Berlin

Berlin, the capital of Deutschland,¹² 368 meters. More famous is the Brandenburg Gate,³ which appears on German euro coins. The glass dome over the Reichstag building,⁴ looking into the parliamentary sessions, is a symbol of post-war democratic transparency. The Berliner Dom, a Protestant church on an island in the Spree, is perhaps the best known religious building. Berlin's Modernism Housing Estates constitute a World Heritage Site, honoring a inclusive social policy and the architects Bruno Taut, Martin Wagner and Walter Gropius.⁵ Museuminsel (Museum Island) is another World Heritage Site, site of five museums holding art treasures from around the world. Within the metropolitan area is Potsdam famed for its palaces and parks, especially Sanssouci. Those and some others in the Berlin-Zehlendorf area constitute a World Heritage Site.

The mathematician, Leonhard Euler, moved to Berlin in 1740 and remained there until 1766, publishing over half of the Berlin Academy's production between 1741 and 1771. Joseph Louis Lagrange replaced Euler in Berlin from 1767 to 1787, and published his Mécanique analytique there. Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi was born in Potsdam and began his mathematical career in Berlin, publishing his Fundamenta nova there in 1829.⁶

Historical maps

Footnotes

1. Germany in English.
2. Berliner Fernsehturm in German.
3. Gate is tor in German.
4. Reichstagsgebäude in German.
5. World Heritage Sites (Unesco and Firefly Books, 2009).
6. Information on Euler, Jacobi and Lagrange is from John Stillwell, Mathematics and Its History, 2nd ed. (Springer, 2000).
7. Estimates in Tables of the World's Largest Cities, in Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth, 2nd ed. (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987). In 1900 Belin was the largest city in what is now Deutschland, België, Nederland, Luxembourg and Danmark, and the fourth largest city in the world.