Stargard, New Brandenburg and many other places, and thus, turning the wilderness into cultivated land, they had an abundance of goods of every kind.62
It has been estimated that the Ascanians brought over 200,000 people to the Mark between 1134 and 1320 alone. It was at this time that the trade routes which had passed over the sheltered fortresses of Köpenick and Spandau shifted slightly to cross the Spree at Berlin. With this, the city was born.
The city of Berlin was founded sometime in the late twelfth century although there is no single reliable date. The question of ‘foundation’ is itself ambiguous as the city now contains the much older settlements of Spandau, Köpenick, Lützow (Charlottenburg) and Teltow. Neither did Berlin start as a single settlement but consisted of two separate entities called Berlin and Cölln, located on opposite banks of a narrow point on the river Spree.63 Years later the East Germans would use this to try to justify the division of the city by the Wall, claiming that Berlin had ‘always’ been split in two. In reality it was not unusual to have two settlements co-existing and many towns of the Mark, including Potsdam and Brandenburg, started in this way, as did many other great European cities – Paris was originally divided into three parts, with the left bank starting as a Roman settlement; Prague began as two settlements, joined in the twelfth century by the Judith Bridge (replaced in the fourteenth century by Charles IV’s magnificent bridge); and Buda and Pest were only united a century ago.64 In historical terms the two settlements at Berlin actually joined quite early.65 But the most important factor in the prosperity of the twin town was its control of a vital crossing point on the Spree before it emptied into the river Havel, at a place where the flat and traversable Barnim and Teltow plateaux lay only five kilometres from one another.66 The Slavs would have found the position too exposed and vulnerable but by the twelfth century the region was more secure and the very lakes and marshes which had once protected the Slavic fortresses were now seen as a hindrance to the movement of goods. From its earliest years Berlin grew strong on trade.
Much has been written over the centuries to portray Berlin as a city which was somehow predestined to play a vital role first in Prussian and then in German politics. This was not the case. For centuries Berlin and Cölln remained small trading towns of minimal importance compared with dazzling contemporaries like Augsburg or Nuremberg. Berlin lay too far north to be on the great east – west route which ran along the Harz foreland and through Thuringia, and acted only as an optional stop for merchants travelling from Magdeburg and Brandenburg on their way to Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, Leubus and Kiev. The first significant change in Berlin’s fortunes came only with the increase of trade in the Baltic.67
The Germans had been trading in the Baltic before the year 1000 but it was their eastward expansion in the twelfth century which led to a dramatic increase in activity in the entire region. In 1241 an alliance was formed between Lübeck and Hamburg to protect the overland route from the Baltic to the North Sea, an agreement which formed the nucleus of the great Hanseatic League.68 By 1370 seventy-seven cities, including all significant centres in northern Europe, were members, including Cologne and Brandenburg, Riga and Braunschweig, and trade extended all the way from London to Russia. Berlin joined much later and it was first mentioned only as a nominal member in 1359. Goods were moved in wooden ships known as ‘cogs’, which often measured over sixty feet in length; by 1368 around 700 such ships were sailing out of Lübeck harbour each year. The growth of the Baltic markets also promoted north – south trade and new routes now threaded their way over the Alps to Nuremberg and from there to Berlin over Barnim and Teltow and on to the north. Berlin’s most important link was with Hamburg, with which it traded over the Spree – Havel – Elbe connection, becoming part of the route to the Oder and to the Ostsee. Important Berlin traders like Thilo von Hameln dealt in the high-quality ‘Berlin rye’ and local oak, which was shipped to Hamburg in cargo boats, while herring and dried cod moved back to Berlin from the Ostsee; iron was brought in from Thuringia; fine cloth came in from Flanders; saffron, pepper, cinnamon, ginger, figs, oil and other spices came in from the Mediterranean and the Orient; wine arrived from northern Italy, Spain, Greece and the Rhine and Mosel areas; and long-distance trade flourished in everything from rice to weapons. Local products were also important. Berlin beer became famous in Hamburg and Lübeck, and trade in honey, wax, feathers, leather, skins, wool, pitch, pewter and brass continued to grow.
By the mid thirteenth century special trade agreements criss-crossed Europe and in March 1252 King William of Holland opened up a favourable trading partnership between the Netherlands and Berlin so that many local merchants went to Ghent, Utrecht and Flemish cities, as well as to Hamburg, Lübeck, Lüneburg and Stettin. In that year Berlin citizens were granted the Landesherrlichen Zollstätten, the freedom to control tolls, while the Stendal guild gave exemption to the residents of Berlin, Brandenburg and Prenzlau from duty normally paid for most goods, including precious Flemish cloth. The new Brandenburg laws defended the rights of citizens to hold a market and ensured their personal freedom. By the end of the thirteenth century Berlin had joined the ranks of that extraordinary institution of medieval Europe – the independent town.
‘Stadt Luft macht frei’, went the old German expression: ‘city air makes one free’. By the thirteenth century small self-governing walled communities were flourishing throughout Europe, separated from the oppressive world of feudalism which dominated life outside. When you entered the gates of the town you passed from the immediate jurisdiction of the prince or king or bishop who controlled the territory into an independent community; you might be a serf or a knight but if you resided in the town for a year and a day you automatically became a free citizen. Townspeople had their own markets and councils, and in the centre one found not a palace but a market square and a town hall. The powerful medieval guilds controlled everything from prices to the quality of goods, from the number of employees in a given business to the accepted working hours, and inspectors regularly combed towns like Berlin ensuring that craftsmen did not advertise their products or undercut fellow producers or deal in foreign goods except during one of the great trade fairs which were held throughout Europe. The proud seals of shoemakers and goldsmiths and tailors also concealed harsh regulations and petty restrictions like the Beeskow Law which dictated that only Germans could be members of a guild, and there were fines for disobeying guild restrictions, fines for wearing incorrect clothing, fines for selling goods on the incorrect day and fines for usury.
The rules were tolerated because they were made and enforced by the townspeople themselves; kings and bishops allowed these freedoms because they benefited from the wealth generated by the towns.69 With prosperity came the creation of their own dynasties and although Berlin had nothing to compare with the great patrician families of Europe like the Fuggers or the Medici some, like the Blankenfeldes, the Rathenows and the Rykes (Reiches), became extremely powerful in their own right.70 Many founded new districts for themselves: the Reiche family created Rosenfelde (now Friedrichsfelde), Steglitz is named after the knight who first lived there, and many streets and surrounding villages still bear the names of their founding families. Increased patrician control was summed up in a document written on 10 April 1288 by Nikolaus von Lietzen, Johann von Blankenfelde and other leaders, in which Berlin cloth cutters were granted the right to create a guild as long as they obeyed the strict laws enforced by the dignitaries of the town – Berlin offered citizens protection and the chance to make money in return for obedience.71 The fortunate citizens of Berlin were indeed ‘free’ when compared to the poor peasants forced to eke out an existence on the land outside its walls.
The increase in wealth brought a flurry of building to the town, with the first important permanent structures being churches. The ruins of two early thirteenth-century Romanesque basilicas still lie under the foundations of the St Nikolai and St Petri churches along with more than ninety early Christian graves, but the earliest church to survive was St Nikolai. Started in 1230, with walls of simple round grey fieldstones, it was rebuilt as a late-Gothic hall church. The church of St Petri was founded around 1250; the Marienkirche and the nearby Neuen Markt were started around 1270 and rebuilt after the great fire of 1380. The religious orders were central to the creation of the city: the Franciscan monks were established in the city in 1250, the Dominican