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The First World War ends
The Social Democratic politician Philipp Scheidemann proclaims the “German Republic” from a window of the Reichstag on 9 November 1918.
On December 30, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and Wilhelm Pieck found the German Communist Party (KPD) in Berlin in the grand hall of the Prussian House of Representatives. -
The Uprise of a new Government
The Spartacist uprising of the KPD and Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) is crushed in Berlin in January, and Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg are arrested and murdered in the Tiergarten by Freikorps troops on January 15. -
New Berlin city assembly is elected
A new Berlin city assembly is elected on February 29 – for the first time not according to the three-class electoral system. The USPD, which had split off from the SPD in 1917, receives 47 seats, while the SPD receives 46, giving the two parties 93 seats out of a total of 144. In another first, 25 women are represented in the city parliament. Gustav Böß becomes lord mayor. -
Kapp Putch collapses
Parts of the army attempt to stage a coup in response to orders that they disband, a requirement of the Treaty of Versailles. They declare the overthrow of the elected government and proclaim the right-wing politician Wolfgang Kapp the new chancellor. The Kapp Putsch collapses on March 17 as a result of a general strike organized jointly by the SPD and KPD. -
The Greater Berlin Act
On October 1, the Greater Berlin Act incorporates 7 towns, 59 rural communities, and 27 estate districts into Berlin and divides the city into 20 boroughs. The city’s population is now 3.8 million, and the municipal area is now thirteen times its previous size, growing from 6,500 hectares to 878 square kilometers. Now the continent’s largest city, Berlin becomes a legendary cultural metropolis in the 1920s. -
First Highway
After eight years of construction, the world’s first highway is officially opened in Grunewald as the “automobile traffic and test route (AVUS) -
Soviet Union founded
The German foreign minister Walter Rathenau is murdered by right-wing soldiers in front of his house on June 24. The Treaty of Rapallo he had negotiated in April initiated cooperation between the German Reich and the state that was to become the Soviet Union, officially founded on 30 December 1922. -
Inflation
Inflation reaches its peak. A kilo of rye bread costs 3.6 million marks in September, and a streetcar ticket 150,000 marks on November 22. -
Housing and population rises
The city councilor for construction Martin Wagner and the architect Bruno Taut start building the “Hufeisen” (horseshoe) housing estate in Britz, conceiving of it as a new synthesis of public housing construction and “a home of one’s own.” The estate was finished in 1931 and is considered a first, outstanding example of the “new living” concept in Berlin. Berlin has a population of 4,024,165 -
Tv Introduced
Television is introduced to the public for the first time at the fifth “Grosse Deutsche Funkausstellung.” -
Bloody May
Berlin is hit by the Great Depression. The city sees many businesses go bankrupt, while 450,000 people are unemployed in February.
More than 30 people are killed and several hundred injured in the “bloody May” of 1929.
In the elections to the city assembly held on November 17, the National Socialist party receives 5.8 percent of the vote and, for the first time, has 13 representatives with seats in the city’s parliament. -
Elections
Reichstag elections on November 6, it still ends up as the strongest party in parliament, just as it did in July. It receives 25.9 percent of the vote in Berlin.
