National Kaiser Wilhelm Monument

The Monument to Freedom and Unity (German: Denkmal für Freiheit und Einheit) is a planned national German monument in Berlin commemorating the country's peaceful reunification in 1990 and earlier 18th, 19th and 20th century unification movements. It was agreed on 9 November 2007 by a decree of the Bundestag. The decree proposed the site of the former National Kaiser Wilhelm Monument on the Schlossfreiheit for the new structure, next to the Berlin Palace containing the Humboldt Forum which was rebuilt between 2013-2020. The monument will feature the slogans "Wir sind das Volk, Wir sind ein Volk" (in English: ‘We are the people, We are one people’), . This is a reference to the chants “Wir sind das Volk” adopted during the Monday demonstrations in 1989 and “Wir sind ein Volk” adopted by advocates of German reunification in 1990. In early June 2017, the Bundestag decided to start construction of the memorial in front of the City Palace according to the design of Milla & Partner. It was to be inaugurated on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 2019. However, construction began on 19 May 2020.

Brandenburg-Prussia (German: Brandenburg-Preußen; Low German: Brannenborg-Preußen) is the historiographic denomination for the Early Modern realm of the Brandenburgian Hohenzollerns between 1618 and 1701. Based in the Electorate of Brandenburg, the main branch of the Hohenzollern intermarried with the branch ruling the Duchy of Prussia, and secured succession upon the latter's extinction in the male line in 1618. Another consequence of the intermarriage was the incorporation of the lower Rhenish principalities of Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg after the Treaty of Xanten in 1614. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) was especially devastating. The Elector changed sides three times, and as a result Protestant and Catholic armies swept the land back and forth, killing, burning, seizing men and taking the food supplies. Upwards of half the population was killed or dislocated. Berlin and the other major cities were in ruins, and recovery took decades. By the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648, Brandenburg gained Minden and Halberstadt, also the succession in Farther Pomerania (incorporated in 1653) and the Duchy of Magdeburg (incorporated in 1680). With the Treaty of Bromberg (1657), concluded during the Second Northern War, the electors were freed of Polish vassalage for the Duchy of Prussia and gained Lauenburg–Bütow and Draheim. The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1679) expanded Brandenburgian Pomerania to the lower Oder. The second half of the 17th century laid the basis for Prussia to become one of the great players in European politics. The emerging Brandenburg-Prussian military potential, based on the introduction of a standing army in 1653, was symbolized by the widely noted victories in Warsaw (1656) and Fehrbellin (1675) and by the Great Sleigh Drive (1678). Brandenburg-Prussia also established a navy and German colonies in the Brandenburger Gold Coast and Arguin. Frederick William, known as "The Great Elector", opened Brandenburg-Prussia to large-scale immigration ("Peuplierung") of mostly Protestant refugees from all across Europe ("Exulanten"), most notably Huguenot immigration following the Edict of Potsdam. Frederick William also started to centralize Brandenburg-Prussia's administration and reduce the influence of the estates. In 1701, Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg, succeeded in elevating his status to King in Prussia. This was made possible by the Duchy of Prussia's sovereign status outside the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, and approval by the Habsburg emperor and other European royals in the course of forming alliances for the War of the Spanish succession and the Great Northern War. From 1701 onward, the Hohenzollern domains were referred to as the Kingdom of Prussia, or simply Prussia. Legally, the personal union between Brandenburg and Prussia continued until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. However, by this time the emperor's overlordship over the empire had become a legal fiction. Hence, after 1701, Brandenburg was de facto treated as part of the Prussian kingdom. Frederick and his successors continued to centralize and expand the state, transforming the personal union of politically diverse principalities typical for the Brandenburg-Prussian era into a system of provinces subordinate to Berlin.

The German colonial empire (German: Deutsches Kolonialreich) constituted the overseas colonies, dependencies and territories of Imperial Germany. Unified in the early 1870s, the chancellor of this time period was Otto von Bismarck. Short-lived attempts at colonization by individual German states had occurred in preceding centuries, but crucial colonial efforts only began in 1884 with the Scramble for Africa. Claiming much of the left-over uncolonized areas of Africa, Germany built the third-largest colonial empire at the time, after the British and French. The German Colonial Empire encompassed parts of several African countries, including parts of present-day Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, New Guinea and numerous other West Pacific / Micronesian islands. Germany lost control of its colonial empire when the First World War began in 1914, in which all of its colonies were invaded by Allied forces during the first weeks of the war. However, a number of colonial military forces held out longer, with German troops in South West Africa and Kamerun surrendering in 1915 and in 1916, respectively, while forces under Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck fighting a guerilla campaign in East Africa tied down allied troops until 1918, only surrendering after the end of the war. Germany's colonial empire was officially confiscated with the Treaty of Versailles after Germany's defeat in the war and where each colony became a League of Nations mandate under the supervision (but not ownership) of one of the victorious powers. The German colonial empire ceased to exist in 1919. Plans to regain their lost colonial possessions persisted through the Second World War, with many at the time suspecting that this was a goal of the Third Reich all along.

The North German Confederation (German: Norddeutscher Bund) was a German federation that existed from July 1867 to December 1870. It is the first period of the German nation state, which is known today as the Federal Republic of Germany.The Confederation came into existence after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 over the lordship of two small Danish duchies (Schleswig-Holstein) claimed by Prussia in 1866. After its victory, Prussia made Austria and its allies to accept the dissolution of the German Confederation (an association of states). The peace treaty allowed Prussia to create a federal state in Northern Germany. On July 1st, 1867, the North German Confederation had a federal constitution.The constitution established a constitutional monarchy with the Prussian king as the holder of the Bundespräsidium. This was the position of a head of state. Laws could only be enabled with the consent of the Reichstag (a parliament based on universal male suffrage) and the Federal Council (Bundesrath, a representation of the states). During the three and a half years of the Confederation, a conservative-liberal cooperation undertook important steps to unify (Northern) Germany with regard to law and infrastructure. The political system (and the political parties) remained essentially the same in the years after 1870. During its existence, there were tensions between the North German Confederation and the Second French Empire, which was ruled by the French Emperor Napoleon III. In summer 1870, a dispute over a new king for Spain escalated into the Franco-Prussian war. In this situation, the south German states of Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Württemberg and Bavaria joined the North German Confederation. On 1 January 1871, the country adopted a new constitution, which was written under the title of a new "German Confederation" but already gave it the name "German Empire" in the preamble and article 11.The Confederation had nearly 30 million inhabitants, of whom 80% lived in Prussia. This is ca. 75% of the population of the German Empire (1871).

The Weimar Republic (German: Weimarer Republik [ˈvaɪmaʁɐ ʁepuˈbliːk] (listen)), officially known as the German Reich (Deutsches Reich), describes Germany in the period of 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to as the German Republic (Deutsche Republik). The country's informal name is derived from the city of Weimar, which hosted the constituent assembly that established its government. In English, the country was usually simply called "Germany", with term "Weimar Republic" not becoming common until the 1930s. Following the devastation of the First World War (1914–1918), Germany was exhausted and sued for peace under desperate circumstances. Awareness of imminent defeat sparked a revolution, the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, formal surrender to the Allies, and the proclamation of the Weimar Republic on 9 November 1918.In its initial years, the republic was beset by grave problems, such as hyperinflation and political extremism, including political murders and two attempted seizures of power by contending paramilitaries; internationally, it suffered isolation, reduced diplomatic standing, and contentious relationships with the great powers. By 1924, a great deal of monetary and political stability was restored, and the republic enjoyed relative prosperity for the next five years; this period, sometimes known as the Golden Twenties, was characterised by significant cultural flourishing, social progress, and gradual improvement in foreign relations. Under the Locarno Treaties of 1925, Germany moved toward normalising relations with its neighbours, recognising most territorial changes under the Treaty of Versailles and committing to never go to war. The following year, it joined the League of Nations, which marked its reintegration into the international community. Nevetheless, there remained strong and widespread resentment against the treaty and those who had signed and supported it, especially on the political right. The Great Depression of October 1929 severely impacted Germany's tenuous progress; high unemployment and subsequent social and political unrest led to the collapse of the coalition government. From March 1930 onwards, President Paul von Hindenburg used emergency powers to back Chancellors Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen and General Kurt von Schleicher. The Great Depression, exacerbated by Brüning's policy of deflation, led to a greater surge in unemployment. On 30 January 1933, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor to head a coalition government; Hitler's far right Nazi Party held two out of ten cabinet seats. Von Papen, as Vice-Chancellor and Hindenburg's confidant, was to serve as the éminence grise who would keep Hitler under control; these intentions badly underestimated Hitler's political abilities. By the end of March 1933, the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 had used the perceived state of emergency to effectively grant the new Chancellor broad power to act outside parliamentary control. Hitler promptly used these powers to thwart constitutional governance and suspend civil liberties, which brought about the swift collapse of democracy at the federal and state level, and the creation of a single-party dictatorship under his leadership. Until the end of World War II in Europe in 1945, the Nazis governed Germany under the pretense that all the extraordinary measures and laws they implemented were constitutional; notably, there was never an attempt to replace or substantially amend the Weimar constitution. Nevertheless, Hitler's seizure of power (Machtergreifung) had effectively ended the republic, replacing its constitutional framework with Führerprinzip, the principle that "the Führer's word is above all written law".

The German Empire or the Imperial State of Germany, also referred to as Imperial Germany, the Kaiserreich, as well as simply Germany, was the period of the German Reich from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the November Revolution in 1918, when the German Reich changed its form of government from a monarchy to a republic.It was founded on 18 January 1871 when the south German states, except for Austria, joined the North German Confederation and the new constitution came into force on April 16, changing the name of the federal state to the German Empire and introducing the title of German Emperor for Wilhelm I, King of Prussia from the House of Hohenzollern. Berlin remained its capital, and Otto von Bismarck, Minister President of Prussia, became Chancellor, the head of government. As these events occurred, the Prussian-led North German Confederation and its southern German allies were still engaged in the Franco-Prussian War. The German Empire consisted of 26 states, each with their own nobility, four constituent kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies (six before 1876), seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. While Prussia was one of four kingdoms in the realm, it contained about two-thirds of the Empire's population and territory, and Prussian dominance had also been constitutionally established, since the King of Prussia was also the German Emperor (German: Kaiser) After 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron (and later steel), chemicals, and railways. In 1871, Germany had a population of 41 million people; by 1913, this had increased to 68 million. A heavily rural collection of states in 1815, the now united Germany became predominantly urban. The success of German industrialization manifested itself in two ways since the early 20th century: the German factories were larger and more modern than their British and French counterparts. The dominance of German Empire in natural sciences, especially in physics and chemistry, was such that one-third of all Nobel Prizes went to German inventors and researchers. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire became the industrial, technological, and scientific giant of Europe, and by 1913, Germany was the largest economy in Continental Europe and the third-largest in the world. Germany also became a great power, it built up the longest railway network of Europe, the world's strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. Starting very small in 1871, in a decade, the navy became second only to Britain's Royal Navy. After the removal of Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II in 1890, the empire embarked on Weltpolitik – a bellicose new course that ultimately contributed to the outbreak of World War I. From 1871 to 1890, Otto von Bismarck's tenure as the first and to this day longest-serving Chancellor was marked by relative liberalism, but it became more conservative afterward. Broad reforms and the Kulturkampf marked his period in the office. Late in Bismarck's chancellorship and in spite of his earlier personal opposition, Germany became involved in colonialism. Claiming much of the leftover territory that was yet unclaimed in the Scramble for Africa, it managed to build the third-largest colonial empire at the time, after the British and the French ones. As a colonial state, it sometimes clashed with the interests of other European powers, especially the British Empire. During its colonial expansion, the German Empire committed the Herero and Namaqua genocide.In addition, Bismarck's successors were incapable of maintaining their predecessor's complex, shifting, and overlapping alliances which had kept Germany from being diplomatically isolated. This period was marked by various factors influencing the Emperor's decisions, which were often perceived as contradictory or unpredictable by the public. In 1879, the German Empire consolidated the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary, followed by the Triple Alliance with Italy in 1882. It also retained strong diplomatic ties to the Ottoman Empire. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, Italy left the alliance and the Ottoman Empire formally allied with Germany. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in the autumn of 1914 failed, and the war on the Western Front became a stalemate. The Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. However, Imperial Germany had success on the Eastern Front; it occupied a large amount of territory to its east following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 contributed to bringing the United States into the war. In October 1918, after the failed Spring Offensive, the German armies were in retreat, allies Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, and Bulgaria had surrendered. The empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution with the abdications of its monarchs, which left the post-war federal republic to govern a devastated populace. The Treaty of Versailles imposed post-war reparation costs of 132 billion gold marks (around US$269 billion or €240 billion in 2019, or roughly US$32 billion in 1921), as well as limiting the army to 100,000 men and disallowing conscription, armored vehicles, submarines, aircraft, and more than six battleships. The consequential economic devastation, later exacerbated by the Great Depression, as well as humiliation and outrage experienced by the German population are considered leading factors in the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism.

Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", alluded to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the Thousand Year Reich, ended in May 1945 after just 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany, ending World War II in Europe. On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, the head of government, by the president of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, the head of state. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all political opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934 and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the offices and powers of the chancellery and presidency. A national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer (leader) of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitler's person and his word became the highest law. The government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitler's favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy. Using deficit spending, the regime undertook a massive secret rearmament program, forming the Wehrmacht (armed forces), and constructed extensive public works projects, including the Autobahnen (motorways). The return to economic stability boosted the regime's popularity. Racism, Nazi eugenics, and especially antisemitism, were central ideological features of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the master race, the purest branch of the Aryan race. Discrimination and the persecution of Jews and Romani people began in earnest after the seizure of power. The first concentration camps were established in March 1933. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, and liberals, socialists, and communists were murdered, imprisoned, or exiled. Christian churches and citizens that opposed Hitler's rule were oppressed and many leaders imprisoned. Education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed. Recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased Germany on the international stage. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, and Hitler's hypnotic oratory to influence public opinion. The government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. From the latter half of the 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands, threatening war if these were not met. The Saarland voted by plebiscite to rejoin Germany in 1935, and in 1936 Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, which had been de-militarized after World War I. Germany seized Austria in the Anschluss of 1938, and demanded and received the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in that same year. In March 1939, the Slovak state was proclaimed and became a client state of Germany, and the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established on the remainder of the occupied Czech Lands. Shortly after, Germany pressured Lithuania into ceding the Memel Territory. Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, launching World War II in Europe. By early 1941, Germany and its European allies in the Axis powers controlled much of Europe. Extended offices of the Reichskommissariat took control of Nazi-conquered areas and a German administration was established in the remainder of Poland. Germany exploited the raw materials and labour of both its occupied territories and its allies. Genocide, mass murder, and large-scale forced labour became hallmarks of the regime. Starting in 1939, hundreds of thousands of German citizens with mental or physical disabilities were murdered in hospitals and asylums. Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads accompanied the German armed forces inside the occupied territories and conducted the genocide of millions of Jews and other Holocaust victims. After 1941, millions of others were imprisoned, worked to death, or murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps. This genocide is known as the Holocaust. While the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was initially successful, the Soviet resurgence and entry of the United States into the war meant that the Wehrmacht lost the initiative on the Eastern Front in 1943 and by late 1944 had been pushed back to the pre-1939 border. Large-scale aerial bombing of Germany escalated in 1944 and the Axis powers were driven back in Eastern and Southern Europe. After the Allied invasion of France, Germany was conquered by the Soviet Union from the east and the other Allies from the west, and capitulated in May 1945. Hitler's refusal to admit defeat led to massive destruction of German infrastructure and additional war-related deaths in the closing months of the war. The victorious Allies initiated a policy of denazification and put many of the surviving Nazi leadership on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.

Schleusen Bridge (German: Schleusenbrücke) is a bridge in Mitte, Berlin, Germany.

The Bauakademie (Building Academy) in Berlin, Germany, was a higher education school for the art of building to train master builders. It originated from the construction department of the Academy of Fine Arts and Mechanical Sciences (from 1704), which emphasized the aesthetic elements of art of building while ignoring the technical. Thus, the governmental Upper Building Department ("UBD") decided to establish an entirely new building educational institution named "Bauakademie". It was founded on 18 March 1799 by King Frederick William III and, in 1801, incorporated into the UBD, as its section. The building of the Building Academy (Bauakademie), built between 1832 and 1836 (later known as Schinkel's Bauakademie), is considered one of the forerunners of modern architecture due to its hithertofore uncommon use of red brick and the relatively streamlined facade of the building. Designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, it was built near the Berlin City Palace and accommodated two royal Prussian institutions: the State Construction Commission (Oberbaudeputation), of which Schinkel was the director, and - first of all - the Building Academy (institution), which in 1879 gave birth to the Royal Technical Higher School (Königlich Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg) - the forerunner of the Technical University of Berlin. For nearly 50 years (1885-1933), the Bauakademie became the home of the "Königlich Preussische Messbild-Anstalt" renamed to "Staatliche Bildstelle" in 1921. This institution, under its director Albrecht Meydenbauer, became the first world-wide office professionally working with photogrammetry and establishing an archive of historical buildings based on photography. By 1920, approximately 20.000 glass-negatives of the format 30x30 cm and 40x40 cm had been collected in Germany and abroad. During the Weimar period, the Bauakademie was the home of the famous Deutsche Hochschule für Politik as well as other institutions supported by the State of Prussia. Damaged during World War II, the Bauakademie was then partially restored, but in 1962 the building was demolished to make room for the future Ministry of Foreign Affairs of East Germany. In 1995, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of East Germany was demolished in order to recreate the Werderscher Markt area. Since then, proposals to rebuild Schinkel's Bauakademie have been discussed with city and Federal authorities. The Werderscher Markt area has already been partially recreated by the Bertelsmann-funded reconstruction of the Alte Kommandantur. As for the Bauakademie, between 2000 and 2001 students erected a temporary structure to give an impression of the volume and form of the building. On November 11, 2016, the German Bundestag decided to rebuild the building academy according to the motto "As much Schinkel as possible". The cost of the project is estimated at 51 million euros.

The Humboldt Box (German: Humboldt-Box) was a futuristic museum structure on the Schloßplatz in the center of Berlin, Germany. It was built as a temporary exhibition space and viewing platform for the Humboldt Forum construction project and to inform the public about its future use.

The State Council Building (German: Staatsratsgebäude) is a building in the former East Berlin that hosted the State Council (German: Staatsrat), the collective head of state of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany or GDR), from 1964 to 1990.

The European School of Management and Technology, also known as ESMT Berlin, is a private non-profit business school based in Berlin, Germany. The business school was founded in 2002 by 25 global companies and institutions including McKinsey & Company, Inc., KPMG, The Boston Consulting Group, Siemens and T-Mobile. ESMT offers a full-time MBA, an executive MBA, a part-time MBA, a global online MBA, a master in management, a master in global management, a master in innovation and entrepreneurship, a master in analytics and artificial intelligence program, as well as open enrollment and customized executive education programs. ESMT Berlin is regarded as one of the most prestigious business schools in Europe, ranked 7th by the Financial Times and 12th by Bloomberg Businessweek. It is one of four business schools in Germany with triple accreditation from the European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS), the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and the Association of MBAs (AMBA).