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Mitte
Borough of Berlin
Coat of arms
Location of Mitte in Berlin
Mitte Show map of Germany Mitte Show map of Berlin
Coordinates: 52°31′N 13°22′E / 52.517°N 13.367°E / 52.517; 13.367Coordinates: 52°31′N 13°22′E / 52.517°N 13.367°E / 52.517; 13.367
Country	Germany
State	Berlin
City	Berlin
Government
• Mayor	Stephan von Dassel (Greens)
Area
• Total	39.47 km2 (15.24 sq mi)
Population (2017-06-30)
• Total	374,000
• Density	9,500/km2 (25,000/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Vehicle registration	B
Website	Official homepage

Mitte is the first and most central borough of Berlin. The borough consists of six sub-entities: Mitte proper, Gesundbrunnen, Hansaviertel, Moabit, Tiergarten and Wedding.

It is one of the two boroughs (beside Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg) which comprises former West and East Berlin districts. Mitte encompasses Berlin's historic core and includes some of the most important tourist sites of Berlin like Museum Island, the TV tower, Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Gate, Unter den Linden, Potsdamer Platz, Alexanderplatz, the Reichstag and Berlin Hauptbahnhof, most of which were in former East Berlin.

When Berliners refer to Mitte they usually mean the smaller locality rather than the larger borough.

Geography

Berlin Cathedral and Television Tower

Mitte (German for "middle", "centre") is located in the central part of Berlin along the Spree River. It borders on Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf in the west, Reinickendorf in the north, Pankow in the east, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in the southeast, and Tempelhof-Schöneberg in the southwest.

In the middle of the Spree lies Museum Island (Museumsinsel) with its museums and Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom). The central square in Mitte is Alexanderplatz with the prominent Fernsehturm (TV tower), Germany's highest building, and the large railway station with connections to many subway (U-Bahn), tramway (Straßenbahn), city trains (S-Bahn) and buses.

There are some important streets which connect Mitte with the other boroughs, e.g. the boulevard Unter den Linden which connects Alexanderplatz to the west with Brandenburg Gate and runs further as Straße des 17. Juni to the Victory Column and the centre of former West Berlin in Charlottenburg, or Karl-Marx-Allee from Alexanderplatz to Friedrichshain and the eastern suburbs.

History

Checkpoint Charlie,1963

The former Mitte district had been established by the 1920 Greater Berlin Act and comprised large parts of the historic city around Alt-Berlin and Cölln. Brandenburg Gate was the western exit at the Berlin city boundary until 1861.

Between 1961 and 1990, Mitte was the central part of East Berlin, however at the same time it was surrounded by the Berlin Wall at its north, south and west. There were some border control points, the most famous of which was Checkpoint Charlie between Kreuzberg and Mitte, which was operated by the United States Army and its allies and was open to foreigners and diplomats.

Two other checkpoints were at Heinrich-Heine-Straße/Prinzenstraße east of Checkpoint Charlie, open to citizens of West Germany and West Berlin and on Invalidenstraße in the north on the border with the West Berlin Tiergarten district (the present-day Moabit locality).

Regierungsviertel (Government District)

The government district is located in the locality of Tiergarten around the Reichstag Building. Most institutions of the German government have their seat at the Regierungsviertel

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  Bundestag, the German parliament in the old Reichstag Building
  


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  Bellevue Palace, seat of the Federal President
  


• German Chancellery


• Offices of the Abgeordneten, members of the parliament, in the Paul-Löbe-Haus and the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus
  


• Federal Ministry of the Interior

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  Reichstag Building
  

  
  

  
  


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  Bellevue Palace
  

  
  

  
  


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  German Chancellery
  

  
  

  
  


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  Paul-Löbe-Haus
  

  
  

  
  


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  Swiss Embassy
  

  
  

  
  

Botschaftsviertel (Embassy Quarter)

Many embassies and the Federal Ministry of Defence in the historic embassy quarter in the south of the Tiergarten Park.

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  Italian Embassy
  

  
  

  
  


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  Japanese Embassy
  

  
  

  
  


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  Spanish Embassy
  

  
  

  
  


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  Indian Embassy
  

  
  

  
  


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  Embassy of the United Arab Emirates
  

  
  

  
  

Tiergarten Park

Großer Tiergarten is the name of the biggest urban park in Mitte, located in the same-named locality. The Tiergarten Park was established as a hunting ground in the 16th century by the Prussian kings. Today its enclosed by densely built-up areas by Hansaviertel and Moabit in the north, the Government District in the east and the City West and the Embassy Quarter in the southwest.

Many cultural monuments and memorials are located in the Tiergarten Park, like the Siegessäule, the Soviet War Memorial and a historic rose garden. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the biggest victim group of the Nazi-Diktatorship, is located on the east side of the park, near the Brandenburg Gate and the place where once Hitler's New Reich Chancellery was.

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  Siegessäule
  

  
  

  
  


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  View from the Siegessäule to Brandenburg Gate
  

  
  

  
  


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  Rose Garden
  

  
  

  
  


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  Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism
  

  
  

  
  


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  Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
  

  
  

  
  

Kulturforum

Philharmonie Berlin

The Kulturforum was built in the 1950s and 1960s at the edge of West Berlin, after most of the once unified city's cultural assets had been lost behind the Berlin Wall. The Kulturforum is characterized by its innovative modernist architecture; several buildings are distinguished by the organic designs of Hans Scharoun, and the Neue Nationalgalerie was designed by Mies van der Rohe.

Among the cultural institutions housed in and around the Kulturforum are:

• Neue Nationalgalerie


• Gemäldegalerie


• Museum of Decorative Arts


• Musical Instrument Museum


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  Kupferstichkabinett (Print room)


• Art Library


• Berliner Philharmonie


• Chamber Music Hall


• Berlin State Library


• Ibero-American Institute


• Wissenschaftszentrum


• St. Matthäus-Kirche

In arts and literature

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  Berlin Alexanderplatz, a 1929 novel by Alfred Döblin
  


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  Mitte 1, a 2013 novel by Albrecht Behmel
  


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  Berlin Mitte, Norman Ohler
  


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  Unter diesem Einfluss, Henning Kober
  

Subdivision

Subdivisions of Mitte

The present-day borough of Mitte consists of six localities:

Demographics

As of 2010^[update], the district had a population of 322,919, of whom 144.000 (44.5%) had a migration background. In the former West Berlin areas of Wedding, Gesundbrunnen and Moabit, foreigners and Germans of foreign origin compose nearly 70% of the population, while in Mitte proper the share of migrants is relatively low. The immigrant community is quite diverse, however, Turks, Africans^[who?], Eastern Europeans^[who?] and East Asians^[who?] form the largest groups.^[1]

Politics

Sitzverteilung in der BVV

At the 2016 elections for the parliament of the borough (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung) the following parties were elected:

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  SPD 14


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  Alliance '90/The Greens 14


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  The Left 10


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  CDU 7


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  Alternative for Germany 5


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  Free Democratic Party 3


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  Pirate Party 2

Twin towns

• 
  Higashiōsaka, Japan since 1959


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  Holon, Israel since 1970


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  Bottrop, Germany since 1983


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  Schwalm-Eder-Kreis since 1992


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  Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan since 1994


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  Tsuwano, Japan since 1995


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  Tourcoing, France since 1995


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  VI. kerület (Terézváros), Budapest, Hungary since 2005


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  Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow, Russia since 2006

View over Mitte from Berlin Cathedral

See also

• Berlin Mitte (electoral district)

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mitte.

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  Official homepage (in German)
  


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  Official homepage of Berlin (in English)