Middle Ages (
replica;
Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte,
Berlin) The name of the city is a combination of two words
braniti – to protect/defend and
bor – forest/wood. Brenna, which had been a fort of the
West Slavic tribe
Stodoranie, was conquered in 929 after the
Battle of Lenzen by the German King
Henry the Fowler of
Saxony. It was at this time first mentioned in documents as
Brennaburg. By the death of King Henry all the tribes between the Middle Elbe and Middle Oder paid tribute to the German King. At the Magdeburg Assembly of Princes in 948 the Bishoprics of Brandenburg and Havelburg were established. The Holy Roman Emperor
Otto I took control of these new sees. In
Slavic revolt of 983 there was a major Slav uprising involving numerous tribes and until the middle of the 12th century the area east of the Elbe remained under their control. During this period the area was ruled by Slavic chiefs of the
Hevelli tribe. The last of them,
Pribislav, died in 1150. Following Pribislav's death his widow Petrissa enabled
Albert I of Brandenburg to take over Brenna. Albert was driven out of Brenna by
Jaksa of Kopanica and returned there after a long siege only in 1157 by agreement and provide it with a joint German-Slav garrison. Albert now styled himself
Margrave of Brandenburg. By 1160 systematic settlement of the Elbe-Havel-Spree basin by nobility, burghers, and peasants from the Schwabengau area (Harz), the
Netherlands, the
Rhineland, and
Westphalia was in progress. In 1165 the foundation stone for a cathedral was laid on the cathedral island of Brandenburg. It was consecrated five years later in the presence of Albert the Bear and his sons. The town was restricted to the western bank of the Havel until 1196, when it was extended to the eastern side. The parts on either side of the river were regarded as three towns (Old Town, New Town and
Brandenburg cathedral district) for centuries. In 1314–1315 the Old and New Towns joined the
Hanseatic League. In the
Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) the towns suffered plundering and destruction; this caused
Potsdam to become the new capital, and the court left the town of Brandenburg. In 1715, Old Town and New Town were merged to form a single town. In 1928, the Brandenburg cathedral district was added.
Modern history In the late 19th century Brandenburg an der Havel became a very important industrial center in the German Empire. Steel industries settled there, and several bicycle brands such as
Brennabor,
Corona and
Excelsior were manufactured in the city. A toy industry was also established. A giant industrial complex belonging to
Deutsche Reichsbahn (German Imperial Railways) was located in Brandenburg-Kirchmöser between the two world wars and under the former
GDR. In 1933/34, a
concentration camp, one of the first in
Nazi Germany, was located on
Neuendorfer Straße in Brandenburg Old Town. After closing this inner city concentration camp, the Nazis used the
Brandenburg-Görden Prison, located in the suburb of Görden. Later the old jail became the
Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre where the Nazis murdered people with mental diseases, including children. This programme later came to be known as "
Action T4" because of the Berlin address, Tiergartenstraße 4, the headquarters of this planned and well-organized
forced euthanasia organisation. Brandenburg an der Havel was one of the first locations in Nazi Germany where the
Nazis experimented with murdering their victims
by gas. The lessons here were later applied for mass murders in
Auschwitz and other
extermination camps. In 1934, the Arado
Aircraft Company (
Arado Flugzeugwerke), which originated in
Warnemünde, built a
satellite factory in Brandenburg that began producing planes in 1935. The factory was expanded over the next five years, and produced trainers and other aircraft for the
Luftwaffe during World War II. The existence of this factory was one of the reasons Brandenburg was heavily bombed in later stages of the war; by 1945, 70% of the city was destroyed.
Friedrich Fromm, a German officer involved in the
20 July plot to assassinate
Adolf Hitler, was executed here in March 1945 for his part in the plot, even though Fromm betrayed those conspirators he knew and ordered their execution. On 25 July 1952
Plaue and
Kirchmöser were incorporated in the city of Brandenburg an der Havel. After
German reunification the city's population declined from around 100,000 in 1989 to roughly 75,000 in 2005 through emigration. The migration was mainly by young people. == Demography ==