How Old Is Berlin? – Mythbusting Berlin

“If you have nothing to tell us except that one barbarian succeeded another on the banks of the Oxus and Jaxartes, what is that to us?”
Voltaire

Making any pronouncement on Berlin’s earliest history is a project fraught with frustration.

Pinpointing exactly when the settlement became a city, or the town turned into a strategic interest remains easier than identifying on which date the embers of civilisation and permanent habitation started to flicker.

Not least as the debate over Berlin’s provenance has been, and remains, a controversial issue. Like any aspect of this city’s problematic history, the political ramification of any specific conclusion exposes an inherent bias.

But how can what boils down to a simple matter of numbers be so problematic?

“To Berlin, the Reich’s capital, I hope that it will remain the same as it is now in the future: hardworking, fanatical, generous and full of the joys of life. In a word: Nazi.”
Joseph Goebbels, Berlin’s Nazi Gauleiter & Propaganda Minister, 1937

In August 1937, more than four years after the Nazi Party’s violent seizure of power, the city of Berlin was gifted a grand birthday.

A prime opportunity to mold the city’s past into a shape that served the Party’s idea of an ideological future. Berlin’s 700 year anniversary was thus presented not just as a milestone but as a triumphant celebration, but of a re-imagined history. The choice of 1237 as Berlin’s foundational year was a calculated act of political maneuvering.

With no surviving founding charter for Berlin, the date was selected based on the first documentary evidence of its medieval sister city, Cölln, located across the Spree River.

The idea for such a celebration had been floated in the more liberal 1920s, a time of artistic fervor and intellectual debate, but was ultimately rejected by the authorities, who feared it would only amplify the city’s already palpable political instability.