Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/613

Rh than 181 4-, the close of the great conflict with Napoleon I. The Exchange, finished in 1803, at a cost of 180,000 sterling : the Synagogue, a proud building in Oriental style, finished in 1866, at a cost of 107,000; and the Rath- haus, finished in 1869, at a cost of 500,000 sterling, in cluding the land on which it stands, are the most recent of its great buildings. The New National Gallery is nearly completed, and the Imperial Bank is being rebuilt. It is probable that no city in the world can show so large a number of fine structures so closely clustered together. Up to a very recent date Berlin was a walled city. Those of its nineteen gates which still remain have only an historical or architectural interest. The principal of these is the Brandenburg Gate, an imitation of the Propy- liea at Athens. It is 201 feet broad and nearly 65 feet high. It is supported by twelve Doric columns, each 44 feet in height, and surmounted by a car of victory, which, taken by Napoleon to Paris in 1807, was brought back by the Prussians in 1814. It has recently been enlarged by two lateral colonnades, each supported by 16 columns.

The streets, about 520 in number, are, with the excep- ion of the districts in the most ancient part of the city, long, strait, and wide, lined with high houses, for the old typical Berlin house, with its ground floor and first floor, is rapidly disappearing. The Unter den Linden is 3287 feet long by 1 60 broad. The new boulevard, the Koniggratz- erstrasse, is longer still, though not so wide. The Fried- richstrasse and the Oranienstrasse exceed 2 English miles in length. The city has about 60 squares. It has 25 theatres and 14 large halls for regular entertainments. It has an aquarium, zoological garden, and a floral institution, al*. with park, flower, and palm houses. It has several hospi tals, of w r hich the largest is the Charite, with accommo dation for 1500 patients. The Bethany, Elizabeth, and Lazarus hospitals are attached to establishments of Pro testant deaconesses. The St Hedwig s hospital is under the care of Roman Catholic sisters. The Augusta hospital, under the immediate patronage and control of the empress, is in the hands of lady nurses, who nurse the sick without assuming the garb and character of a religious sisterhood. The people s parks are the Huniboldt s Hain, the Friedrich s Hain, the Hasenheide, and, above all, the Thiergarten, a wood covering 820 Prussian acres of ground, and reaching up to the Brandenburg Gate.

As has been seen, the population has trebled itself within the last 34 years, naturally not so much by the excess of births over deaths, as by an unbroken current of immigra tion. In 1873 the births were 35,954, the deaths 26,427, leaving an excess of 8527 births. But the increase in the population of the city in the same year was 50,184, leaving 41,657 as the increase through the influx from without. It will thus be seen at a glance that only a minority of the population are native Berliners. In the census of 1867 it was found that, taking the population above 20 years of age, only one-third were natives of the city. The immi gration is almost exclusively from the Prussian provinces, and among these principally from Brandenburg and from the eastern and north-eastern provinces. In 1871 it was round that out of every 10,000 inhabitants, 9725 were Prus sian subjects, 165 were from other German states, 55 from foreign lands, and 47 were of a nationality not ascertained. The foreign element almost vanishes, and the German element is represented principally by the north, so that in blood and manners Berlin remains essentially a north eastern German city, i.e., a city in which German, Wend, and Polish blood flows commingled in the veins of the citizens. In past times Berlin received a strong infusion of foreign blood, the influence of which is perceptible to the present day in its intellectual and social life. Such names as Savigny, Lancizolle, De la Croix, De le Coq, Du Bois-Reymond, tell of the French refugees who found a home here in the cold north wheii expelled from their own land. Daniel, in his Geography, vol. iv. p. 155, says that there was a time when every tenth man iu the city was a Frenchman. Flemish and Bohemian elements, to say no- thiug of the banished Salzburgers, were introduced in a similar manner. Add to these the 36,013 Jews now resi dent in the city, and the picture of the commingled races which make up its population is pretty complete. The 826,341 inhabitants of the city were found at the census of 1871 to be living iu 14,478 dwelling-houses, and to consist of 178,159 households. These numbers show that the luxury of a single house for a single family is rare, and this holds good also of the wealthier classes of the people. These numbers fall far short of the present (187oj number of houses and of households, as will be seen from the fact that the value of the household property of the city in 1874 exceeded that of 1871 by 18,000,000 sterling, of which the greatest part falls to newly-built houses or houses enlarged. In 1871 the average number of persons comprised in a household was found to be 4 6, the number of households dwelling in a house 12 3, and the number of persons dwelling in a house 57*1. These numbers throw light on the moral and social life of the city, and compared with the past, show the change in the domestic habits of the people. In 1540 the average number of inmates in a house was 6, in 1740 it was 17, in 1867 it had risen to 32, and in 1871 to 57. Between the years 1864 and 1871 the one-storied houses of the city decreased 8 per cent., the two and three-storied houses 4^- per cent., while the number of four-storied houses increased 11 per cent., and the five-storied and higher houses 50 per cent. With the increase of high houses, the underground cellar dwellings, which form so striking a feature in the house architecture of the city, increase iii a like proportion, and these and the attics are the dwellings of the poor. In 1867 there were 14,292 such cellar dwellings, in 1871 they had increased to 19,208. Taking the average of 1867 4 inmates to a cellar dwelling we get 76,832 persons living under ground. In 1871 there were 4565 dwellings which contained no room which could be heated. This class of dwelling had doubled between the two census years of 1867 and 1871. Taking 3 inmates (the ascer tained average of 1867) to such a dwelling, we have 13,695 persons who pass the winter in unheated dwellings, in a climate where the cold not unfrequently sinks below the zero of Fahrenheit. Of the remaining dwellings of the city, 95,423 had only one room which could be heated. This number, at 4 persons to a dwelling, give us an insight into the domestic life of 381,692 of the inhabitants of the city; that is, with the 13,695 persons mentioned above, of nearly half the population. Such dwellings engender no feeling of home, and the habits of the people are in a certain sense nomadic. In 1872, 74,568 changes of dwell ing took place, involving an expense at a very moderate calculation of 158,900. In the poorer townships there were 70 removals to every 100 dwellings ! The rate of mortality is high. In 1873, a favourable year, it was 28 to every 1000 of the population. Taking the deaths as a whole, 58 per cent, were of children under 10 years of age. The rate of mortality is on the increase. Professor Virchow, in a report to the municipal authorities, stated that, dividing the last 15 years into periods of 5 years each, the general mortality in each of the three periods was as 5, 7, 9. The mortality of children under 1 year in the same three periods was as 5, 7, 1 1 ; that is, it had more than doubled. In the year 1872, out of 27,800 deaths, 11,136 were of children under 1 year. The city is well supplied with water by works con structed by an English company, which have now becoma