With around 72,000 inhabitants, Brandenburg an der Havel is the third largest and, in terms of area, the largest independent city and one of the four regional centers of the German state of Brandenburg. The Slavic eponymous Brandenburg was first mentioned in writing in 928 or 929. Urban structures did not develop until after the German conquest in the 12th century. A document from 1170 names the old town in Brandenburg for the first time as a city under German law. Because of its long history and because it gave its name to the whole of Brandenburg, it is also known as the “cradle of the Mark”.
Brennaburg Castle was taken from King Heinrich I of the Hevellers in winter 927 to 928. Otto I founded a diocese here in 948, which was first subordinated to the Archbishop of Mainz, in 968 assigned to the newly established Archdiocese of Magdeburg, but destroyed again in 983 by the pagan Wends and then re-established by Albrecht the Bear in 1153. After Bishop Matthias von Jagow converted to the Protestant Church in 1539 and the Catholic service in the cathedral ceased in 1544, the diocese was administered by the Elector until 1598, then it was abolished and the monastery property was partly converted into electoral domains and partly sold to nobles. But the cathedral chapter remained, which was not legally repealed until 1810, but was renewed again in 1826. Of the twelve canon positions, which were all conferred by the king, nine have since belonged to the nobility and three to the clergy. In November 1848 the seat of the Prussian National Assembly was moved to Brandenburg, where it was opened on November 27th and dissolved again on December 5th, 1848.
By plane
The nearest airport is Berlin Brandenburg Airport (IATA:
BER) (about 90 km). The city can be reached by car and public transport
in about 1 to 1.5 hours.
By train
From the main station
Hauptbahnhof has a very good train connection in the direction of Berlin
(journey time from the main station approx. 45 minutes) and Potsdam
(journey time approx. 20 minutes). Trains run twice an hour during the
day. There is a train every hour from Magdeburg (journey time approx. 50
minutes). Brandenburg is in the fare zone of the Berlin-Brandenburg
Transport Association. In addition, Brandenburg is approached by
regional traffic and some IC. There are direct connections from Hanover,
among others.
The best way to get to the city center from the
main train station is to take the Brandenburg transport company tram
(line 6 to Neustädter Markt). Other train stops are Brandenburg-Altstadt
Brandenburg-Altstadt and Görden Görden (on the route to Rathenow).
By bus
Current timetables www.regiobus-pm.de
In the street
Brandenburg can be reached by car via the A 2 motorway, Brandenburg
junction. At this point, be warned of the two stationary speed cameras
that are on the road into town. If you are coming from the direction of
Hanover/Magdeburg, you should leave the A2 at the Wollin junction and
drive through the town of Wenzlow-Grüningen in the direction of
Brandenburg.
The federal roads B 1 Potsdam - Magdeburg and B 102
Rathenow - Jüterbog also lead through the city.
By boat
Since
the city is surrounded by water, you can of course also arrive by ship.
Although there are no scheduled services, river cruise ships dock
regularly in the city.
You can also arrive with your own boat,
along the Havel there are various mooring options, also in the inner
city area.
The city is served by the trains and buses of the Brandenburg Transport Authority.
The Katharinenkirche is one of the most important churches. in the
Neustadt, a Gothic brick hall building. Nave 1381-1401, choir built
around 1410, tower on the west side 1583-85, with a Corpus Christi
chapel on the north side, a carved wood altar (1410), a bronze baptismal
font (1440) and several monuments. The decorative gables on the chapels
on the north and south sides are among the most ornate brick Gothic
buildings.
Also worth mentioning are:
Cathedral Church (St.
Peter and Paul), Burghof 9, 14776 Brandenburg an der Havel. Originally a
Romanesque pillar basilica, built around 1170, with a transitional style
crypt completed before 1235. Converted into a Gothic vaulted building in
the 14th century, refurbished by Schinkel in 1834, with a good
altarpiece (1465) on a gold background, a valuable baroque organ,
tombstones on the walls, etc. that of Bishop Theodorich von Schulenburg
(died 1393), altar candlesticks (angel statues) from 1441 and a large
collection of medieval vestments.
St. Peter's Chapel . Early Gothic
(14th century), on the cathedral island.
St. Gotthardt Church . A
brick Gothic hall church with a gallery from around 1456 using
Romanesque components from the second half of the 12th century.
Nikolai Church . Standing empty for a long time, but now completely
renovated and actively used, Romanesque-style church (12th and 13th
centuries), belonging to the Holy Trinity Catholic community since the
1990s.
St. John's Church . The brick Gothic monastery church was
badly damaged in the Second World War and only secured after 1990 and
finally restored on the outside. It is used as an exhibition hall.
Old Town Hall. A magnificent brick Gothic building with rich
decorations, in front of it the figure of Roland von Brandenburg. Right
next to it is the Gothic Ordonnanzhaus.
Neustadt mill gate tower
Plau gate tower
Rathenow gate tower
stone gate tower
Archaeological State Museum of Brandenburg, Neustädter Heidestraße
28, 14776 Brandenburg an der Havel. Tel.: +49 (0)3381 410 41 12, e-mail:
info@landesmuseum-brandenburg.de . The Brandenburg State Archaeological
Museum in the Paulikloster shows around 10,000 finds from 50,000 years
of human cultural development. It is located in the Paulikloster
Brandenburg, which was rebuilt especially for this purpose after being
severely damaged. Open: Tue-Sun, Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Whit
Monday, May 1, Oct 3, Oct 31, Dec 25, Dec 26 10am-5pm.
Brandenburg-Görden Prison Memorial, Anton-Saefkow-Allee 38, 14772
Brandenburg an der Havel. Phone: +49 (0)3381 328 74 75 . Open: Thurs
1:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.; Sat–Sun, public holidays 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Historic Port of Brandenburg, Hauptstraße 77, 14776 Brandenburg an der
Havel. Phone: +49 (0)157 38 69 84 95, email: info@hhb-ev.de .
Tram
Museum, Bahnhofstrasse 2-4, 14772 Brandenburg. Tel.: +49 (0)3381 89 01
11. Open: Thurs, Sun 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.; closed: public holiday.
Price: €1 (adults), €0.50 (children).
Computer Museum, Magdeburger
Strasse 50, 14776 Brandenburg an der Havel. Phone: +49 (0)3381 35 54 01.
Fishing Museum, Genthiner Strasse 2, 14774 Brandenburg an der Havel OT
Plaue. Tel.: +49 (0)3381 40 32 44. Open: Wed–Sun 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Price: free.
Psychiatric Museum, Anton-Saefkow-Allee 2, House 23,
14772 Brandenburg. Phone: +49 (0)3381 78 21 02.
Old Town Market
New Town Market
Beetzsee
Riewendsee
Fontane-Klub, Ritterstraße 69. The Fontane-Klub is picturesquely
situated on the Millennium Bridge in the old town of Brandenburg. There
is a cabaret stage, a program cinema, a restaurant and a bar in the
house. The in-house event theater operates the cabaret stage and the
Fontane cinema, which has won numerous cinema program prizes.
The
event-theater also organizes the Brandenburg Monastery Summer, a small
theater festival that has taken place annually in June and July in
Brandenburg an der Havel since 2001 and enjoys national recognition. The
special thing is that the event theater plays in the city. Venues have
so far included St. Pauli Monastery, Brandenburg Cathedral, Plaue Castle
and the Buhnenhaus excursion restaurant. The Brandenburg monastery
summer combines operettas, music theater and drama with culinary and
tourist offers and puts together adventure packages. In 2016, for
example, the musical "My Fair Lady" will be performed in the Buhnenhaus
excursion restaurant. The experience package that can also be booked
includes a steamer trip from Brandenburg an der Havel to the Buhnenhaus
and back, a cup of coffee before the performance and a barbecue buffet
after the performance. In addition, a new venue will be developed in
2016: the Sankt-Johannis-Kirche, which was still used as a flower hall
for the BUGA in 2015. Here you can experience the "Sin in Words and
Sound" program with an optional culinary offer from GenussCatering.
The central shopping center is the Sankt-Annen-Galerie
Cheap
CurryWust, An der Bundesstrasse 1, 14776 Brandenburg an der
Havel. Open: Mon - Sat 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Price: currywurst €1.80,
hamburger €4.90.
Middle
Bräuhaus Pub Pur, Lewaldstrasse 23A,
14774 Brandenburg an der Havel. Tel.: +49 3381 403466. The cooking is
live, you can watch and put together your own meal according to your
mood and weight. They brew their own beers, including unusual varieties,
including Knoblauchbräu (only on Herrstag) or liquorice beer. Open: Thu,
Fri, Sat from 5 p.m.
Restaurant Remise, Burghof 2, 14776 Brandenburg
an der Havel. Phone: +49 3381 7943 120, email: remise@domevents.de.
Recommended restaurant with regional cuisine, right next to the
cathedral.
Unfortunately, the booking portal of the city of Brandenburg only
offers a relatively small selection.
Upscale
SORAT Hotel
Brandenburg, Altstädter Markt 1, 14770 Brandenburg/Havel (in the
historic old town directly at the town hall). Phone: +49 (0)33 81 5970.
The oldest written mention of the name Brandenburg is in the deed of
foundation of the diocese of Brandenburg. It speaks of the founding of
the bishopric in the civitate Brendanburg. It is dated to the year 948
(historian dispute see Middle Ages). The chronicle first mention of the
name is in the chronicles of Widukind von Corvey from the year 967. Here
the conquest of the Brennaburg is spoken of. Possible interpretations of
the name could now be: Slavic origin of the name from bran "swamp,
morass" or the Germanic origin of branda "fire". The lack of a cult
around this saint in the Brandenburg area speaks against a derivation of
the name from Saint Brendan. However, the name could have been
transferred from the western Franconian area during the Carolingian
period as part of the Frankonization of place names and thus go back to
a cult of saints widespread elsewhere. More recent attempts at
interpretation also refer to a word of Indo-European origin: brendh for
"swell" or "swell". In this case, the interpretation is based on a water
name, with the addition of the ending -burg.
In all probability
the name Brennabor is fictitious. In 1677, the Bohemian Jesuit Father
Bohuslaus Balbinus tried to reconstruct the names of the places in the
former Slavic settlement areas in order to prove their Slavic origin:
"Brandenburg was founded by the Slavs at that time: Branny Bor, d. H.
called silvae custodia, guard of the forest.” (Otto Tschirch)
Background: For ethnic-political reasons, the Bohemian Slavs replaced
the unpopular German “burg” with the Slavic “bor”, which sounded similar
but was not documented. Because of the "castle" in the place name, it
can be assumed with certainty that the Slavic inhabitants of Brandenburg
called their castle wall differently, but how is unknown. The fictitious
"Brennabor" was only able to establish itself so persistently because
the company of the same name, Brennabor, in the city of Brandenburg an
der Havel had been producing its bicycles under this name with great
success since 1892.
The official name of the city itself has
fluctuated in its recent history between Brandenburg (older
Brendanburg), Brandenburg a./Havel, Brandenburg (Havel) and - as the
name has been since 1993 - Brandenburg an der Havel.
The Paleolithic finds are extremely sparse, since the glacial
reshaping of the area during the Weichselian Ice Age exported all
existing artefacts into inaccessible deep soil layers.
There are
only sparse archaeological findings from the Germanic settlement phase.
For example, skull burials, "[...] the circumstances of which partly
suggest a cult or victim (?) [...]", are mentioned in the district of
Brandenburg-Neuendorf.
In the 4th to 3rd century BC, the area of
today's city of Brandenburg an der Havel formed "[...] the limit of the
mass occurrence of both late Hallstadt and Celtic import goods." From
this one can draw the conclusion that the Havel crossing north of the
Marienberg was already very was a crossing point for important trade
routes for a long time.
In his writing De origine et situ
Germanorum (Germania), Tacitus settles the Suebian tribe of the Semnonen
in the Elbe-Havel area, the majority of whose population, however, may
have already left their old homeland at the end of the second century AD
during the early migration period. Assumptions that suggest the
existence of a Frigga or Freyja sanctuary on the Marienberg are purely
speculative in nature and since the construction of the kettle on the
top of the Marienberg in the 1960s can no longer be archaeologically
proven or ruled out.
For the period between the emigration of the
Germanic population and the massive influx of Slavs from the south and
east, a settlement-free area is assumed to be around 150 years. Between
the 5th and the 7th century, excavation finds in the Brandenburg area,
among other places, still show a modest Germanic settlement, which
contradicts the theory of a complete lack of settlements. From the 6th
century onwards, Slavic tribes from the Silesian and Bohemian regions
conquered the country. The remaining remnants of the Germanic population
are overlaid by the Slavs, assimilated and ultimately absorbed by the
newcomers. Above all, water body names such as those of the Havel,
Spree, Elbe and others from the Germanic language layer are preserved,
while field and settlement names are reassigned by the Slavs.
The central Brandenburg (Brendanburg) of the Slavic Hevellers, which
was conquered by King Heinrich I in 928/929, was located on the
cathedral island. Otto I established the diocese of Brandenburg here in
948 - according to some sources 949 or 965 - and the associated imperial
principality of the Bishopric of Brandenburg.
In the great Slav
uprising of 983, not only the Brandenburg but also the areas east of the
Elbe were reconquered. Thus, after the first German invasion, the newly
established imperial rule was initially abolished by the Liutizenbund.
For the now again Slavic region, this resulted in a halt to
Christianization for the next 150 to 200 years. The diocese continued to
exist formally with a continuous occupation of titular bishops in exile
in Magdeburg and returned after the reconquest in 1157.
The last
Heveller prince, Pribislaw-Heinrich, who had already converted to
Christianity, ruled from the castle with the Petrikirche on the
cathedral island. He called the Premonstratensians to Brandenburg, who
settled before 1147 in the merchant settlement of Parduin near the St.
Gotthardt Church.
After his death in 1150, the land passed to
Margrave Albrecht the Bear by inheritance contract. First, however, the
Polish vassal Jacza von Köpenick occupied the castle and land. While
Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa was conducting a campaign against Poland in
1157, Albrecht the Bear conquered the promised inheritance of Pribislav
and founded the Mark Brandenburg. The two cathedral neighborhoods, as
well as the old town and the new town district, are likely to have
emerged soon after. In 1165 the Premonstratensians moved to the Castle
Island, today the Cathedral Island, where the construction of the
cathedral began in the same year.
The settlement around the
Gotthardtkirche expanded after 1160 to form the old town on the road
from Magdeburg via Köpenick and Lebus to Posen. In 1170 Brandenburg was
mentioned as a city in a document issued by Margrave Otto I. To the west
of the old town, the Nikolaikirche in the village of Luckenberg, built
before 1173, indicates an old merchant settlement. South of the old
town, the new town with the St. Catherine's Church was planned at the
end of the 12th century (first documented mention in 1196). Both cities
were walled separately and formed two independent communes. These
belonged to the secular margraviate of Brandenburg, while Brandenburg
Cathedral was in the meantime the main town of the ecclesiastical
bishopric of Brandenburg. The Havel formed the border between the two
principalities.
In the old town, the Franciscans founded the St.
Johannis monastery after 1234, in the new town the margravial court was
left to the Dominicans in 1286 to build the St. Pauli monastery. A
dynasty of burgraves that was probably installed in the middle of the
12th century has disappeared from records since 1243. As the capital of
the Margraviate of Brandenburg, as a bishopric, as the location of a
Schöppenstuhl that has been invoked from afar and as a long-distance
trading city, the two cities of Brandenburg together formed the
undisputed center between the Elbe and the Oder in the late Middle Ages.
The Jewish community, which pointed to long-distance trade, was
severely persecuted around 1350, 1446 and 1510. The first Roland
mentioned in 1402 on the Neustädter Markt expressed the city's freedoms,
since 1230 the upper courts were in the hands of bourgeois mayors and
Schöppen.
On June 21 and 22, 1412, Friedrich I, the previous
Burgrave of Nuremberg and first Prince of the Mark from the House of
Hohenzollern, moved into the city as the new Elector via the important
Brandenburg-Magdeburg military road. In honor of him or this event, a
monument was later erected on the former border of the Mark in the
Neustädter Heide, the Hohenzollernstein. In 1431, both Brandenburg
cities concluded a league of cities with Berlin, Kölln and Frankfurt
(Oder) against interference from the new sovereigns. Until 1518 they
belonged to the Hanseatic League.
In 1521 Elector Joachim I officially confirmed the title of Chur and
capital of Brandenburg an der Havel. He also determined the order of the
Mark towns in homage and in the field. The order here was: Brandenburg
old and new town, Berlin, Kölln, Stendal, Prenzlau, Perleberg, Ruppin,
Frankfurt (Oder) and Cüstrin. As a result, later inheritance homages
resulted in disputes with Berlin up until the 19th century.
Between 1536 and 1555 the Reformation prevailed in the city and
cathedral chapters, the diocese was secularized and in 1571 the
Bishopric of Brandenburg was incorporated into the Electorate of
Brandenburg. At the same time, the cities lost their leading position as
a result of Berlin's rise to the position of electoral residence.
In 1619, free elections to the council were abolished, and in 1622
the deteriorating coinage triggered riots among the urban population.
The destruction and decline in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) could
only be made up for after 1800. In 1648 only 3,000 of the 10,000
inhabitants before the war were still alive. The settlement of Huguenots
in 1685 brought economic revival with tanning and leather processing; a
reformed church emerged. The build-up of the Brandenburg army since the
late 17th century turned both Brandenburgs into garrison towns.
In the early 18th century, in 1704, with the consent of the king, the
cathedral foundation founded the Knights' Academy as a training center
for the nobility for state and military service. In 1715, by order of
the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I. Brandenburg Altstadt and
Brandenburg Neustadt were united into one city. There was now a common
city government, but each city retained its councillors. In connection
with the unification of the two cities, the first cadastre with an
associated very precise city map was made by Christoph Gottlieb Hedemann
from 1722 to 1724. The merging of the two previously independent cities
was a lengthy process. Dom Brandenburg continued to be an independent
municipality and did not yet belong to the unified city of Brandenburg.
After the defeat of the Prussian army at the Battle of Jena and
Auerstedt, French troops occupied the city from 1806 to 1808. Napoleon
forced occupied cities like Brandenburg to go into deep debt. Only with
the industrialization in the second half of the 19th century
(Gründerzeit) could the debts be repaid. With the Prussian
administrative reforms after the Congress of Vienna, the city was
assigned to the newly created administrative divisions from 1816, the
district of Westhavelland in the administrative district of Potsdam,
part of the province of Brandenburg (since 1939 "Mark Brandenburg").
In 1846, Brandenburg received its first rail connection to Berlin
and Magdeburg. During the 1848 revolution, the Prussian National
Assembly, expelled from Berlin by the king, met in the Brandenburg
Cathedral from November 8th until its dissolution on December 5th, 1848.
The Reichstein brothers founded the Brennabor-Werke in 1871, which began
by manufacturing baby carriages but eventually mainly produced bicycles
and cars.
With the rise of industry, the population doubled in
the last decades of the 19th century due to immigration from the area
around the city, but also from the Ruhr area, from East and West
Prussia, from Gdansk, Pomerania and Silesia. On April 1, 1881, the city
of Brandenburg separated from the Westhavelland district and from then
on formed its own urban district.
The infrastructure was
significantly expanded parallel to the industrial development around
1900, while at the same time several bicycle factories, a shipyard, an
iron foundry, factories for tin toys, textiles and furniture were
settled in Brandenburg. The first horse-drawn tram ran in 1897. The West
Havelland district railways opened three small railways in 1901/1912 to
open up the surrounding area. With the opening of the Brandenburg City
Railway from Rathenow to Belzig in 1904, Brandenburg became a railway
junction. The silo channel to bypass the city center was opened in 1910.
A steel and rolling mill was built here in 1913, while an old cloth and
silk weaving mill was closed.
At the beginning of the 20th
century, Brandenburg was shaped by the steel, metal, textile and toy
industries. The growing importance of the city was also due to the
stationing of the Fusilier Regiment "Prinz Heinrich von Prussia"
(Brandenburg) No. 35, Field Artillery Regiment "General Feldzeugmeister"
(1st Brandenburg) No. 3 and Cuirassier Regiment "Kaiser Nikolaus I. of
Russia” (Brandenburg) No. 6.
Shortly before the outbreak of the
First World War, the newly founded Brandenburgische Flugzeugwerke GmbH
opened its factory at what later became the Brandenburg-Briest airfield
to manufacture Etrich Taube aircraft. The company, which was merged into
Hansa-Brandenburg in 1914, had to give up aircraft construction after
the Second World War. The global economic crisis that broke out in 1929
also hit the city hard.
Due to the convenient location and the already established steel
production, Brandenburg was expanded in 1933 to become an increasingly
important location for aircraft and truck production. In the course of
the rearmament of the Wehrmacht, the aircraft manufacturer Arado set up
branches at the Briest airfield from 1934 and especially for seaplanes
in the district of Neuendorf. In 1935, the Opel plant in Brandenburg on
the Silokanal followed, producing Opel “Blitz” trucks for the Wehrmacht.
During the National Socialist period in 1933/34, one of the first
concentration camps was housed in the old prison in Brandenburg. The
Brandenburg-Görden prison was a prison and place of execution for
numerous resistance fighters until it was liberated by Soviet troops on
April 27, 1945. Between 1940 and 1945, 1,772 people were executed in
prison during the Nazi era. For this reason, it houses a documentation
center for the victims of the Nazi judiciary.
The special unit of
the army Baulehrkompanie z. b. V. 800 had its headquarters in
Brandenburg a. i.e. Havel. On June 1, 1940, the size of the association
reached such a level that it was renamed the Brandenburg Teaching
Regiment. b. V. 800 made sense. Only now, after numerous deployments,
did the term Brandenburger also become a synonym for German commandos.
In addition to this special unit, the 68th Infantry Regiment (as part of
the 23rd Infantry Division), the 59th Artillery Regiment, the 22nd Flak
Regiment and an engineer battalion were stationed here.
In
Brandenburg, on Anton-Saefkow-Allee, there is a state clinic for
psychiatry (formerly: "state mental asylum", then: "Brandenburg
Psychiatric State Institute Görden", later only briefly "state institute
Görden"). Its director at the time, Professor Hans Heinze, was one of
the main perpetrators of the various forms of sick-murders under
National Socialism. The clinic was directly involved in the T4
euthanasia campaign. Most of the murders were carried out in the killing
facility located directly in front of the historic old town, and some in
the successor facility in Bernburg. 9,772 patients were murdered in the
Brandenburg killing center. There was also systematic murder in the
children's department set up in the Görden state institution.
During the Second World War, air raids in 1944/1945 and ground fighting
as part of the Red Army's ring closure around Berlin in April 1945
caused considerable destruction in the urban area of Brandenburg.
From April 1944 to April 20, 1945, the 8th US Air Force carried out
seven air raids on Brandenburg. A total of more than 800 four-engine
Boeing B-17 "Flying Fortress" dropped more than 2000 tons of bombs on
the industrial plants, but increasingly also on the inner city of
Brandenburg. After the two attacks on March 31 and April 20, 1945 alone,
more than 1,650 people died. After air raids and ground fighting, 10,000
of the 23,800 homes before the war were destroyed or damaged, and 70% of
the industrial plants. Practically all larger industrial companies
(mainly steel processing) had served in armaments production during the
Second World War.
Brandenburg became part of the SBZ from 1945. In many places, the
Soviet Union dismantled industrial plants on a large scale and
transferred them from Germany to the Soviet Union as reparations. In
Brandenburg, among other things, the Opel plant was dismantled or
demolished. The barracks on Magdeburger Strasse, previously used by the
German military, were used by the Group of Soviet Armed Forces in
Germany until their final withdrawal in the 1990s. Here, in addition to
the barracks, there were, among other things, a house for the officers,
a school and a grocery store (магазин).
The 1950s were years of
new industrial beginnings. The construction of the rolling mill in
Kirchmöser from 1949 and the steel and rolling mill in Brandenburg from
1950 gave the city back its heavy industry. Steel, mechanical
engineering and construction industries as well as Deutsche Reichsbahn
companies in Kirchmöser became symbols of the city. In 1956 the VEB
Brandenburger children's clothing (BRAKI) was founded, which emerged
from the predecessor military effects factory Richter and Rohrlapper. At
the end of the 1970s, 850 people worked there, producing for both
Germany and abroad. The number of inhabitants increased continuously
until 1989.
In 1990, the SPD politician Helmut Schliesing was
elected mayor in the first free elections after the political change in
the GDR. After German reunification, the Treuhandanstalt took over the
privatization, downsizing or closure of many state-owned enterprises
(VEB) in Brandenburg. This was accompanied by a pronounced
deindustrialization. The number of inhabitants fell, the unemployment
rate rose far above the German average.
On May 25, 2009, the city
was awarded the title of “Place of Diversity” by the federal government.
In 2015, Brandenburg an der Havel was one of the venues for the Federal
Horticultural Show 2015.
The communities of Dom Brandenburg and Neuendorf were incorporated into Brandenburg in 1929.[27] The town of Wilhelmsdorf followed in 1937. In the GDR, the towns of Göttin, Klein Kreutz, Mötzow and Painke became districts of Brandenburg on July 1, 1950, before they became independent communities again just two years later, on July 25, 1952. On the same date, the municipality of Kirchmöser and the town of Plaue became local and urban districts. The town of Saaringen was incorporated into Klein Kreutz on January 1, 1957, which in turn was reintegrated into the town of Brandenburg an der Havel on December 6, 1993, along with Painke and Göttingen. On October 26, 2003, the villages of Gollwitz and Wust were incorporated into the city.
In the current urban area there are several locations that fell into
disrepair over the course of history for various reasons, were abandoned
or were taken over by the expanding urban space.
Such deserted
settlements are partly proven by sources, partly they are mentioned
uncertainly, such as the hamlet of Harlungate on the western slope of
the Marienberg.
In the case of some deserted villages, the
location of the village can be roughly localized, such as Luckenberg,
whose church, the Nikolaikirche basilica, still bears witness to the
fact that Luckenberg may be given market and town rights in the future,
which should lead to the founding of a town in the Middle Ages. The
Vorwerk Silo, on the other hand, has to be topographically determined
precisely. Other village locations can only be located vaguely, such as
Wendgräben on the Buckau, Derenthin near the Gränert, Görne in the area
of today's Görden district, Schmölln in the area of the old Plane
estuary, Blosendorp in the Neuendorf district, Steenow on the Mühlenfeld
between Brandenburg on the Havel and the district of Klein Kreutz, the
Krug Krakow in the course of the Old Army Road northeast of the Krakow
suburb.
Other locations such as the presumed Stutzdorf, which was
formerly regarded as a Slavic fishing district on the outskirts of the
new town, but which could be determined by more recent archaeological
excavations as the German settlement core, can hardly be precisely
defined due to complete overbuilding and survived at best as a street
name. The Deutsches Dorf road, which accompanies the south-eastern part
of the Brandenburg city wall of the Neustadt, now leads across the
settlement area of the old Stutzdorf. Archeology was able to
substantiate the legitimacy of the street name for the time being.
However, Reinhard E. Fischer assigns a Slavic origin to the name
Stutzdorf and translates it as "place where there are pike" (cf. the
Polish word for pike Szczupak or Russian Щука, Schchuka). The topography
of Stutzdorf near the banks of the Havel does not contradict Fischer's
interpretation. A similar fate befell the settlement of Parduin, which
later became the old town.
Other deserted settlements in the
immediate vicinity of the city of Brandenburg an der Havel are the
village of Beetz, which gave the Beetzsee its name and was located on
its western bank between Brielow and Radewege, Deutsch Briest on the
western bank of the Havel, Planow, Duster Reckahn, Borsdorf (Prützke
district). ), Ludekendorf (also district of Prützke),
Rokitz/Rotscherlinde. Another submerged village of Görne is suspected
southeast of today's location of Prützke, on the Görnberg above the
Görnsee of the same name. During the construction of the Reichsautobahn
in 1934, "late Slavic fragments, gray goods, remains of houses and herds
as well as 110 graves from the village cemetery" were found. Some
authors consider this village Görne to be identical with the already
mentioned Ludekendorf.
One reason for the difficulty in locating
many deserted settlements is that geographical information was not given
priority in the sources, which were often from the late Middle Ages.
These places were mostly mentioned in the context of economic matters.
Alternatively, officials from the respective localities could also be
called as witnesses in connection with the preparation of documents. The
fact that at the time of desertification, as a rule, only the places of
worship were solidly built, while all other buildings were made of
perishable material, makes exact localization more difficult, since for
financial reasons one generally does not search in a targeted manner
during archaeological surface excavations and excavation sections can
search for such findings. In these cases, archeology is more dependent
on findings that are made in the target area in advance of planned
construction, development or other measures.
The two cities of Brandenburg (old town and new town) already had
several thousand inhabitants in the Middle Ages. The population grew
only slowly, but fell again and again due to the numerous wars,
epidemics and famines. By the year 1600 it had risen to around 10,000,
but fell to just 3,000 by 1648 due to the effects of the Thirty Years'
War. It was only in 1715 that the pre-war level was reached again. With
the onset of industrialization in the 19th century, the city's
population grew very rapidly. In 1818, just 12,800 people lived in the
city, and in the 19th century significantly more people settled in the
small town. From then on, around 50,000 people lived here. With the
consequences of the Second World War, the city lost 18 percent of its
inhabitants, and thus around 15,000 people. The population dropped from
84,000 in 1939 to around 69,000 in December 1945. In 1952 the number of
people living in the city was the same as before the war.
By
1988, the population of the city of Brandenburg had reached its all-time
high of around 95,000. After 1989, however, the number of inhabitants
fell sharply again. Since the political change in the GDR in 1989, there
has been a regression in population development, because Wasserstadt
lost around 24 percent of its residents (over 22,000 people) by the end
of 2013 due to emigration and a decline in the birth rate. From 2014
this trend was reversed, the population stabilized at a good 71,000 and
even increased again.
The following overview shows the population
according to the respective territorial status. Up to 1830 these are
mostly estimates, after that they are census results (¹) or official
updates from the Central Statistical Office of the GDR (until 1990), the
State Office (1991-2000) or the Brandenburg State Office for Statistics
and Data Processing (2001-2006) and the Office for Statistics
Berlin-Brandenburg (from 2006). From 1871, the information refers to the
"local population", from 1925 to the resident population and since 1966
to the "population at the place of main residence". Before 1871, the
number of inhabitants was determined according to inconsistent survey
procedures.
Brandenburg an der Havel is located on an area of 228.8 square
kilometers in the west of the state of Brandenburg, about 70
kilometers from Berlin and is part of its agglomeration.
The
city is located on the Havel River, which is important for inland
shipping, between Potsdam and the confluence with the Elbe near
Havelberg. In the urban area, the Havel branches out into several
branches and canals that form some islands that characterize the
cityscape. There are also ten natural lakes, most of which are
flowed through by the Havel or connected to it. Only the Gördensee
and Bohnenländer See, located in the glacial
Bohnenland-Görden-Rinne, as well as the Heilige See have no natural
inflow and outflow to the Havel. These are drained through
artificial ditches, the Bohnenländer See over the Eisengraben from
the Butter Laake, the Gördensee over the Quenzgraben. The largest
lakes in the city are the Plauer See with an area of around 640
hectares and the Beetzsee, which can be seen on the map as the
northeastern tip of the city area. In the lakes there are several
islands such as Buhnenwerder between Plauer, Breitling and
Möserschem See. Buhnenwerder is also the name of an island in the
Beetzsee. The Riewendsee, northeast of the Beetzsee, is an exclave
of the city. Although it belongs to Brandenburg, it is completely
surrounded by other municipal or urban areas. Conversely, the narrow
area corridor from Beetzsee and Riewendsee separates the Beetzsee
municipality almost completely from the rest of the
Potsdam-Mittelmark district. The Havel, in turn, separates the
historic landscapes of Havelland in the north and Zauche in the
south. The city owns shares in both landscapes. Other natural rivers
besides the Havel are the Plane rivers, which have their source in
Fläming, and their tributaries Temnitz and Sandfurthgraben and the
Buckau and their tributaries Verlorenwasser. Plane and Buckau each
flow into the Breitlingsee. The river Emster, which flows into the
Havel between the districts of Wust and Gollwitz, was expanded and
widened like a canal in the 19th century. There are also some
canals, such as the Jakobsgraben, the Brandenburg City Canal and the
Silo Canal, which were created as waterways at different times.
The highest point in the urban area with over 70 meters is at
the southern end of the urban area south of the motorway. In the
city center, the Marienberg reaches a height of almost 68 meters. It
was the highest elevation up to the incorporation of painke in 1993
and belongs to an ice age chain of hills in the ice edge layer 1 c
of the Brandenburg phase of the Weichsel ice age. The 63 meter high
vineyard near Klein Kreutz, which was later used for viticulture,
was built in peripheral location 2. In the southeast of the urban
area, Brandenburg between Kirchmöser and Mahlenzien has a share in
the high plateau of the Karower Platte formed in the main ice-edge
location. On this, for example, lies the Mühlenberg, which, like the
Marienberg, was historically used as a Telegrafenberg.
The
soils are generally rather sandy and in some cases not very fertile.
Around 75 percent of the urban area is used for agricultural
purposes, swamp areas or bodies of water. The agricultural areas of
the city also include the forests of Gördenwald, Neustädter Heide
and Neu-Plauer Forst, which together with smaller forest areas make
up around 20 percent of the communal area. The dominant planting in
these areas is the monoculture of the pine, although lately more and
more people have moved away from them and switched to planting mixed
vegetation.
Brandenburg an der Havel is divided into eight districts, two of which are referred to as city or districts. The three medieval town centers today form the districts of Altstadt, Neustadt, to which the districts of Göttin and PAINKE belong since 1993, and the cathedral with Klein Kreutz and Saaringen since 1993 and Gollwitz and Wust since 2003. In the 20th century, three new districts were planned in the historic district of the old town. These were Görden in the 1920s, north from 1959 and finally the Hohenstücke slab construction area from 1972. In 1952 the independent town of Plaue and the municipality of Kirchmöser were incorporated, which are now part of the town or district. The Mahlenzien district has belonged to Kirchmöser since 1993. Overall, the city is divided into around 50 city and districts, localities and residential areas. In the north of the municipality of Beetzsee is the Brielower extension, to the west of this Butterlake and again to the north of Bohnenland.
The
independent city of Brandenburg an der Havel is almost completely
surrounded by the Potsdam-Mittelmark district. The Havelland
district also borders the urban area over a few kilometers in the
extreme northwest and northeast. The neighboring cities and
communities are clockwise: in the northwest the community Milower
Land in the Havelland district, in the north the city Havelsee and
the communities Beetzsee and Roskow in Potsdam-Mittelmark.
Beetzseeheide, Päwesin in Potsdam-Mittelmark and the Havelland town
of Nauen are located on the shores of the Beetzsee and Riewendsee
lakes, which are part of the city. The community of Groß Kreutz
borders Brandenburg in the east, Lehnin, Wollin and Wenzlow
monasteries to the south and Rosenau, Wusterwitz and Bensdorf to the
west. They are all in turn in the district of Potsdam-Mittelmark.
Environment and nature protection
Protected areas
In the
1990s, the lowlands of the Fiener Bruch and adjacent areas were
designated as an EU bird sanctuary Fiener Bruch as part of the
Natura 2000 network. In the extreme southwest, Brandenburg an der
Havel has a small share of this bird sanctuary.
The island of
Buhnenwerder in the Beetzsee is designated as the seagull island of
Buhnenwerder as a nature reserve. It was already declared a nature
reserve on April 1, 1930 by an ordinance of the district president.
This makes it the oldest nature reserve in the city of Brandenburg.
On the island there was a large breeding colony of black-headed
gulls, which was the aim of the protection. The Volksbund
Naturschutz had leased Buhnenwerder as early as 1929 and set up an
observation station. During the egg-laying period, the breeding
colony was monitored and protected from the clutches being looted.
Buhnenwerder was also the subject of scientific work on black-headed
gulls at an early stage. Young animals and migratory behavior were
documented.
During the Second World War, the clutches on the
island were massively looted and Buhnenwerder was used as a military
training area, which led to the breeding colony disappearing.
However, after the area was placed under protection again after the
end of the war, the birds were quickly reintroduced. However, stocks
have been declining since the late 1950s. Other species on the
island include common tern, reed warbler, reed bunting, bittern and
European pond turtle.
Landscape change
Since around 1180,
the Havel has been dammed by dams near the Brandenburg Cathedral
Island in order to operate water mills, south of the Mühlendamm
between Cathedral Island and Neustadt, to the north three dams in
the course of Krakauer Straße. Because of the low gradient of the
river, the Brandenburg mill dam caused the water level to rise by
more than a meter 64 km upstream in Spandau. As a result, wetlands
were created by human hands on the central Havel, while the high
medieval state development was characterized elsewhere by the
drainage of marshland.
In the north of the urban area, in the
old town forest, are the Gördensee and the Bohnenländer See, which
formed in a glacial channel, the Bohnenland-Görden-Rinne. The lakes
have no natural runoff. Since the creation of drainage ditches, the
iron ditch from Bohnenländer and the Quenzgraben from Gördensee,
both have lost significantly in volume and area, and the lakes are
affected by a pronounced and unnatural silting process. In the late
18th century, for example, the Gördensee was about twice as long
north-south and about 50 percent larger water area than at the
beginning of the 21st century. The lost bodies of water are covered
by boggy, swampy soils and an extensive belt of reeds. Due to the
ongoing siltation, both lakes are described as dying lakes.
The city of Brandenburg has a temperate climate. This is influenced from the east by the continental climate and from the west by the Atlantic maritime climate. The significant rainfall is distributed over the whole year. There are no pronounced dry months. The average annual rainfall for Havelsee is 539 mm. The driest month is February with a rainfall of 32 mm, while the most rainfall falls in June with an average of 64 mm. The annual average temperature is 9.1 ° C. The warmest month in comparison is July with an average of 18.4 ° C. In January, the coldest month of the year, the average temperature is −0.2 ° C.