upper chest. The neck of the cello is above the player's left shoulder, and the C-String tuning peg is just behind the left ear. The bow is drawn horizontally across the strings. In early times, female cellists sometimes played side-saddle, since it was considered improper for a lady to part her knees in public. A player's handedness does not alter the way the cello is held or used. In exceedingly rare cases the cello has been played in a mirror-image posture: this is usually because of a physical disability of one of the player's arms or hands which makes the required technique impossible for that side of the body. In such a situation, the player must decide whether or not to reverse the set-up of the cello (the string positions, bass-bar, sound post, fingerboard shape, and bridge carving are all asymmetrical).
The position of the left hand fingers along the strings determine the pitch of the note. The closer to the bridge that the string is depressed, the higher in pitch will be the resulting sound, because the vibrating string length has been shortened. In the neck positions (which use just less than half of the fingerboard, nearest the top of the instrument), the thumb rests on the back of the neck; in thumb position (a general name for notes on the remainder of the fingerboard) the thumb usually rests alongside the fingers on the string and the side of the thumb is used to play notes. The fingers are normally held curved with each knuckle bent, with the fingertips in contact with the string. If a finger is required on two (or more) strings at once to play perfect fifths (in double stops or chords) it is used flat. In slower, or more expressive playing, the contact point can move slightly away from the nail to the pad of the finger, allowing a fuller vibrato.
Vibrato is a small oscillation in the pitch of a note, usually considered expressive. It is created by a partial rotation of the upper arm at the shoulder joint, which translates into a linear oscillation of the lower arm. The fixed point of contact of the fingertip on the string absorbs this motion by rocking back and forth. It is this change in the attitude of the fingertip to the string which causes the pitch to vary. Vibrato is a key expressive device, and a well-developed vibrato technique is an essential element of a modern cellist's skill. In some styles of music, such as that of the Romantic period, vibrato may be used on almost every note. However, in other styles, such as Baroque repertoire, vibrato is used only rarely, as an ornament. In any case, the choice of whether to use vibrato, and how much, is normally a stylistic decision on the part of the player. Typically, the lower the pitch of the note played, the wider and slower the vibrato.
Harmonics played on the cello fall into two classes; natural and artificial. Natural harmonics are produced by lightly touching (but not depressing) the string with the finger at certain places, and then bowing (or, rarely, plucking) the string. For example, the halfway point of the string will produce a harmonic that is one octave above the unfingered (open) string. Natural harmonics only produce notes that are part of the harmonic series for the string on which they occur. Artificial harmonics (also called False harmonics), in which the player depresses the string fully with one finger while touching the same string lightly with another finger, can produce any notes above middle C. They usually appear with the touching note a perfect fourth above the stopped note, which produces a sound two octaves above the stopped note, although other intervals are available. All harmonics produce a distinctive flute-like sound, and are usually performed without vibrato.
Glissando ("sliding", in Italian) is an effect played by sliding the finger up or down the fingerboard without releasing the string. This causes the pitch to rise and fall smoothly, without separate, discernible steps.
In cello playing, the bow is much like the breath of a wind instrument player. Arguably, it is the major determinant in the expressiveness of the playing. The right hand holds the bow and controls the duration and character of the notes. The bow is drawn across the strings roughly halfway between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge, in a direction perpendicular to the strings. The bow is held with all five fingers of the right hand, the thumb opposite the fingers and closer to the cellist's body. The shape of the hand should resemble that of its relaxed state, with all fingers curved, including the thumb. The transmission of weight from the arm to the bow happens through the pronation (inward rotation) of the forearm, which pushes the index finger and to a lesser degree the middle finger onto the bow. The necessary counterforce is provided by the thumb. Depending upon the school of training, the other two fingers are used in various degrees to help maintain the angle of the bow to the string and are critical to controlling the bow when it is off the string. (See also spiccato).
In English, the terminology for bow direction (down and up) can be misleading. A downbow is drawn to the right of the player, and an upbow to the left. A downbow is drawn by first using the upper arm, then the forearm, then the wrist (turning slightly inward) in order to maintain a straight stroke. An upbow is drawn by moving first the forearm, then the upper arm, then the wrist (pushing slightly upward). The bow is mostly used perpendicular to the string being played. In order to perform string changes the whole arm is either lowered or lifted, with as little wrist movement as possible in order to maintain the angle to the string. However, flexibility of the wrist is necessary when changing the bow direction from up-bow to down-bow and vice versa. For very fast bow movements, the wrist is used to accomplish the horizontal movement of bow. For longer strokes, the arm is used as well as the wrist.
Tone production and volume of sound depend on a combination of several factors. The three most important ones are: bow speed, weight applied to the string, and point of contact of the bow hair with the string. A good player will be capable of a very even tone, and will counter the natural tendency to play with the most force with the part of the bow nearest to the frog or heel, and the least force near the tip. The closer to the bridge the string is bowed, the more projecting and brighter the tone, with the extreme (sul ponticello) producing a metallic, shimmery sound. If bowing closer to the fingerboard (sul tasto), the sound produced will be softer, more mellow, and less defined.
Double stops involve the playing of two notes at the same time. Two strings are fingered simultaneously, and the bow is drawn so as to sound them both at once. Triple and quadruple stops may also be played (in a "broken" fashion), but are difficult to sustain because of the change in slope of the bridge. To extend the technique in this area, Frances-Marie Uitti has invented a two-bow system: one bow plays above the strings and one below, allowing for sustained triple and quadruple stops. However, this technique is very rarely seen or used.
In pizzicato playing, the string is plucked directly with the fingers or thumb. Usually this is done with the right hand, while the bow is held away from the strings by the rest of the hand or (for extended passages) set down. A single string can be played pizzicato, or double, triple, or quadruple stops can be played. Occasionally, a player must bow one string with the right hand and simultaneously pluck another with the left. This is marked by a "+" above the note. Strumming of chords is also possible, in guitar fashion.
Col legno is the technique in which the player uses the wood rather than the hair of the bow on the strings; it takes two different forms, col legno battuto and col legno tratto. Col legno battuto is performed as a percussive technique with no sustaining of the sound. The much less common alternative is col legno tratto, wherein the wood is drawn across the string as the hair is in a normal bow stroke. Some players refuse to use this technique because of potential damage to the bow.
In spiccato playing, the strings are not "drawn" by the bow hair but struck by it, while still retaining some horizontal motion, to generate a more percussive, crisp sound. It may be performed by using the wrist to "dip" the bow into the strings. Spiccato is usually associated with lively playing. On a violin, spiccato bowing comes off the string, but on a cello, the wood of the bow may rise briskly up without the hair actually leaving the string. While playing spiccato, the bow is literally bouncing off the string. Cello players simply "dip" the bow into the string, and touch it very fast, and then lift the bow off the string.
In staccato, the player moves the bow a small distance and stops it on the string, making a short sound, the rest of the written duration being taken up by silence.
Legato is a technique where the notes are smoothly connected without accents or breaks.
Sul ponticello "on the bridge" refers to bowing closer to the bridge, while sul tasto "on the fingerboard" calls for bowing nearer the end of the fingerboard. Ponticello calls for more bow weight and slower bow speed, and produces a "harder" sound, with strong overtone content. Sul tasto, in extreme cases called "flautando," produces a more flute-like sound, with more emphasis on the fundamental frequency of the note, and softer overtones.
1/8 size cello with full size cello
Standard-sized cellos are referred to as "full-size". However, cellos come in smaller (fractional) sizes, from "seven-eighths" and "three-quarter" down to "one-sixteenth" sized cellos (e.g. 7/8, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16). The smaller-sized cellos are identical to standard cellos in construction, range, and usage, but are simply 'scaled-down' for the benefit of children and shorter adults. A "half-size" cello is not actually half the size of a "full-size", but only slightly smaller. Many smaller cellists prefer to play a "seven-eighths" cello as the hand stretches in the lower positions are less demanding. Although rare, cellos in sizes larger than four-fourths do exist. Cellists with unusually large hands may play a slightly larger than full-sized cello. Cellos made before approximately 1700 tended to be considerably larger than those made after that date, and than those made and commonly played today. Around 1680, string-making technology made lower pitches on shorter strings possible. The cellos of Stradivari, for example, can be clearly divided into two models, with the style made before 1702 characterized by larger instruments (of which only three examples are extant in their original size and configuration), and the style made during and after 1702, when Stradivari, presumably in response to the "new" type of strings, began making cellos of a smaller size. This later model is the one most commonly used by modern luthiers.
There are many accessories for the cello.
*Cases are used to protect the cello and bow (or multiple bows) when traveling and for safe storage. They are often made of carbon fiber, fiber-glass, and less commonly wood.
*Rosin, made from conifer resin, is applied to the bow hairs to increase the effectiveness of the friction, grip or bite, and allow proper sound production. Rosin may have additives to modify the friction such as beeswax, gold, silver or tin.
*Endpin stops or straps (tradenames include Rockstop and Black Hole) keep the cello from sliding if the end pin does not have a rubber piece on the end (used on wood floors) though in many cases a rubber piece will not suffice on even a wood floor. Many Cellists often use a square or rectangle of carpet that can be secured under the front two legs of the chair as an endpin stop. This is however less likely to be seen in a professional arena and more used in rehearsal or in private.Players might even use their shoe to keep the endpin in place
*Wolf tone eliminators are sometimes placed on cello strings between the tailpiece and the bridge in order to eliminate acoustic anomalies known as wolf tones or "wolfs".
*Mutes are used to change the sound of the cello by reducing overtones. Practice mutes (made of metal) significantly reduce the instrument's volume (they are also referred to as "hotel mutes"). The most common mute is a rubber disc with two holes to fit the two middle strings. It sits just after the bridge and has a flap that can be placed over the top of the bridge to mute the vibrations travelling down it to the sound post inside the cello. These are especially used due to their simplicity and can be taken off or put on very quickly due to the fact that they stay on the strings past the bridge, which don't vibrate.
*Metronomes provide a steady tempo by sounding out a certain number of beats per minute. They are adjustable to fit the tempo of the piece. Many models can also produce a tuning pitch of A4 (440 Hz), among others. These can, of course, be used for all instruments.
*Humidifiers are used to control and stabilize the humidity around and inside the cello and are popular with travelling cellists. Often placed inside the cello itself or inside the case. Some players will not use humidifiers inside their cellos because they have the potential to drip, which may cause damage to the cello
*Tuners are used to tune the instrument. A tuner helps by providing a reference pitch to tune to. Most musicians cannot memorize the exact sound of a pitch, so they need a reference pitch
Cellos are part of the standard symphony orchestra. Usually, the orchestra includes eight to twelve cellists. The cello section, in standard orchestral seating, is located on stage left (the audience's right) in the front, opposite the first violin section. However, some orchestras and conductors prefer switching the positioning of the viola and cello sections. The principal, or "first chair" cellist is the section leader, determining bowings for the section in conjunction with other string principals, and playing solos. Principal players always sit closest to the audience.
The cellos are a critical part of orchestral music; all symphonic works involve the cello section, and many pieces require cello soli or solos. Much of the time, cellos provide part of the harmony for the orchestra. On many occasions, the cello section will play the melody for a brief period of time, before returning to the harmony. There are also cello concertos, which are orchestral pieces in which a featured, solo cellist is accompanied by an entire orchestra.
There are numerous cello concertos - where a solo cello is accompanied by an orchestra - notably 25 by Vivaldi, 12 by Boccherini, 3 by C.P.E. Bach, 2 by Haydn, 2 by Saint-Saëns, 2 by DvoÅák, and one each by Schumann, Lalo and Elgar. Beethoven's Triple Concerto for Cello, Violin and Piano and Brahms' Double Concerto for Cello and Violin are also part of the concertante repertoire although in both cases the cello shares solo duties with at least one other instrument. Moreover, several composers wrote large-scale pieces for cello and orchestra, which are concertos in all but name. The most important are Strauss' tone poem Don Quixote, Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Bloch's Schelomo and Bruch's Kol Nidrei.
In the 20th century, the cello repertoire grew. This was due to the influence of virtuoso cellist Mstislav Rostropovich who inspired, commissioned and/or premiered dozens of new works. Among these, Prokofiev's Symphonia Concertante, Britten's Cello Symphony and the concertos of Shostakovich, LutosÅawski and Dutilleux have already become part of the standard repertoire. In addition, Hindemith, Barber, Honegger, Villa-Lobos, Myaskovsky, Walton, Glass, Rodrigo, Arnold, Penderecki and Ligeti also wrote major concertos for other cellists (notably Gregor Piatigorsky, Siegfried Palm and Julian Lloyd Webber).
Cellists Julian Lloyd Webber (left) and Mstislav Rostropovich
There are also many sonatas for cello and piano. Those written by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Britten are the most famous.
Finally, there are several unaccompanied pieces for cello, most importantly J.S. Bach's six Unaccompanied Suites for Cello (arguably the most important cello pieces), Zoltán Kodály's Sonata for Solo Cello and Britten's three Unaccompanied Suites for Cello. Other notable examples include Dutilleux' Trois Strophes sur le Nom de Sacher, Berio's Les Mots Sont Allés (both part of a series of twelve compositions for solo cello commissioned by Rostropovich for Swiss conductor Paul Sacher's 70th birthday), Ligeti and Carter's sonatas and Xenakis' Nomos Alpha and Kottos.
The cello is a member of the traditional string quartet as well as string quintets, sextet or trios and other mixed ensembles.
There are also pieces written for two, three, four or more cellos; this type of ensemble is also called a "cello choir" and its sound is familiar from the introduction to Rossini's William Tell Overture as well as Zaccharias' prayer scene in Verdi's Nabucco. As a self-sufficient ensemble, its most famous repertoire is Villa-Lobos' first of his Bachianas Brasileiras for cello ensemble (the fifth is for soprano and 8 cellos). Another example is Boulez' Messagesquisse for 7 cellos. The Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (or "the Twelve" as they have since taken to being called) specialize in this repertoire and have commissioned many works, including arrangements of well-known popular songs.
Though the cello is less common in popular music than in classical music, it is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello is rarely part of a group's standard lineup (though like its cousin the violin it is becoming more common in mainstream pop).
In the 1960s, artists such as the Beatles and Cher used the cello in popular music, in songs such as "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)," "Eleanor Rigby" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the 1970s, the Electric Light Orchestra enjoyed great commercial success taking inspiration from so-called "Beatlesque" arrangements, adding the cello (and violin) to the standard rock combo line-up and in 1978 the UK based rock band, Colosseum II, collaborated with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber on the recording Variations. Most notably, Pink Floyd included a cello solo in their 1970 epic instrumental Atom Heart Mother. Bass guitarist Mike Rutherford of Genesis was originally a cellist and included some cello parts in their Foxtrot album.
Established non-traditional cello groups include Apocalyptica, a group of Finnish cellists best known for their versions of Metallica songs, Rasputina, a group of two female cellists committed to an intricate cello style intermingled with Gothic music, Von Cello, a cello fronted rock power trio, and Break of Reality who mix elements of classical music with the more modern rock and metal genre. These groups are examples of a style that has become known as cello rock. The crossover string quartet bond also includes a cellist. Silenzium and Vivacello are Russian (Novosibirsk) groups playing rock and metal and having more and more popularity in Siberia.
More recent bands using the cello are Aerosmith, Nirvana, Oasis, Murder by Death, Cursive, and OneRepublic. So-called "chamber pop" artists like Kronos Quartet, The Vitamin String Quartet and Margot and the Nuclear So and So's have also recently made cello common in modern alternative rock. Heavy metal band System of a Down has also made use of the cello's rich sound. The indie rock band The Stiletto Formal are known for using a cello as a major staple of their sound, and the orch-rock group,The Polyphonic Spree, which has pioneered the use of stringed and symphonic instruments, employs the cello in very creative ways for many of their "psycadelic-esque" melodies.
Pop star Richard Marx uses a cello in some of his studio recordings, such as "One Thing Left" and "In This All Alone."
Post-rock bands and other avant-garde groups commonly feature strings; cellos and violins over violas and contrabasses.
Modern musical theatre pieces like Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, Duncan Sheik's Spring Awakening, Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins, and Ricky Ian Gordon's My Life with Albertine use small string ensembles (including solo cellos) to a prominent extent.
The cello can also be used in bluegrass and folk music, with notable players including Ben Sollee of the Sparrow Quartet and the "Cajun cellist" Sean Grissom.
The cello and the double bass are now also used in some modern Chinese orchestras .
In jazz, bassists Oscar Pettiford and Harry Babasin were among the first to use the cello as a solo instrument; both tuned their instrument in fourths, an octave above the double bass. Fred Katz (who was not a bassist) was one of the first notable jazz cellists to use the instrument's standard tuning and arco technique. Contemporary jazz cellists include Abdul Wadud, Diedre Murray, Ron Carter, Dave Holland, David Darling, Lucio Amanti, Akua Dixon, Ernst Reijseger, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Vincent Courtois, Jean-Charles Capon, and Erik Friedlander.
Cellos are made by luthiers, specialists in building and repairing stringed instruments, ranging from guitars to violins. The following luthiers are notable for the cellos they have produced:
*Nicolò Amati and others in the Amati family
*William Forster
*Nicolò Gagliano
*Matteo Goffriller
*Giovanni Battista Guadagnini
*Giuseppe Guarneri
*Domenico Montagnana
*Giovanni Battista Rogeri
*Francesco Ruggieri
*Stefano Scarampella
*Antonio Stradivari
*David Tecchler
*Carlo Giuseppe Testore
*Jean Baptiste Vuillaume
A person who plays the cello is called a cellist, not a "celloist." For a list of notable cellists, see the list of cellists. See also .
Specific instruments are, or become, famous, for a variety of reasons. An instrument's notability may arise from its age, the fame of its maker, its physical appearance, its acoustic properties, and its use by notable performers. The most famous instruments are generally known for all of these things. The most highly prized instruments are now collector's items, and are priced beyond the reach of most musicians. These instruments are typically owned by some kind of organization or investment group, which loans the instrument to a performer for his or her use. (For example, the Davidov Stradivarius, which is currently in the possession of one of the most widely-known living cellists, Yo-Yo Ma, is actually owned by the Vuitton Foundation.
Some notable cellos:
*the "King", by Andrea Amati, is one of the oldest known cellos, built between 1538 and 1560. It is in the collection of the National Music Museum in South Dakota. National Music Museum page
*Servais Stradivarius is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
*Davidov Stradivarius, played by Jacqueline du Pré, currently played by Yo-Yo Ma
*Barjansky Stradivarius, played by Julian Lloyd Webber
*Bonjour Stradivarius, played by Soo Bae
*Paganini-Ladenburg Stradivarius, played by Clive Greensmith of the Tokyo String Quartet
*Duport Stradivarius, played by Mstislav Rostropovich
*Piatti Stradivarius, 1720, played by Carlos Prieto
* Brahms guitar
* Electric cello
* List of solo cello pieces
* List of compositions for cello and piano
* List of compositions for cello and orchestra
* Double Concerto for Violin and Cello
* Triple concerto for violin, cello, and piano
* String instrument repertoire
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* Apocalyptica
*Stephen Bonta. "Violoncello", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed January 28 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
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* The Internet Cello Society: an online community of cellists; includes several forums.
* Sources for the prescribed sheet music for the ABRSM practical Cello exams.
* Cello Teacher's Friend : A place for cellists to share ideas.
* cellist.nl: An international register of professional cellists, teachers, and students.
* Cello History: A brief history of the cello
* A Cello Teacher Training Manual And Syllabus
* Bowed Radio (podcast focusing on new music for bowed string instruments)
* Elgar Cello Concerto Performance
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Cello | null | null | data/set2/a9 | Cello
The violoncello (abbreviated to cello, or 'cello, plural cellos or celliâthe c is , as in the ch in "check", thus "chel-lo") is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra.
Study of a three-quarter size cello.
The name Cello is an abbreviation of the Italian violoncello, which means "little violone", referring to the violone ("big viol"), the lowest-pitched instrument of the viol family, the group of string instruments that were superseded by the violin family. Thus, the name carries both an augmentative "-one" ("big") and a diminutive "-cello" ("little"). Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2 (two octaves below middle C) as the lowest string, followed by G2, D3, and A3. It is tuned the same way as the viola, only an octave lower.
The cello is most closely associated with European classical music, and has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. Welcome::. to Academic Journals Inc The instrument is a part of the standard orchestra and is the bass voice of the string quartet, as well as being part of many other chamber groups. A large number of concertos and sonatas have been written for the cello. The instrument is less common in popular music, but is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello has also recently appeared in major hip-hop and R & B performances, such as singers Rihanna and Ne-Yo's performance at the American Music Awards. The instrument has also been modified for Indian classical music by Nancy Lesh and Saskia Rao-de Haas.
Among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are J. S. Bach's six unaccompanied Suites. From the Classical era, the two concertos by Joseph Haydn in C major and D major stand out, as do the five sonatas for cello and pianoforte of Beethoven which span the important three periods of his compositional evolution. Romantic era repertoire includes the Schumann Concerto, the DvoÅák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Brahms. Compositions from the early 20th century include Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano and unaccompanied cello sonatas by Zoltán Kodály and Paul Hindemith. The cello's versatility made it popular with composers in the mid- to late twentieth century such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Britten, Ligeti and Dutilleux, encouraged by soloists who specialized in contemporary music (such as Siegfried Palm and Mstislav Rostropovich) commissioning from and collaborating with composers.
The violoncello da spalla (sometimes "violoncello piccolo da spalla" or "violoncello da span") was the first cello referred to in print (by Jambe de Fer in 1556). Delbanco, Nicholas. (January 1, 2001) Harper's Bazaar. The Countess of Stanlein Restored. (Violoncello owned by Bernard Greenhouse is restored). Volume 302; Issue 1808; Page 39. "Violone" means a larger "viola" (viol), while "-cello" in Italian is a diminutive and spalla means "shoulder" in Italian so that violoncello da spalla suggest a "little big violin" that may be held on the shoulder so that the player could perform while walking or that the early, short-necked instrument was hung across the shoulder by a strap. By the turn of the twentieth century, it had grown customary to abbreviate the name violoncello to 'cello, with the apostrophe indicating the six missing prefix letters. It now is acceptable to use the name "cello" without the apostrophe and as a full designation.
The cello is typically made from wood, although other materials such as carbon fiber or aluminum may be used. A traditional cello has a spruce top, with maple for the back, sides, and neck. Other woods, such as poplar willow, are sometimes used for the back and sides. Less expensive cellos frequently have tops and backs made of laminated wood.
The top and back are traditionally hand-carved, though less expensive cellos are often machine-produced. The sides, or ribs, are made by heating the wood and bending it around forms. The cello body has a wide top bout, narrow middle formed by two C-bouts, and wide bottom bout, with the bridge and sound holes just below the middle.
The top and back of the cello has decorative border inlay known as purfling. Purfling looks attractive, but is not just for decoration. If a cello is dropped or bumped against something so that damage occurs, the purfling can stop cracks from forming. A crack may form at the rim of the instrument, but will spread no further. Without purfling, cracks can spread up or down the top or back. Playing, traveling and the weather all affect the cello and can increase a crack if purfling is not in place. Less expensive instruments typically have the purfling painted on.
Cello manufacturer Luis & Clark constructs cellos from carbon fiber. Carbon fiber instruments are particularly suitable for outdoor playing because of the strength of the material and its resistance to humidity and temperature fluctuations.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) as well as German luthier G.A. Pfretzschner produced an untold number of aluminum cellos (in addition to aluminum double basses and violins). An advertisement published in N.Y. Music Service catalogue (1930) reads: "...made entirely of aluminum with the exception of the fingerboard. They have many advantages over the wood basses and violoncellos, as they cannot crack, split or warp and are made to last forever ... possessing a tone quality that is deep, resonant and responsive to the utmost degree. Violoncello $150."
Above the main body is the carved neck, which leads to a pegbox and the scroll. The neck, pegbox, and scroll are normally carved out of a single piece of wood. Attached to the neck and extending over the body of the instrument is the fingerboard. The nut is a raised piece of wood, where the fingerboard meets the pegbox, which the strings rest on. The pegbox houses four tuning pegs, one for each string. The pegs are used to tune the cello by either tightening or loosening the string. The scroll is a traditional part of the cello and all other members of the violin family. Ebony is usually used for the tuning pegs, fingerboard, and nut, but other hard woods, such as boxwood or rosewood, can be used.
Strings on a cello have cores made out of gut, metal, or synthetic materials, such as Perlon. Most modern strings used today are also wound with metallic materials like aluminum, titanium and chromium. Cellists may mix different types of strings on their instruments.
The tailpiece and endpin are found in the lower part of the cello. The tailpiece is traditionally made of ebony or another hard wood, but can also be made of plastic or steel. It attaches the strings to the lower end of the cello, and can have one or more fine tuners. The endpin or spike is made of wood, metal or rigid carbon fiber and supports the cello in playing position. In the Baroque period the cello was held between the calves. Around the 1830s, the Belgian cellist Auguste Adrien Servais introduced the endpin and propagated its use. Modern endpins are retractable and adjustable; older ones were removed when not in use. (The word "endpin" sometimes also refers to the button of wood located at this place in all instruments in the violin family, but this is usually called "tailpin".) The sharp tip of the cello's endpin is sometimes capped with a rubber tip that protects the tip from dulling and prevents the cello from slipping on the floor.
The bridge of a cello, with a mute
The bridge holds the strings above the cello and transfers their vibrations to the top of the instrument and the soundpost inside (see below). The bridge is not glued, but rather held in place by the tension of the strings. The f-holes, named for their shape, are located on either side of the bridge, and allow air to move in and out of the instrument as part of the sound-production process. The f-holes also act as access points to the interior of the cello for repairs or maintenance. Sometimes a small hose containing a water-soaked sponge, called a Dampit, is inserted through the f-holes, and serves as a humidifier.
Internally, the cello has two important features: a bass bar, which is glued to the underside of the top of the instrument, and a round wooden sound post, which is wedged between the top and bottom plates. The bass bar, found under the bass foot of the bridge, serves to support the cello's top and distribute the vibrations. The sound post, found under the treble side of the bridge, connects the back and front of the cello. Like the bridge, the sound post is not glued, but is kept in place by the tensions of the bridge and strings. Together, the bass bar and sound post transfer the strings' vibrations to the top (front) of the instrument (and to a lesser extent the back), acting as a diaphragm to produce the instrument's sound.
Cellos are constructed and repaired using hide glue, which is strong but reversible, allowing for disassembly when needed. Tops may be glued on with diluted glue, since some repairs call for the removal of the top. Theoretically, hide glue is weaker than the body's wood, so as the top or back shrinks side-to-side, the glue holding it will let go, avoiding a crack in the plate.
A cello bow.
Traditionally, bows are made from pernambuco or brazilwood. Both come from the same species of tree (Caesalpina echinata), but pernambuco, used for higher-quality bows, is the heartwood of the tree and is darker in color than brazilwood (which is sometimes stained to compensate). Pernambuco is a heavy, resinous wood with great elasticity which makes it an ideal wood for instrument bows.
Bows are also made from other materials, such as carbon-fiber-stronger than wood-and fiberglass(often used to make inexpensive, low-quality student bows). An average cello bow is 73 cm long (shorter than a violin or viola bow) 3 cm high (from the frog to the stick) and 1.5 cm wide. The frog of a cello bow typically has a rounded corner like that of a viola bow, but is wider. A cello bow is roughly 10 grams heavier than a viola bow, which in turn is roughly 10 grams heavier than a violin bow.
Bow hair is traditionally horsehair, though synthetic hair in varying colors is also used. Prior to playing, a musician-in this case a cellist-tightens the bow by turning a screw to pull the frog (the part of the bow under the hand) back, and increase the tension of the hair. Rosin is applied by the player to make the hairs sticky. Bows need to be re-haired periodically. Ideally a bow should be re-haired every year, but this is not in great practice because of cost.
The cello developed from the bass violin, first referred to by Jambe de Fer in 1556, which was originally a three-string instrument. The first instance of a composer specifying the bass violin may have been Gabrieli in Sacrae symphoniae, 1597. Monteverdi referred to the instrument as "basso de viola da braccio" in Orfeo (1607). Although the first bass violin, possibly invented by Amati as early as 1538, was most likely inspired by the viol, it was created to be used in consorts with the violin. The bass violin was actually often referred to as a "violone," or "large viola," as were the viols of the same period. Instruments that share features with both the bass violin and the viola de gamba appear in Italian art of the early 1500s...
The invention of wire-wound strings (fine wire around a thin gut core), around 1660 in Bologna, allowed for a finer bass sound than was possible with purely gut strings on such a short body. Bolognese makers exploited this new technology to create the cello, a somewhat smaller instrument suitable for solo repertoire due to both the timbre of the instrument and the fact that the smaller size made it easier to play virtuosic passages. This instrument had disadvantages as well, however. The cello's light sound was not as suitable for church and ensemble playing, so it had to be doubled by basses or violones.
Around 1700, Italian players popularized the cello in northern Europe, although the bass violin (basse de violon) continued to be used for another two decades in France. Many existing bass violins were literally cut down in size in order to convert them into cellos according to the smaller pattern cello as developed by Stradivari, who also made a number of old pattern large cello's (the 'Servais'). Cyr 1982 The bass violin remained the "most used" instrument in England as late as 1740, where the violoncello was still "not common." Grassineau 1740 The sizes, names, and tunings of the cello varied widely by geography and time. The size was not standardized until around 1750.
Despite similarities to the viola da gamba, the cello is actually part of the viola da braccio family, meaning "viol of the arm", which includes, among others, the violin and viola. Though paintings like Bruegel's "The Rustic Wedding" and de Fer in his Epitome Musical suggest that the bass violin had alternate playing positions, these were short-lived and the more practical and ergonomic a gamba position eventually replaced them entirely.
A cello strung with gut strings. Note the absence of fine-tuning pins on the tailpiece.
Baroque era cellos differed from the modern instrument in several ways. The neck has a different form and angle which matches the baroque bass-bar and stringing. Modern cellos have an endpin at the bottom to support the instrument (and transmit some of the sound through the floor), while Baroque cellos are held only by the calves of the player. Modern bows curve in and are held at the frog; Baroque bows curve out and are held closer to the bow's point of balance. Modern strings normally have a metal core, although some use a synthetic core; Baroque strings are made of gut, with the G and C strings wire-wound. Modern cellos often have fine-tuners connecting the strings to the tailpiece, which make it much easier to tune the instrument, but such pins are rendered ineffective by the flexibility of the gut strings used on Baroque cellos. Overall, the modern instrument has much higher string tension than the Baroque cello, resulting in a louder, more projecting tone, with fewer overtones.
No educational works specifically devoted to the cello existed before the 18th century, and those that do exist contain little value to the performer beyond simple accounts of instrumental technique. The earliest cello manual is Michel Corrette's Méthode, thèorique et pratique pour apprendre en peu de temps le violoncelle dans sa perfection (Paris, 1741).
Seated Cellist
The cello is usually played while seated. Its weight is supported mainly by its endpin or spike, which rests on the floor. Sometimes, an endpin support is needed to prevent the endpin from slipping on smooth surfaces. The cello is steadied on the lower bout between the knees of the seated player, and on the upper bout against the upper chest. The neck of the cello is above the player's left shoulder, and the C-String tuning peg is just behind the left ear. The bow is drawn horizontally across the strings. In early times, female cellists sometimes played side-saddle, since it was considered improper for a lady to part her knees in public. A player's handedness does not alter the way the cello is held or used. In exceedingly rare cases the cello has been played in a mirror-image posture: this is usually because of a physical disability of one of the player's arms or hands which makes the required technique impossible for that side of the body. In such a situation, the player must decide whether or not to reverse the set-up of the cello (the string positions, bass-bar, sound post, fingerboard shape, and bridge carving are all asymmetrical).
The position of the left hand fingers along the strings determine the pitch of the note. The closer to the bridge that the string is depressed, the higher in pitch will be the resulting sound, because the vibrating string length has been shortened. In the neck positions (which use just less than half of the fingerboard, nearest the top of the instrument), the thumb rests on the back of the neck; in thumb position (a general name for notes on the remainder of the fingerboard) the thumb usually rests alongside the fingers on the string and the side of the thumb is used to play notes. The fingers are normally held curved with each knuckle bent, with the fingertips in contact with the string. If a finger is required on two (or more) strings at once to play perfect fifths (in double stops or chords) it is used flat. In slower, or more expressive playing, the contact point can move slightly away from the nail to the pad of the finger, allowing a fuller vibrato.
Vibrato is a small oscillation in the pitch of a note, usually considered expressive. It is created by a partial rotation of the upper arm at the shoulder joint, which translates into a linear oscillation of the lower arm. The fixed point of contact of the fingertip on the string absorbs this motion by rocking back and forth. It is this change in the attitude of the fingertip to the string which causes the pitch to vary. Vibrato is a key expressive device, and a well-developed vibrato technique is an essential element of a modern cellist's skill. In some styles of music, such as that of the Romantic period, vibrato may be used on almost every note. However, in other styles, such as Baroque repertoire, vibrato is used only rarely, as an ornament. In any case, the choice of whether to use vibrato, and how much, is normally a stylistic decision on the part of the player. Typically, the lower the pitch of the note played, the wider and slower the vibrato.
Harmonics played on the cello fall into two classes; natural and artificial. Natural harmonics are produced by lightly touching (but not depressing) the string with the finger at certain places, and then bowing (or, rarely, plucking) the string. For example, the halfway point of the string will produce a harmonic that is one octave above the unfingered (open) string. Natural harmonics only produce notes that are part of the harmonic series for the string on which they occur. Artificial harmonics (also called False harmonics), in which the player depresses the string fully with one finger while touching the same string lightly with another finger, can produce any notes above middle C. They usually appear with the touching note a perfect fourth above the stopped note, which produces a sound two octaves above the stopped note, although other intervals are available. All harmonics produce a distinctive flute-like sound, and are usually performed without vibrato.
Glissando ("sliding", in Italian) is an effect played by sliding the finger up or down the fingerboard without releasing the string. This causes the pitch to rise and fall smoothly, without separate, discernible steps.
In cello playing, the bow is much like the breath of a wind instrument player. Arguably, it is the major determinant in the expressiveness of the playing. The right hand holds the bow and controls the duration and character of the notes. The bow is drawn across the strings roughly halfway between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge, in a direction perpendicular to the strings. The bow is held with all five fingers of the right hand, the thumb opposite the fingers and closer to the cellist's body. The shape of the hand should resemble that of its relaxed state, with all fingers curved, including the thumb. The transmission of weight from the arm to the bow happens through the pronation (inward rotation) of the forearm, which pushes the index finger and to a lesser degree the middle finger onto the bow. The necessary counterforce is provided by the thumb. Depending upon the school of training, the other two fingers are used in various degrees to help maintain the angle of the bow to the string and are critical to controlling the bow when it is off the string. (See also spiccato).
In English, the terminology for bow direction (down and up) can be misleading. A downbow is drawn to the right of the player, and an upbow to the left. A downbow is drawn by first using the upper arm, then the forearm, then the wrist (turning slightly inward) in order to maintain a straight stroke. An upbow is drawn by moving first the forearm, then the upper arm, then the wrist (pushing slightly upward). The bow is mostly used perpendicular to the string being played. In order to perform string changes the whole arm is either lowered or lifted, with as little wrist movement as possible in order to maintain the angle to the string. However, flexibility of the wrist is necessary when changing the bow direction from up-bow to down-bow and vice versa. For very fast bow movements, the wrist is used to accomplish the horizontal movement of bow. For longer strokes, the arm is used as well as the wrist.
Tone production and volume of sound depend on a combination of several factors. The three most important ones are: bow speed, weight applied to the string, and point of contact of the bow hair with the string. A good player will be capable of a very even tone, and will counter the natural tendency to play with the most force with the part of the bow nearest to the frog or heel, and the least force near the tip. The closer to the bridge the string is bowed, the more projecting and brighter the tone, with the extreme (sul ponticello) producing a metallic, shimmery sound. If bowing closer to the fingerboard (sul tasto), the sound produced will be softer, more mellow, and less defined.
Double stops involve the playing of two notes at the same time. Two strings are fingered simultaneously, and the bow is drawn so as to sound them both at once. Triple and quadruple stops may also be played (in a "broken" fashion), but are difficult to sustain because of the change in slope of the bridge. To extend the technique in this area, Frances-Marie Uitti has invented a two-bow system: one bow plays above the strings and one below, allowing for sustained triple and quadruple stops. However, this technique is very rarely seen or used.
In pizzicato playing, the string is plucked directly with the fingers or thumb. Usually this is done with the right hand, while the bow is held away from the strings by the rest of the hand or (for extended passages) set down. A single string can be played pizzicato, or double, triple, or quadruple stops can be played. Occasionally, a player must bow one string with the right hand and simultaneously pluck another with the left. This is marked by a "+" above the note. Strumming of chords is also possible, in guitar fashion.
Col legno is the technique in which the player uses the wood rather than the hair of the bow on the strings; it takes two different forms, col legno battuto and col legno tratto. Col legno battuto is performed as a percussive technique with no sustaining of the sound. The much less common alternative is col legno tratto, wherein the wood is drawn across the string as the hair is in a normal bow stroke. Some players refuse to use this technique because of potential damage to the bow.
In spiccato playing, the strings are not "drawn" by the bow hair but struck by it, while still retaining some horizontal motion, to generate a more percussive, crisp sound. It may be performed by using the wrist to "dip" the bow into the strings. Spiccato is usually associated with lively playing. On a violin, spiccato bowing comes off the string, but on a cello, the wood of the bow may rise briskly up without the hair actually leaving the string. While playing spiccato, the bow is literally bouncing off the string. Cello players simply "dip" the bow into the string, and touch it very fast, and then lift the bow off the string.
In staccato, the player moves the bow a small distance and stops it on the string, making a short sound, the rest of the written duration being taken up by silence.
Legato is a technique where the notes are smoothly connected without accents or breaks.
Sul ponticello "on the bridge" refers to bowing closer to the bridge, while sul tasto "on the fingerboard" calls for bowing nearer the end of the fingerboard. Ponticello calls for more bow weight and slower bow speed, and produces a "harder" sound, with strong overtone content. Sul tasto, in extreme cases called "flautando," produces a more flute-like sound, with more emphasis on the fundamental frequency of the note, and softer overtones.
1/8 size cello with full size cello
Standard-sized cellos are referred to as "full-size". However, cellos come in smaller (fractional) sizes, from "seven-eighths" and "three-quarter" down to "one-sixteenth" sized cellos (e.g. 7/8, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16). The smaller-sized cellos are identical to standard cellos in construction, range, and usage, but are simply 'scaled-down' for the benefit of children and shorter adults. A "half-size" cello is not actually half the size of a "full-size", but only slightly smaller. Many smaller cellists prefer to play a "seven-eighths" cello as the hand stretches in the lower positions are less demanding. Although rare, cellos in sizes larger than four-fourths do exist. Cellists with unusually large hands may play a slightly larger than full-sized cello. Cellos made before approximately 1700 tended to be considerably larger than those made after that date, and than those made and commonly played today. Around 1680, string-making technology made lower pitches on shorter strings possible. The cellos of Stradivari, for example, can be clearly divided into two models, with the style made before 1702 characterized by larger instruments (of which only three examples are extant in their original size and configuration), and the style made during and after 1702, when Stradivari, presumably in response to the "new" type of strings, began making cellos of a smaller size. This later model is the one most commonly used by modern luthiers.
There are many accessories for the cello.
*Cases are used to protect the cello and bow (or multiple bows) when traveling and for safe storage. They are often made of carbon fiber, fiber-glass, and less commonly wood.
*Rosin, made from conifer resin, is applied to the bow hairs to increase the effectiveness of the friction, grip or bite, and allow proper sound production. Rosin may have additives to modify the friction such as beeswax, gold, silver or tin.
*Endpin stops or straps (tradenames include Rockstop and Black Hole) keep the cello from sliding if the end pin does not have a rubber piece on the end (used on wood floors) though in many cases a rubber piece will not suffice on even a wood floor. Many Cellists often use a square or rectangle of carpet that can be secured under the front two legs of the chair as an endpin stop. This is however less likely to be seen in a professional arena and more used in rehearsal or in private.Players might even use their shoe to keep the endpin in place
*Wolf tone eliminators are sometimes placed on cello strings between the tailpiece and the bridge in order to eliminate acoustic anomalies known as wolf tones or "wolfs".
*Mutes are used to change the sound of the cello by reducing overtones. Practice mutes (made of metal) significantly reduce the instrument's volume (they are also referred to as "hotel mutes"). The most common mute is a rubber disc with two holes to fit the two middle strings. It sits just after the bridge and has a flap that can be placed over the top of the bridge to mute the vibrations travelling down it to the sound post inside the cello. These are especially used due to their simplicity and can be taken off or put on very quickly due to the fact that they stay on the strings past the bridge, which don't vibrate.
*Metronomes provide a steady tempo by sounding out a certain number of beats per minute. They are adjustable to fit the tempo of the piece. Many models can also produce a tuning pitch of A4 (440 Hz), among others. These can, of course, be used for all instruments.
*Humidifiers are used to control and stabilize the humidity around and inside the cello and are popular with travelling cellists. Often placed inside the cello itself or inside the case. Some players will not use humidifiers inside their cellos because they have the potential to drip, which may cause damage to the cello
*Tuners are used to tune the instrument. A tuner helps by providing a reference pitch to tune to. Most musicians cannot memorize the exact sound of a pitch, so they need a reference pitch
Cellos are part of the standard symphony orchestra. Usually, the orchestra includes eight to twelve cellists. The cello section, in standard orchestral seating, is located on stage left (the audience's right) in the front, opposite the first violin section. However, some orchestras and conductors prefer switching the positioning of the viola and cello sections. The principal, or "first chair" cellist is the section leader, determining bowings for the section in conjunction with other string principals, and playing solos. Principal players always sit closest to the audience.
The cellos are a critical part of orchestral music; all symphonic works involve the cello section, and many pieces require cello soli or solos. Much of the time, cellos provide part of the harmony for the orchestra. On many occasions, the cello section will play the melody for a brief period of time, before returning to the harmony. There are also cello concertos, which are orchestral pieces in which a featured, solo cellist is accompanied by an entire orchestra.
There are numerous cello concertos - where a solo cello is accompanied by an orchestra - notably 25 by Vivaldi, 12 by Boccherini, 3 by C.P.E. Bach, 2 by Haydn, 2 by Saint-Saëns, 2 by DvoÅák, and one each by Schumann, Lalo and Elgar. Beethoven's Triple Concerto for Cello, Violin and Piano and Brahms' Double Concerto for Cello and Violin are also part of the concertante repertoire although in both cases the cello shares solo duties with at least one other instrument. Moreover, several composers wrote large-scale pieces for cello and orchestra, which are concertos in all but name. The most important are Strauss' tone poem Don Quixote, Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Bloch's Schelomo and Bruch's Kol Nidrei.
In the 20th century, the cello repertoire grew. This was due to the influence of virtuoso cellist Mstislav Rostropovich who inspired, commissioned and/or premiered dozens of new works. Among these, Prokofiev's Symphonia Concertante, Britten's Cello Symphony and the concertos of Shostakovich, LutosÅawski and Dutilleux have already become part of the standard repertoire. In addition, Hindemith, Barber, Honegger, Villa-Lobos, Myaskovsky, Walton, Glass, Rodrigo, Arnold, Penderecki and Ligeti also wrote major concertos for other cellists (notably Gregor Piatigorsky, Siegfried Palm and Julian Lloyd Webber).
Cellists Julian Lloyd Webber (left) and Mstislav Rostropovich
There are also many sonatas for cello and piano. Those written by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Britten are the most famous.
Finally, there are several unaccompanied pieces for cello, most importantly J.S. Bach's six Unaccompanied Suites for Cello (arguably the most important cello pieces), Zoltán Kodály's Sonata for Solo Cello and Britten's three Unaccompanied Suites for Cello. Other notable examples include Dutilleux' Trois Strophes sur le Nom de Sacher, Berio's Les Mots Sont Allés (both part of a series of twelve compositions for solo cello commissioned by Rostropovich for Swiss conductor Paul Sacher's 70th birthday), Ligeti and Carter's sonatas and Xenakis' Nomos Alpha and Kottos.
The cello is a member of the traditional string quartet as well as string quintets, sextet or trios and other mixed ensembles.
There are also pieces written for two, three, four or more cellos; this type of ensemble is also called a "cello choir" and its sound is familiar from the introduction to Rossini's William Tell Overture as well as Zaccharias' prayer scene in Verdi's Nabucco. As a self-sufficient ensemble, its most famous repertoire is Villa-Lobos' first of his Bachianas Brasileiras for cello ensemble (the fifth is for soprano and 8 cellos). Another example is Boulez' Messagesquisse for 7 cellos. The Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (or "the Twelve" as they have since taken to being called) specialize in this repertoire and have commissioned many works, including arrangements of well-known popular songs.
Though the cello is less common in popular music than in classical music, it is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello is rarely part of a group's standard lineup (though like its cousin the violin it is becoming more common in mainstream pop).
In the 1960s, artists such as the Beatles and Cher used the cello in popular music, in songs such as "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)," "Eleanor Rigby" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the 1970s, the Electric Light Orchestra enjoyed great commercial success taking inspiration from so-called "Beatlesque" arrangements, adding the cello (and violin) to the standard rock combo line-up and in 1978 the UK based rock band, Colosseum II, collaborated with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber on the recording Variations. Most notably, Pink Floyd included a cello solo in their 1970 epic instrumental Atom Heart Mother. Bass guitarist Mike Rutherford of Genesis was originally a cellist and included some cello parts in their Foxtrot album.
Established non-traditional cello groups include Apocalyptica, a group of Finnish cellists best known for their versions of Metallica songs, Rasputina, a group of two female cellists committed to an intricate cello style intermingled with Gothic music, Von Cello, a cello fronted rock power trio, and Break of Reality who mix elements of classical music with the more modern rock and metal genre. These groups are examples of a style that has become known as cello rock. The crossover string quartet bond also includes a cellist. Silenzium and Vivacello are Russian (Novosibirsk) groups playing rock and metal and having more and more popularity in Siberia.
More recent bands using the cello are Aerosmith, Nirvana, Oasis, Murder by Death, Cursive, and OneRepublic. So-called "chamber pop" artists like Kronos Quartet, The Vitamin String Quartet and Margot and the Nuclear So and So's have also recently made cello common in modern alternative rock. Heavy metal band System of a Down has also made use of the cello's rich sound. The indie rock band The Stiletto Formal are known for using a cello as a major staple of their sound, and the orch-rock group,The Polyphonic Spree, which has pioneered the use of stringed and symphonic instruments, employs the cello in very creative ways for many of their "psycadelic-esque" melodies.
Pop star Richard Marx uses a cello in some of his studio recordings, such as "One Thing Left" and "In This All Alone."
Post-rock bands and other avant-garde groups commonly feature strings; cellos and violins over violas and contrabasses.
Modern musical theatre pieces like Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, Duncan Sheik's Spring Awakening, Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins, and Ricky Ian Gordon's My Life with Albertine use small string ensembles (including solo cellos) to a prominent extent.
The cello can also be used in bluegrass and folk music, with notable players including Ben Sollee of the Sparrow Quartet and the "Cajun cellist" Sean Grissom.
The cello and the double bass are now also used in some modern Chinese orchestras .
In jazz, bassists Oscar Pettiford and Harry Babasin were among the first to use the cello as a solo instrument; both tuned their instrument in fourths, an octave above the double bass. Fred Katz (who was not a bassist) was one of the first notable jazz cellists to use the instrument's standard tuning and arco technique. Contemporary jazz cellists include Abdul Wadud, Diedre Murray, Ron Carter, Dave Holland, David Darling, Lucio Amanti, Akua Dixon, Ernst Reijseger, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Vincent Courtois, Jean-Charles Capon, and Erik Friedlander.
Cellos are made by luthiers, specialists in building and repairing stringed instruments, ranging from guitars to violins. The following luthiers are notable for the cellos they have produced:
*Nicolò Amati and others in the Amati family
*William Forster
*Nicolò Gagliano
*Matteo Goffriller
*Giovanni Battista Guadagnini
*Giuseppe Guarneri
*Domenico Montagnana
*Giovanni Battista Rogeri
*Francesco Ruggieri
*Stefano Scarampella
*Antonio Stradivari
*David Tecchler
*Carlo Giuseppe Testore
*Jean Baptiste Vuillaume
A person who plays the cello is called a cellist, not a "celloist." For a list of notable cellists, see the list of cellists. See also .
Specific instruments are, or become, famous, for a variety of reasons. An instrument's notability may arise from its age, the fame of its maker, its physical appearance, its acoustic properties, and its use by notable performers. The most famous instruments are generally known for all of these things. The most highly prized instruments are now collector's items, and are priced beyond the reach of most musicians. These instruments are typically owned by some kind of organization or investment group, which loans the instrument to a performer for his or her use. (For example, the Davidov Stradivarius, which is currently in the possession of one of the most widely-known living cellists, Yo-Yo Ma, is actually owned by the Vuitton Foundation.
Some notable cellos:
*the "King", by Andrea Amati, is one of the oldest known cellos, built between 1538 and 1560. It is in the collection of the National Music Museum in South Dakota. National Music Museum page
*Servais Stradivarius is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
*Davidov Stradivarius, played by Jacqueline du Pré, currently played by Yo-Yo Ma
*Barjansky Stradivarius, played by Julian Lloyd Webber
*Bonjour Stradivarius, played by Soo Bae
*Paganini-Ladenburg Stradivarius, played by Clive Greensmith of the Tokyo String Quartet
*Duport Stradivarius, played by Mstislav Rostropovich
*Piatti Stradivarius, 1720, played by Carlos Prieto
* Brahms guitar
* Electric cello
* List of solo cello pieces
* List of compositions for cello and piano
* List of compositions for cello and orchestra
* Double Concerto for Violin and Cello
* Triple concerto for violin, cello, and piano
* String instrument repertoire
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* Apocalyptica
*Stephen Bonta. "Violoncello", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed January 28 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
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* The Internet Cello Society: an online community of cellists; includes several forums.
* Sources for the prescribed sheet music for the ABRSM practical Cello exams.
* Cello Teacher's Friend : A place for cellists to share ideas.
* cellist.nl: An international register of professional cellists, teachers, and students.
* Cello History: A brief history of the cello
* A Cello Teacher Training Manual And Syllabus
* Bowed Radio (podcast focusing on new music for bowed string instruments)
* Elgar Cello Concerto Performance
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Cello | null | null | data/set2/a9 | Cello
The violoncello (abbreviated to cello, or 'cello, plural cellos or celliâthe c is , as in the ch in "check", thus "chel-lo") is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra.
Study of a three-quarter size cello.
The name Cello is an abbreviation of the Italian violoncello, which means "little violone", referring to the violone ("big viol"), the lowest-pitched instrument of the viol family, the group of string instruments that were superseded by the violin family. Thus, the name carries both an augmentative "-one" ("big") and a diminutive "-cello" ("little"). Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2 (two octaves below middle C) as the lowest string, followed by G2, D3, and A3. It is tuned the same way as the viola, only an octave lower.
The cello is most closely associated with European classical music, and has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. Welcome::. to Academic Journals Inc The instrument is a part of the standard orchestra and is the bass voice of the string quartet, as well as being part of many other chamber groups. A large number of concertos and sonatas have been written for the cello. The instrument is less common in popular music, but is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello has also recently appeared in major hip-hop and R & B performances, such as singers Rihanna and Ne-Yo's performance at the American Music Awards. The instrument has also been modified for Indian classical music by Nancy Lesh and Saskia Rao-de Haas.
Among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are J. S. Bach's six unaccompanied Suites. From the Classical era, the two concertos by Joseph Haydn in C major and D major stand out, as do the five sonatas for cello and pianoforte of Beethoven which span the important three periods of his compositional evolution. Romantic era repertoire includes the Schumann Concerto, the DvoÅák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Brahms. Compositions from the early 20th century include Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano and unaccompanied cello sonatas by Zoltán Kodály and Paul Hindemith. The cello's versatility made it popular with composers in the mid- to late twentieth century such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Britten, Ligeti and Dutilleux, encouraged by soloists who specialized in contemporary music (such as Siegfried Palm and Mstislav Rostropovich) commissioning from and collaborating with composers.
The violoncello da spalla (sometimes "violoncello piccolo da spalla" or "violoncello da span") was the first cello referred to in print (by Jambe de Fer in 1556). Delbanco, Nicholas. (January 1, 2001) Harper's Bazaar. The Countess of Stanlein Restored. (Violoncello owned by Bernard Greenhouse is restored). Volume 302; Issue 1808; Page 39. "Violone" means a larger "viola" (viol), while "-cello" in Italian is a diminutive and spalla means "shoulder" in Italian so that violoncello da spalla suggest a "little big violin" that may be held on the shoulder so that the player could perform while walking or that the early, short-necked instrument was hung across the shoulder by a strap. By the turn of the twentieth century, it had grown customary to abbreviate the name violoncello to 'cello, with the apostrophe indicating the six missing prefix letters. It now is acceptable to use the name "cello" without the apostrophe and as a full designation.
The cello is typically made from wood, although other materials such as carbon fiber or aluminum may be used. A traditional cello has a spruce top, with maple for the back, sides, and neck. Other woods, such as poplar willow, are sometimes used for the back and sides. Less expensive cellos frequently have tops and backs made of laminated wood.
The top and back are traditionally hand-carved, though less expensive cellos are often machine-produced. The sides, or ribs, are made by heating the wood and bending it around forms. The cello body has a wide top bout, narrow middle formed by two C-bouts, and wide bottom bout, with the bridge and sound holes just below the middle.
The top and back of the cello has decorative border inlay known as purfling. Purfling looks attractive, but is not just for decoration. If a cello is dropped or bumped against something so that damage occurs, the purfling can stop cracks from forming. A crack may form at the rim of the instrument, but will spread no further. Without purfling, cracks can spread up or down the top or back. Playing, traveling and the weather all affect the cello and can increase a crack if purfling is not in place. Less expensive instruments typically have the purfling painted on.
Cello manufacturer Luis & Clark constructs cellos from carbon fiber. Carbon fiber instruments are particularly suitable for outdoor playing because of the strength of the material and its resistance to humidity and temperature fluctuations.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) as well as German luthier G.A. Pfretzschner produced an untold number of aluminum cellos (in addition to aluminum double basses and violins). An advertisement published in N.Y. Music Service catalogue (1930) reads: "...made entirely of aluminum with the exception of the fingerboard. They have many advantages over the wood basses and violoncellos, as they cannot crack, split or warp and are made to last forever ... possessing a tone quality that is deep, resonant and responsive to the utmost degree. Violoncello $150."
Above the main body is the carved neck, which leads to a pegbox and the scroll. The neck, pegbox, and scroll are normally carved out of a single piece of wood. Attached to the neck and extending over the body of the instrument is the fingerboard. The nut is a raised piece of wood, where the fingerboard meets the pegbox, which the strings rest on. The pegbox houses four tuning pegs, one for each string. The pegs are used to tune the cello by either tightening or loosening the string. The scroll is a traditional part of the cello and all other members of the violin family. Ebony is usually used for the tuning pegs, fingerboard, and nut, but other hard woods, such as boxwood or rosewood, can be used.
Strings on a cello have cores made out of gut, metal, or synthetic materials, such as Perlon. Most modern strings used today are also wound with metallic materials like aluminum, titanium and chromium. Cellists may mix different types of strings on their instruments.
The tailpiece and endpin are found in the lower part of the cello. The tailpiece is traditionally made of ebony or another hard wood, but can also be made of plastic or steel. It attaches the strings to the lower end of the cello, and can have one or more fine tuners. The endpin or spike is made of wood, metal or rigid carbon fiber and supports the cello in playing position. In the Baroque period the cello was held between the calves. Around the 1830s, the Belgian cellist Auguste Adrien Servais introduced the endpin and propagated its use. Modern endpins are retractable and adjustable; older ones were removed when not in use. (The word "endpin" sometimes also refers to the button of wood located at this place in all instruments in the violin family, but this is usually called "tailpin".) The sharp tip of the cello's endpin is sometimes capped with a rubber tip that protects the tip from dulling and prevents the cello from slipping on the floor.
The bridge of a cello, with a mute
The bridge holds the strings above the cello and transfers their vibrations to the top of the instrument and the soundpost inside (see below). The bridge is not glued, but rather held in place by the tension of the strings. The f-holes, named for their shape, are located on either side of the bridge, and allow air to move in and out of the instrument as part of the sound-production process. The f-holes also act as access points to the interior of the cello for repairs or maintenance. Sometimes a small hose containing a water-soaked sponge, called a Dampit, is inserted through the f-holes, and serves as a humidifier.
Internally, the cello has two important features: a bass bar, which is glued to the underside of the top of the instrument, and a round wooden sound post, which is wedged between the top and bottom plates. The bass bar, found under the bass foot of the bridge, serves to support the cello's top and distribute the vibrations. The sound post, found under the treble side of the bridge, connects the back and front of the cello. Like the bridge, the sound post is not glued, but is kept in place by the tensions of the bridge and strings. Together, the bass bar and sound post transfer the strings' vibrations to the top (front) of the instrument (and to a lesser extent the back), acting as a diaphragm to produce the instrument's sound.
Cellos are constructed and repaired using hide glue, which is strong but reversible, allowing for disassembly when needed. Tops may be glued on with diluted glue, since some repairs call for the removal of the top. Theoretically, hide glue is weaker than the body's wood, so as the top or back shrinks side-to-side, the glue holding it will let go, avoiding a crack in the plate.
A cello bow.
Traditionally, bows are made from pernambuco or brazilwood. Both come from the same species of tree (Caesalpina echinata), but pernambuco, used for higher-quality bows, is the heartwood of the tree and is darker in color than brazilwood (which is sometimes stained to compensate). Pernambuco is a heavy, resinous wood with great elasticity which makes it an ideal wood for instrument bows.
Bows are also made from other materials, such as carbon-fiber-stronger than wood-and fiberglass(often used to make inexpensive, low-quality student bows). An average cello bow is 73 cm long (shorter than a violin or viola bow) 3 cm high (from the frog to the stick) and 1.5 cm wide. The frog of a cello bow typically has a rounded corner like that of a viola bow, but is wider. A cello bow is roughly 10 grams heavier than a viola bow, which in turn is roughly 10 grams heavier than a violin bow.
Bow hair is traditionally horsehair, though synthetic hair in varying colors is also used. Prior to playing, a musician-in this case a cellist-tightens the bow by turning a screw to pull the frog (the part of the bow under the hand) back, and increase the tension of the hair. Rosin is applied by the player to make the hairs sticky. Bows need to be re-haired periodically. Ideally a bow should be re-haired every year, but this is not in great practice because of cost.
The cello developed from the bass violin, first referred to by Jambe de Fer in 1556, which was originally a three-string instrument. The first instance of a composer specifying the bass violin may have been Gabrieli in Sacrae symphoniae, 1597. Monteverdi referred to the instrument as "basso de viola da braccio" in Orfeo (1607). Although the first bass violin, possibly invented by Amati as early as 1538, was most likely inspired by the viol, it was created to be used in consorts with the violin. The bass violin was actually often referred to as a "violone," or "large viola," as were the viols of the same period. Instruments that share features with both the bass violin and the viola de gamba appear in Italian art of the early 1500s...
The invention of wire-wound strings (fine wire around a thin gut core), around 1660 in Bologna, allowed for a finer bass sound than was possible with purely gut strings on such a short body. Bolognese makers exploited this new technology to create the cello, a somewhat smaller instrument suitable for solo repertoire due to both the timbre of the instrument and the fact that the smaller size made it easier to play virtuosic passages. This instrument had disadvantages as well, however. The cello's light sound was not as suitable for church and ensemble playing, so it had to be doubled by basses or violones.
Around 1700, Italian players popularized the cello in northern Europe, although the bass violin (basse de violon) continued to be used for another two decades in France. Many existing bass violins were literally cut down in size in order to convert them into cellos according to the smaller pattern cello as developed by Stradivari, who also made a number of old pattern large cello's (the 'Servais'). Cyr 1982 The bass violin remained the "most used" instrument in England as late as 1740, where the violoncello was still "not common." Grassineau 1740 The sizes, names, and tunings of the cello varied widely by geography and time. The size was not standardized until around 1750.
Despite similarities to the viola da gamba, the cello is actually part of the viola da braccio family, meaning "viol of the arm", which includes, among others, the violin and viola. Though paintings like Bruegel's "The Rustic Wedding" and de Fer in his Epitome Musical suggest that the bass violin had alternate playing positions, these were short-lived and the more practical and ergonomic a gamba position eventually replaced them entirely.
A cello strung with gut strings. Note the absence of fine-tuning pins on the tailpiece.
Baroque era cellos differed from the modern instrument in several ways. The neck has a different form and angle which matches the baroque bass-bar and stringing. Modern cellos have an endpin at the bottom to support the instrument (and transmit some of the sound through the floor), while Baroque cellos are held only by the calves of the player. Modern bows curve in and are held at the frog; Baroque bows curve out and are held closer to the bow's point of balance. Modern strings normally have a metal core, although some use a synthetic core; Baroque strings are made of gut, with the G and C strings wire-wound. Modern cellos often have fine-tuners connecting the strings to the tailpiece, which make it much easier to tune the instrument, but such pins are rendered ineffective by the flexibility of the gut strings used on Baroque cellos. Overall, the modern instrument has much higher string tension than the Baroque cello, resulting in a louder, more projecting tone, with fewer overtones.
No educational works specifically devoted to the cello existed before the 18th century, and those that do exist contain little value to the performer beyond simple accounts of instrumental technique. The earliest cello manual is Michel Corrette's Méthode, thèorique et pratique pour apprendre en peu de temps le violoncelle dans sa perfection (Paris, 1741).
Seated Cellist
The cello is usually played while seated. Its weight is supported mainly by its endpin or spike, which rests on the floor. Sometimes, an endpin support is needed to prevent the endpin from slipping on smooth surfaces. The cello is steadied on the lower bout between the knees of the seated player, and on the upper bout against the upper chest. The neck of the cello is above the player's left shoulder, and the C-String tuning peg is just behind the left ear. The bow is drawn horizontally across the strings. In early times, female cellists sometimes played side-saddle, since it was considered improper for a lady to part her knees in public. A player's handedness does not alter the way the cello is held or used. In exceedingly rare cases the cello has been played in a mirror-image posture: this is usually because of a physical disability of one of the player's arms or hands which makes the required technique impossible for that side of the body. In such a situation, the player must decide whether or not to reverse the set-up of the cello (the string positions, bass-bar, sound post, fingerboard shape, and bridge carving are all asymmetrical).
The position of the left hand fingers along the strings determine the pitch of the note. The closer to the bridge that the string is depressed, the higher in pitch will be the resulting sound, because the vibrating string length has been shortened. In the neck positions (which use just less than half of the fingerboard, nearest the top of the instrument), the thumb rests on the back of the neck; in thumb position (a general name for notes on the remainder of the fingerboard) the thumb usually rests alongside the fingers on the string and the side of the thumb is used to play notes. The fingers are normally held curved with each knuckle bent, with the fingertips in contact with the string. If a finger is required on two (or more) strings at once to play perfect fifths (in double stops or chords) it is used flat. In slower, or more expressive playing, the contact point can move slightly away from the nail to the pad of the finger, allowing a fuller vibrato.
Vibrato is a small oscillation in the pitch of a note, usually considered expressive. It is created by a partial rotation of the upper arm at the shoulder joint, which translates into a linear oscillation of the lower arm. The fixed point of contact of the fingertip on the string absorbs this motion by rocking back and forth. It is this change in the attitude of the fingertip to the string which causes the pitch to vary. Vibrato is a key expressive device, and a well-developed vibrato technique is an essential element of a modern cellist's skill. In some styles of music, such as that of the Romantic period, vibrato may be used on almost every note. However, in other styles, such as Baroque repertoire, vibrato is used only rarely, as an ornament. In any case, the choice of whether to use vibrato, and how much, is normally a stylistic decision on the part of the player. Typically, the lower the pitch of the note played, the wider and slower the vibrato.
Harmonics played on the cello fall into two classes; natural and artificial. Natural harmonics are produced by lightly touching (but not depressing) the string with the finger at certain places, and then bowing (or, rarely, plucking) the string. For example, the halfway point of the string will produce a harmonic that is one octave above the unfingered (open) string. Natural harmonics only produce notes that are part of the harmonic series for the string on which they occur. Artificial harmonics (also called False harmonics), in which the player depresses the string fully with one finger while touching the same string lightly with another finger, can produce any notes above middle C. They usually appear with the touching note a perfect fourth above the stopped note, which produces a sound two octaves above the stopped note, although other intervals are available. All harmonics produce a distinctive flute-like sound, and are usually performed without vibrato.
Glissando ("sliding", in Italian) is an effect played by sliding the finger up or down the fingerboard without releasing the string. This causes the pitch to rise and fall smoothly, without separate, discernible steps.
In cello playing, the bow is much like the breath of a wind instrument player. Arguably, it is the major determinant in the expressiveness of the playing. The right hand holds the bow and controls the duration and character of the notes. The bow is drawn across the strings roughly halfway between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge, in a direction perpendicular to the strings. The bow is held with all five fingers of the right hand, the thumb opposite the fingers and closer to the cellist's body. The shape of the hand should resemble that of its relaxed state, with all fingers curved, including the thumb. The transmission of weight from the arm to the bow happens through the pronation (inward rotation) of the forearm, which pushes the index finger and to a lesser degree the middle finger onto the bow. The necessary counterforce is provided by the thumb. Depending upon the school of training, the other two fingers are used in various degrees to help maintain the angle of the bow to the string and are critical to controlling the bow when it is off the string. (See also spiccato).
In English, the terminology for bow direction (down and up) can be misleading. A downbow is drawn to the right of the player, and an upbow to the left. A downbow is drawn by first using the upper arm, then the forearm, then the wrist (turning slightly inward) in order to maintain a straight stroke. An upbow is drawn by moving first the forearm, then the upper arm, then the wrist (pushing slightly upward). The bow is mostly used perpendicular to the string being played. In order to perform string changes the whole arm is either lowered or lifted, with as little wrist movement as possible in order to maintain the angle to the string. However, flexibility of the wrist is necessary when changing the bow direction from up-bow to down-bow and vice versa. For very fast bow movements, the wrist is used to accomplish the horizontal movement of bow. For longer strokes, the arm is used as well as the wrist.
Tone production and volume of sound depend on a combination of several factors. The three most important ones are: bow speed, weight applied to the string, and point of contact of the bow hair with the string. A good player will be capable of a very even tone, and will counter the natural tendency to play with the most force with the part of the bow nearest to the frog or heel, and the least force near the tip. The closer to the bridge the string is bowed, the more projecting and brighter the tone, with the extreme (sul ponticello) producing a metallic, shimmery sound. If bowing closer to the fingerboard (sul tasto), the sound produced will be softer, more mellow, and less defined.
Double stops involve the playing of two notes at the same time. Two strings are fingered simultaneously, and the bow is drawn so as to sound them both at once. Triple and quadruple stops may also be played (in a "broken" fashion), but are difficult to sustain because of the change in slope of the bridge. To extend the technique in this area, Frances-Marie Uitti has invented a two-bow system: one bow plays above the strings and one below, allowing for sustained triple and quadruple stops. However, this technique is very rarely seen or used.
In pizzicato playing, the string is plucked directly with the fingers or thumb. Usually this is done with the right hand, while the bow is held away from the strings by the rest of the hand or (for extended passages) set down. A single string can be played pizzicato, or double, triple, or quadruple stops can be played. Occasionally, a player must bow one string with the right hand and simultaneously pluck another with the left. This is marked by a "+" above the note. Strumming of chords is also possible, in guitar fashion.
Col legno is the technique in which the player uses the wood rather than the hair of the bow on the strings; it takes two different forms, col legno battuto and col legno tratto. Col legno battuto is performed as a percussive technique with no sustaining of the sound. The much less common alternative is col legno tratto, wherein the wood is drawn across the string as the hair is in a normal bow stroke. Some players refuse to use this technique because of potential damage to the bow.
In spiccato playing, the strings are not "drawn" by the bow hair but struck by it, while still retaining some horizontal motion, to generate a more percussive, crisp sound. It may be performed by using the wrist to "dip" the bow into the strings. Spiccato is usually associated with lively playing. On a violin, spiccato bowing comes off the string, but on a cello, the wood of the bow may rise briskly up without the hair actually leaving the string. While playing spiccato, the bow is literally bouncing off the string. Cello players simply "dip" the bow into the string, and touch it very fast, and then lift the bow off the string.
In staccato, the player moves the bow a small distance and stops it on the string, making a short sound, the rest of the written duration being taken up by silence.
Legato is a technique where the notes are smoothly connected without accents or breaks.
Sul ponticello "on the bridge" refers to bowing closer to the bridge, while sul tasto "on the fingerboard" calls for bowing nearer the end of the fingerboard. Ponticello calls for more bow weight and slower bow speed, and produces a "harder" sound, with strong overtone content. Sul tasto, in extreme cases called "flautando," produces a more flute-like sound, with more emphasis on the fundamental frequency of the note, and softer overtones.
1/8 size cello with full size cello
Standard-sized cellos are referred to as "full-size". However, cellos come in smaller (fractional) sizes, from "seven-eighths" and "three-quarter" down to "one-sixteenth" sized cellos (e.g. 7/8, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16). The smaller-sized cellos are identical to standard cellos in construction, range, and usage, but are simply 'scaled-down' for the benefit of children and shorter adults. A "half-size" cello is not actually half the size of a "full-size", but only slightly smaller. Many smaller cellists prefer to play a "seven-eighths" cello as the hand stretches in the lower positions are less demanding. Although rare, cellos in sizes larger than four-fourths do exist. Cellists with unusually large hands may play a slightly larger than full-sized cello. Cellos made before approximately 1700 tended to be considerably larger than those made after that date, and than those made and commonly played today. Around 1680, string-making technology made lower pitches on shorter strings possible. The cellos of Stradivari, for example, can be clearly divided into two models, with the style made before 1702 characterized by larger instruments (of which only three examples are extant in their original size and configuration), and the style made during and after 1702, when Stradivari, presumably in response to the "new" type of strings, began making cellos of a smaller size. This later model is the one most commonly used by modern luthiers.
There are many accessories for the cello.
*Cases are used to protect the cello and bow (or multiple bows) when traveling and for safe storage. They are often made of carbon fiber, fiber-glass, and less commonly wood.
*Rosin, made from conifer resin, is applied to the bow hairs to increase the effectiveness of the friction, grip or bite, and allow proper sound production. Rosin may have additives to modify the friction such as beeswax, gold, silver or tin.
*Endpin stops or straps (tradenames include Rockstop and Black Hole) keep the cello from sliding if the end pin does not have a rubber piece on the end (used on wood floors) though in many cases a rubber piece will not suffice on even a wood floor. Many Cellists often use a square or rectangle of carpet that can be secured under the front two legs of the chair as an endpin stop. This is however less likely to be seen in a professional arena and more used in rehearsal or in private.Players might even use their shoe to keep the endpin in place
*Wolf tone eliminators are sometimes placed on cello strings between the tailpiece and the bridge in order to eliminate acoustic anomalies known as wolf tones or "wolfs".
*Mutes are used to change the sound of the cello by reducing overtones. Practice mutes (made of metal) significantly reduce the instrument's volume (they are also referred to as "hotel mutes"). The most common mute is a rubber disc with two holes to fit the two middle strings. It sits just after the bridge and has a flap that can be placed over the top of the bridge to mute the vibrations travelling down it to the sound post inside the cello. These are especially used due to their simplicity and can be taken off or put on very quickly due to the fact that they stay on the strings past the bridge, which don't vibrate.
*Metronomes provide a steady tempo by sounding out a certain number of beats per minute. They are adjustable to fit the tempo of the piece. Many models can also produce a tuning pitch of A4 (440 Hz), among others. These can, of course, be used for all instruments.
*Humidifiers are used to control and stabilize the humidity around and inside the cello and are popular with travelling cellists. Often placed inside the cello itself or inside the case. Some players will not use humidifiers inside their cellos because they have the potential to drip, which may cause damage to the cello
*Tuners are used to tune the instrument. A tuner helps by providing a reference pitch to tune to. Most musicians cannot memorize the exact sound of a pitch, so they need a reference pitch
Cellos are part of the standard symphony orchestra. Usually, the orchestra includes eight to twelve cellists. The cello section, in standard orchestral seating, is located on stage left (the audience's right) in the front, opposite the first violin section. However, some orchestras and conductors prefer switching the positioning of the viola and cello sections. The principal, or "first chair" cellist is the section leader, determining bowings for the section in conjunction with other string principals, and playing solos. Principal players always sit closest to the audience.
The cellos are a critical part of orchestral music; all symphonic works involve the cello section, and many pieces require cello soli or solos. Much of the time, cellos provide part of the harmony for the orchestra. On many occasions, the cello section will play the melody for a brief period of time, before returning to the harmony. There are also cello concertos, which are orchestral pieces in which a featured, solo cellist is accompanied by an entire orchestra.
There are numerous cello concertos - where a solo cello is accompanied by an orchestra - notably 25 by Vivaldi, 12 by Boccherini, 3 by C.P.E. Bach, 2 by Haydn, 2 by Saint-Saëns, 2 by DvoÅák, and one each by Schumann, Lalo and Elgar. Beethoven's Triple Concerto for Cello, Violin and Piano and Brahms' Double Concerto for Cello and Violin are also part of the concertante repertoire although in both cases the cello shares solo duties with at least one other instrument. Moreover, several composers wrote large-scale pieces for cello and orchestra, which are concertos in all but name. The most important are Strauss' tone poem Don Quixote, Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Bloch's Schelomo and Bruch's Kol Nidrei.
In the 20th century, the cello repertoire grew. This was due to the influence of virtuoso cellist Mstislav Rostropovich who inspired, commissioned and/or premiered dozens of new works. Among these, Prokofiev's Symphonia Concertante, Britten's Cello Symphony and the concertos of Shostakovich, LutosÅawski and Dutilleux have already become part of the standard repertoire. In addition, Hindemith, Barber, Honegger, Villa-Lobos, Myaskovsky, Walton, Glass, Rodrigo, Arnold, Penderecki and Ligeti also wrote major concertos for other cellists (notably Gregor Piatigorsky, Siegfried Palm and Julian Lloyd Webber).
Cellists Julian Lloyd Webber (left) and Mstislav Rostropovich
There are also many sonatas for cello and piano. Those written by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Britten are the most famous.
Finally, there are several unaccompanied pieces for cello, most importantly J.S. Bach's six Unaccompanied Suites for Cello (arguably the most important cello pieces), Zoltán Kodály's Sonata for Solo Cello and Britten's three Unaccompanied Suites for Cello. Other notable examples include Dutilleux' Trois Strophes sur le Nom de Sacher, Berio's Les Mots Sont Allés (both part of a series of twelve compositions for solo cello commissioned by Rostropovich for Swiss conductor Paul Sacher's 70th birthday), Ligeti and Carter's sonatas and Xenakis' Nomos Alpha and Kottos.
The cello is a member of the traditional string quartet as well as string quintets, sextet or trios and other mixed ensembles.
There are also pieces written for two, three, four or more cellos; this type of ensemble is also called a "cello choir" and its sound is familiar from the introduction to Rossini's William Tell Overture as well as Zaccharias' prayer scene in Verdi's Nabucco. As a self-sufficient ensemble, its most famous repertoire is Villa-Lobos' first of his Bachianas Brasileiras for cello ensemble (the fifth is for soprano and 8 cellos). Another example is Boulez' Messagesquisse for 7 cellos. The Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (or "the Twelve" as they have since taken to being called) specialize in this repertoire and have commissioned many works, including arrangements of well-known popular songs.
Though the cello is less common in popular music than in classical music, it is sometimes featured in pop and rock recordings. The cello is rarely part of a group's standard lineup (though like its cousin the violin it is becoming more common in mainstream pop).
In the 1960s, artists such as the Beatles and Cher used the cello in popular music, in songs such as "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)," "Eleanor Rigby" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the 1970s, the Electric Light Orchestra enjoyed great commercial success taking inspiration from so-called "Beatlesque" arrangements, adding the cello (and violin) to the standard rock combo line-up and in 1978 the UK based rock band, Colosseum II, collaborated with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber on the recording Variations. Most notably, Pink Floyd included a cello solo in their 1970 epic instrumental Atom Heart Mother. Bass guitarist Mike Rutherford of Genesis was originally a cellist and included some cello parts in their Foxtrot album.
Established non-traditional cello groups include Apocalyptica, a group of Finnish cellists best known for their versions of Metallica songs, Rasputina, a group of two female cellists committed to an intricate cello style intermingled with Gothic music, Von Cello, a cello fronted rock power trio, and Break of Reality who mix elements of classical music with the more modern rock and metal genre. These groups are examples of a style that has become known as cello rock. The crossover string quartet bond also includes a cellist. Silenzium and Vivacello are Russian (Novosibirsk) groups playing rock and metal and having more and more popularity in Siberia.
More recent bands using the cello are Aerosmith, Nirvana, Oasis, Murder by Death, Cursive, and OneRepublic. So-called "chamber pop" artists like Kronos Quartet, The Vitamin String Quartet and Margot and the Nuclear So and So's have also recently made cello common in modern alternative rock. Heavy metal band System of a Down has also made use of the cello's rich sound. The indie rock band The Stiletto Formal are known for using a cello as a major staple of their sound, and the orch-rock group,The Polyphonic Spree, which has pioneered the use of stringed and symphonic instruments, employs the cello in very creative ways for many of their "psycadelic-esque" melodies.
Pop star Richard Marx uses a cello in some of his studio recordings, such as "One Thing Left" and "In This All Alone."
Post-rock bands and other avant-garde groups commonly feature strings; cellos and violins over violas and contrabasses.
Modern musical theatre pieces like Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, Duncan Sheik's Spring Awakening, Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins, and Ricky Ian Gordon's My Life with Albertine use small string ensembles (including solo cellos) to a prominent extent.
The cello can also be used in bluegrass and folk music, with notable players including Ben Sollee of the Sparrow Quartet and the "Cajun cellist" Sean Grissom.
The cello and the double bass are now also used in some modern Chinese orchestras .
In jazz, bassists Oscar Pettiford and Harry Babasin were among the first to use the cello as a solo instrument; both tuned their instrument in fourths, an octave above the double bass. Fred Katz (who was not a bassist) was one of the first notable jazz cellists to use the instrument's standard tuning and arco technique. Contemporary jazz cellists include Abdul Wadud, Diedre Murray, Ron Carter, Dave Holland, David Darling, Lucio Amanti, Akua Dixon, Ernst Reijseger, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Vincent Courtois, Jean-Charles Capon, and Erik Friedlander.
Cellos are made by luthiers, specialists in building and repairing stringed instruments, ranging from guitars to violins. The following luthiers are notable for the cellos they have produced:
*Nicolò Amati and others in the Amati family
*William Forster
*Nicolò Gagliano
*Matteo Goffriller
*Giovanni Battista Guadagnini
*Giuseppe Guarneri
*Domenico Montagnana
*Giovanni Battista Rogeri
*Francesco Ruggieri
*Stefano Scarampella
*Antonio Stradivari
*David Tecchler
*Carlo Giuseppe Testore
*Jean Baptiste Vuillaume
A person who plays the cello is called a cellist, not a "celloist." For a list of notable cellists, see the list of cellists. See also .
Specific instruments are, or become, famous, for a variety of reasons. An instrument's notability may arise from its age, the fame of its maker, its physical appearance, its acoustic properties, and its use by notable performers. The most famous instruments are generally known for all of these things. The most highly prized instruments are now collector's items, and are priced beyond the reach of most musicians. These instruments are typically owned by some kind of organization or investment group, which loans the instrument to a performer for his or her use. (For example, the Davidov Stradivarius, which is currently in the possession of one of the most widely-known living cellists, Yo-Yo Ma, is actually owned by the Vuitton Foundation.
Some notable cellos:
*the "King", by Andrea Amati, is one of the oldest known cellos, built between 1538 and 1560. It is in the collection of the National Music Museum in South Dakota. National Music Museum page
*Servais Stradivarius is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
*Davidov Stradivarius, played by Jacqueline du Pré, currently played by Yo-Yo Ma
*Barjansky Stradivarius, played by Julian Lloyd Webber
*Bonjour Stradivarius, played by Soo Bae
*Paganini-Ladenburg Stradivarius, played by Clive Greensmith of the Tokyo String Quartet
*Duport Stradivarius, played by Mstislav Rostropovich
*Piatti Stradivarius, 1720, played by Carlos Prieto
* Brahms guitar
* Electric cello
* List of solo cello pieces
* List of compositions for cello and piano
* List of compositions for cello and orchestra
* Double Concerto for Violin and Cello
* Triple concerto for violin, cello, and piano
* String instrument repertoire
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* Apocalyptica
*Stephen Bonta. "Violoncello", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed January 28 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
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* The Internet Cello Society: an online community of cellists; includes several forums.
* Sources for the prescribed sheet music for the ABRSM practical Cello exams.
* Cello Teacher's Friend : A place for cellists to share ideas.
* cellist.nl: An international register of professional cellists, teachers, and students.
* Cello History: A brief history of the cello
* A Cello Teacher Training Manual And Syllabus
* Bowed Radio (podcast focusing on new music for bowed string instruments)
* Elgar Cello Concerto Performance
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