Palace of the Reich President

The Vorbunker (upper bunker or forward bunker) was an underground concrete structure originally intended to be a temporary air-raid shelter for Adolf Hitler and his guards and servants. It was located behind the large reception hall that was added onto the old Reich Chancellery, in Berlin, Germany, in 1936. The bunker was officially called the "Reich Chancellery Air-Raid Shelter" until 1943, when the complex was expanded with the addition of the Führerbunker, located one level below. On 16 January 1945, Hitler moved into the Führerbunker. He was joined by his senior staff, including Martin Bormann. Later, Eva Braun and Joseph Goebbels moved into the Führerbunker while Magda Goebbels and their six children took residence in the upper Vorbunker. The Goebbels family lived in the Vorbunker until their deaths on 1 May 1945.

The Führerbunker (German pronunciation: [ˈfyːʁɐˌbʊŋkɐ]) was an air raid shelter located near the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. It was part of a subterranean bunker complex constructed in two phases in 1936 and 1944. It was the last of the Führer Headquarters (Führerhauptquartiere) used by Adolf Hitler during World War II. Hitler took up residence in the Führerbunker on 16 January 1945, and it became the centre of the Nazi regime until the last week of World War II in Europe. Hitler married Eva Braun there on 29 April 1945, less than 40 hours before they committed suicide. After the war, both the old and new Chancellery buildings were levelled by the Soviets. The underground complex remained largely undisturbed until 1988–89, despite some attempts at demolition. The excavated sections of the old bunker complex were mostly destroyed during reconstruction of that area of Berlin. The site remained unmarked until 2006, when a small plaque was installed with a schematic diagram. Some corridors of the bunker still exist but are sealed off from the public.

The British Embassy in Berlin (German: Britische Botschaft, Berlin) is the United Kingdom's diplomatic mission to Germany. It is located on 70-71 Wilhelmstraße, near the Hotel Adlon, in Berlin. The current ambassador is Jill Gallard.

The Palais Strousberg was a large city mansion built in Berlin, Germany for the railway magnate Bethel Henry Strousberg. It was designed by the architect August Orth and built between 1867–68 at No.70 Wilhelmstraße. The grandiose splendour of its accommodation and novel integration of the latest building technologies into the fabric of the building, ensured that Berliners would still find the Palais impressive decades after its construction, becoming the model of refined luxury in Berlin architecture.After the Strousberg family's bankruptcy in 1875, the building was rented to the embassy of Great Britain and Ireland who eventually purchased the property in 1884. Following World War II Wilhelmstraße was partitioned into the East German sector of Berlin in 1948. The Palais, which had been severely damaged during the war, was demolished in the 1950s.

The Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin is a luxury hotel in Berlin, Germany. It is on Unter den Linden, the main boulevard in the central Mitte district, at the corner with Pariser Platz, directly opposite the Brandenburg Gate. The original Hotel Adlon was one of the most famous hotels in Europe. It opened in 1907 and was largely destroyed in 1945 in the closing days of World War II, though a small wing continued operating until 1984. The current hotel, which opened on August 23, 1997, is a new building with a design inspired by the original.

The Academy of Arts (German: Akademie der Künste) is a state arts institution in Berlin, Germany. The task of the Academy is to promote art, as well as to advise and support the states of Germany.The Academy's predecessor organization was founded in 1696 by Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg as the Brandenburg Academy of Arts, an academic institution in which members could meet and discuss and share ideas. The current Academy was founded on 1 October 1993 as the re-unification of formerly separate East and West Berlin academies.

The Reich Chancellery (German: Reichskanzlei) was the traditional name of the office of the Chancellor of Germany (then called Reichskanzler) in the period of the German Reich from 1878 to 1945. The Chancellery's seat, selected and prepared since 1875, was the former city palace of Prince Antoni Radziwiłł (1775–1833) on Wilhelmstraße in Berlin. Both the palace and a new Reich Chancellery building (completed in early 1939) were seriously damaged during World War II and subsequently demolished. Today the office of the German chancellor is usually called Kanzleramt (Chancellor's Office), or more formally Bundeskanzleramt (Federal Chancellor's Office). The latter is also the name of the new seat of the Chancellor's Office, completed in 2001.

The Congress of Berlin (13 June – 13 July 1878) was a diplomatic conference to reorganise the states in the Balkan Peninsula after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, which had been won by Russia against the Ottoman Empire. Represented at the meeting were Europe's then six great powers: Russia, Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Germany; the Ottomans; and four Balkan states: Greece, Serbia, Romania and Montenegro. The congress concluded with the signing of the Treaty of Berlin, replacing the preliminary Treaty of San Stefano that had been signed three months earlier. The leader of the congress, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, sought to stabilise the Balkans, reduce the role of the defeated Ottoman Empire in the region, and balance the distinct interests of Britain, Russia and Austria-Hungary. He also wanted to avoid domination of the Balkans by Russia or the formation of a Greater Bulgaria, and to keep Constantinople in Ottoman hands. Finally Bismarck wanted to encourage the development of civil rights for Jews in the region. Under Bismarck's influence, the congress stripped the Ottomans of many of their European possessions, but refused to grant them to Russia and massively reduced the gains of Bulgaria (compared to the Principality of Bulgaria envisaged by the preliminary San Stefano treaty). The affected territories were instead granted varying degrees of independence. Romania became fully independent, though was forced to give part of Bessarabia to Russia, and gained Northern Dobruja. Serbia and Montenegro were also granted full independence but lost territory, with Austria-Hungary occupying the Sandžak region along with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Britain took possession of Cyprus. Of the territory that remained within the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria was made a semi-independent principality, Eastern Rumelia became a special administration, and the region of Macedonia was returned to the Ottomans on condition of reforms to its governance. The results were initially hailed as a success for peace in the region, but most of the participants were not satisfied with the outcome. The Ottomans were humiliated and had their weakness confirmed as the "sick man of Europe". Russia resented the lack of rewards, despite having won the war that the conference was supposed to resolve, and humiliated by the other great powers in their rejection of the San Stefano settlement. Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece all received far less than they thought they deserved, especially Bulgaria which was left with less than half of the territory envisioned by the Treaty of San Stefano. Bismarck became hated by Russian nationalists and Pan-Slavists, and later found that he had tied Germany too closely to Austria-Hungary in the Balkans. Although Austria-Hungary gained substantial territory, this angered the South Slavs and led to decades of tensions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, culminating in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In the long term, the settlement led to rising tensions between Russia and Austria-Hungary, and disputes over nationalism in the Balkans. Grievances with the results of the congress festered until they exploded in the First and Second Balkan Wars (1912 and 1913 respectively). Continuing nationalism in the Balkans was one of the causes of the First World War in 1914.

Berlin Brandenburger Tor (in German Bahnhof Berlin Brandenburger Tor) – formerly Berlin Unter den Linden (1936-2009) – is an underground railway station in the central Mitte district of Berlin, Germany, located on the Unter den Linden boulevard near Hotel Adlon, Pariser Platz and Brandenburg Gate. It is served by the Berlin S-Bahn and U-Bahn, as well as local bus lines.

Zum schwarzen Ferkel ("The Black Piglet") was a tavern located at the corner of Unter den Linden and Neue Wilhelmstraße in Berlin. Said once to have been frequented by Heinrich Heine, Robert Schumann and E. T. A. Hoffmann, it was in the 1890s the meeting place for a circle of mainly Nordic writers and artists, including August Strindberg, Holger Drachmann and Edvard Munch but also the Pole Stanisław Przybyszewski and several Germans. The real name of the Weinstube, which was owned by a Gustav Türke, was Gustav Türkes Weinhandlung und Probierstube, but it was also known as "The Cloister". The name Zum schwarzen Ferkel was given to it by Strindberg as he thought the Armenian (or Bessarabian) wine-sack hanging over the entrance resembled a black piglet; the name was enthusiastically accepted by the owner. Strindberg had come to Berlin from Sweden in 1892, after his divorce the previous year from his first wife Siri von Essen, on the invitation of the Swedish writer Ola Hansson and his wife, the critic Laura Marholm, and for the first period in Berlin he stayed with the couple in their home in Friedrichshagen. After a while he started to refer to the place in letters as "Friedrichshölle" ("Friedrichs-Hell") and eventually moved into central Berlin, falling out with this former hosts in the process, and settling at a pension on Neue Wilhelmstrasse, close to Türke's tavern. The story of Strindberg's discovery and naming of the tavern comes from the Finnish writer Adolf Paul, and the circle at the Ferkel originally consisted of Strindberg, Paul, the German writer Richard Dehmel, the physician Carl Ludwig Schleich, the Polish journalist Stanisław Przybyszewski and a few others, all of whom had previously belonged to the group frequenting Ola Hansson's home in Friedrichshagen. Other Scandinavians arriving in Berlin would join the group. Edvard Munch became a regular after he had arrived in Berlin in October 1892 in connection with an exhibition that was scandalously closed after only seven days. The Norwegian writer Gunnar Heiberg became a member of the circle in November; other Norwegians included the painter couple Christian and Oda Krohg, the writer Axel Maurer and the poet Gabriel Finne. A quarrel between Munch and the Danish poet Holger Drachmann caused Strindberg temporarily to leave the group. He started seeing the Austrian journalist Frida Uhl, soon to be his second wife. After the couple had become secretly engaged and Frida Uhl had left Berlin temporarily for Munich, Strindberg returned to the Ferkel. Meanwhile Munch had introduced another female member of the group, the Norwegian music student Dagny Juel. Several of the men were attracted by Dagny Juel, who entered into a number of brief sexual liaisons within the circle, including a three-week relationship in March 1893 with the newly engaged Strindberg while Frida Uhl was still away. Juel married Przybyszewski on 18 August 1893; she later wrote some literary pieces and was murdered by a lover in Tbilisi in 1901. Munch, who was in love with her, felt betrayed, and he depicted her on several paintings; she is likely to be the model for his Jealousy. The main written testimonies to come out of the Ferkel circle was Adolf Paul's Strindberg-Erinnerungen und -Briefe (1914) and Strindberg's novel Klostret ("The Cloister") which was published only posthumously in 1966.

The Ordenspalais ("Palace of the Order [of Saint John]") was a building on the northern corner of Wilhelmplatz with Wilhelmstraße in Berlin (now in Berlin-Mitte). Erection of the building at Wilhelmplatz No. 7/8 began in 1737 as the residence of the Prussian Major General Karl Ludwig, Count of Waldburg-Capustigall, who died the next year. By command of King Frederick William I of Prussia, the palace was finished by the Order of Saint John (the Johanniterorden) according to plans by Carl Friedrich Richter, who also designed the neighbouring Palais Schulenburg (later the German Reich Chancellery). From 1738, the palace was the principal residence of the Herrenmeister ("Master of the Knights"), chief of the Order, and housed the Berlin legation of the Order. The palace later was renamed for Prince Augustus Ferdinand of Prussia, who was Herrenmeister from 1763 to 1811. The Kingdom of Prussia took over the building in 1811, upon the dissolution of the Order by a government desperate for funds in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, and the building thereafter housed several governmental agencies before Prince Charles of Prussia made it his residence in 1829. He had the palace remodeled in a Neoclassical style according to plans by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, with an annex built by Friedrich August Stüler. In 1853, the building, now numbered Wilhelmplatz No. 8/9, saw the solemn restoration of the Johanniterorden and Prince Charles's installation as the new Herrenmeister. After his death in 1883, the palace remained the residence of Prince Charles's descendants Princes Frederick Charles and Friedrich Leopold of Prussia. After World War I and the fall of the Prussian monarchy, the palace became the subject of a lengthy lawsuit between the House of Hohenzollern and the Free State of Prussia. The palace remained empty until the German government made it the offices of the united press department of the Reichsregierung and the Foreign Office, which held daily press conferences here. In March 1933, the building became the headquarters of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda led by Joseph Goebbels. During his tenure, the building was again enlarged, with Stüler's annex extended and rebuilt until 1940. The Ordenspalais itself was destroyed in the last months of World War II. The annex, renumbered Wilhelmstraße No. 49, survived and from 1947 was the seat of the East German National Front organization. Since 1999, the building has held the main offices of the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

The Federal Ministry for Labour and Social Affairs (German: Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsminɪsˌteːʁiʊm fyːɐ̯ ˈaʁbaɪ̯t ʊnt zoˈt͡si̯aːləs] (listen)), abbreviated BMAS) is a federal ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany headed by the Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs as a member of the Cabinet of Germany (Bundesregierung). Its first location is on Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin, the second in Bonn.