BERLIN 



693 



BERLIN 



BERLIN, CENTRALLY LOCATED IN WHAT WAS UNTIL 1918 A GREAT EMPIRE 



The city lies in the same latitude as Edmon- 

 ton, Alberta, and Southern Labrador, but its 

 climate and average temperature correspond to 

 that of New York. It is as far north of the 

 equator as the Strait of Magellan is south 

 of it. It is 180 miles from Hamburg and 

 eighty-four miles from Stettin, and has water 

 communication with both ports through the 

 Elbe and the Oder rivers and the canal con- 

 necting them. It is 427 miles from Vienna, 

 674 miles from Paris, 746 miles from London, 

 1,048 miles from Rome, 1,098 miles from Petro- 

 grad and 1,699 miles from Constantinople. 



Famous Buildings and Monuments. Berlin is 

 famous for its imposing buildings, beautiful 

 parks and splendid avenues. The center of the 

 social and political life is Unter-den-Linden, 

 one of the most famous streets of the world. 

 At the eastern end of this promenade is the 

 palace formerly occupied by Emperor William 

 II, a rectangular brown sandstone building with 

 over 600 rooms. At the western end is the 

 famous Brandenburg Gate surmounted by the 

 bronze quadriga, or chariot of victory, which 

 Napoleon carried off to Paris in 1807. Between 

 the palace and the Brandenburg Gate, a dis- 

 tance of less than a mile, are the French and 

 Russian embassies, the University of Berlin, 

 the royal library, the opera house, the palaces of 

 Emperor William I and Emperor Frederick III, 

 the finest hotels and the most elegant shops. 



Of all the public buildings, by far the most 

 magnificent is the Parliament building (Reichs- 

 tagsgebaude), in a modified classic style. 



Though unattractive in some of its details, it 

 is a strikingly-powerful architectural concep- 

 tion. Also notable is the new cathedral, dedi- 

 cated in 1905. It is in the Italian Renaissance 

 style, with a dome rising to a height of 380 feet, 

 the loftiest building in Berlin. Almost equally 

 conspicuous is the Emperor William Memorial 

 Church, completed in 1895 as a memorial to 

 the "Old Kaiser," as the Germans still affec- 

 tionately call the grandfather of the last of 

 the Hohenzollerns. 



Berlin has hundreds of monuments, in all 

 parts of the city. Perhaps the most famous is 

 Rauch's equestrian statue of Frederick the 

 Great, which is on Unter-den-Linden, near the 

 palace. Near by is the national monument of 

 Emperor William I. In the Konigs Platz, the 

 great square in front of the Reichstag building, 

 is the Victory Column, erected to celebrate the 

 victories of the Franco-German War of 1870- 

 1871. Statues of Bismarck, Von Moltke and 

 Von Roon stand not far away. From the Vic- 

 tory Column it is but a step to the Avenue of 

 Victory (Sieges- Alice), a promenade adorned 

 with statues of the thirty-two Hohenzollerns 

 who ruled in Prussia before the formation of 

 the new German Empire. This statuary was 

 a gift of Emperor William II to the city. 



Intellectual and Artistic Life. While the 

 city, the kingdom of Prussia and the Empire 

 have all been spending money freely to make 

 Berlin outwardly a great capital, people of 

 ability, of brains and of genius, have been 

 drawn to it to make it a capital in other 



