The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape

by Brian Ladd

Berlin never amounted to much as a medieval city. Its identity in later times (unlike Cologne’s or Nuremberg’s) was thus rarely linked to its medieval past, permitting that past to be neglected. The major cities of medieval Germany lay mainly to the south and west. The vast plain of northeastern Germany was on the margins of the Roman-influenced Christian civilization defined by Charlemagne’s empire. Only in the twelfth century did most of the territory of the later GDR forge permanent links to Germany and the West. Under the sponsorship of various princes, ethnic German colonists began settling the area. They founded towns and conquered, assimilated, or drove out the Slavic inhabitants of the area, who were for the most part neither Christians nor town-dwellers. Although there may have been an earlier settlement on the site, Berlin’s poorly documented origins can probably be placed in the late twelfth century. Sometime in the early thirteenth century, town charters were granted to two settlements on opposite sides of a fordable crossing of the Spree River. The larger town on the right bank was named Berlin; the other, an island enclosed by an arm of the river, was Cölln. Each was protected by walls. The two towns would remain closely allied, and soon the name Berlin was customarily applied to both together.