Pre-1871 Prior to 1871, Germany was not a unified
nation-state, and had no capital city. The medieval German
Holy Roman Empire used to have
Aachen as its preferred seat of government during
Charlemagne's reign, and until 1531 it was the place where 31 Holy Roman Emperors were crowned Kings of the Germans. The coronation later moved to
Frankfurt. However, after Charlemagne, none of the subsequent Holy Roman Emperors moved to Aachen or Frankfurt, instead retaining their own original constituent kingdom or principality as base or moving into temporary Royal palaces dotted around the confederate realm known as
Kaiserpfalz. The last imperial ruling house (the
Habsburgs) had
Vienna as its permanent seat of government. After the
Congress of Vienna created the formal
German Confederation in 1815, a
Federal Assembly convened at the
Free City of Frankfurt, representing not the people of the individual
German Lands but their sovereigns. Subsequently, Frankfurt briefly became the official German capital during the short-lived
Revolutions of 1848 in the German states.
1871–1945 It was only during the 1871
unification of Germany that the newly unified
German Reich was first assigned an official capital. Since Berlin was the capital of
Prussia, the leading state of the new Reich, it became the capital of Germany as well. Berlin had been the capital of Prussia and its predecessor,
Brandenburg (an der Havel), since 1518. Berlin remained the capital of the German Reich until 1945. However, for a period of a few months following the
First World War, the national assembly met in
Weimar because
civil war was ravaging Berlin. After the capture of Berlin in 1945,
Flensburg briefly
served as capital. Germany was then
occupied by the Allies as the outcome of
World War II, and Berlin ceased to be the capital of a sovereign German state.
1945–1990 until 3 October 1990:• western Germany (blue)• East Germany (red)• Berlin (yellow) In 1949, with sovereignty regained the country split up into Germany (western) and
East Germany. Berlin was also divided, into
West Berlin and
East Berlin. Originally,
Frankfurt was to be the provisional capital of western Germany. However, the authorities of state intended to make Berlin the capital if Germany were ever reunified. They feared that since Frankfurt was a major city in its own right, it would ultimately be accepted as a permanent capital and weaken western German support for reunification. For this reason, the capital was located in the smaller university city of
Bonn as a more obviously provisional solution. Another factor was that Bonn is close to
Cologne, the hometown of Germany's first
Federal Chancellor,
Konrad Adenauer. East Germany claimed all of Berlin as its capital, although the city as a whole was still legally occupied territory and would remain so for 41 years. In reality, the Soviet occupation sector of Berlin, East Berlin served as the East German capital. The United States, United Kingdom, and France did not recognize East Berlin as the capital of East Germany even after establishing diplomatic relations with East Germany
in 1973 and 1974, though they set up embassies in East Berlin.
Since 1990 In 1990, with the
reunification of Germany, Berlin was also reunified and became the capital of the enlarged Germany. There was some debate, however, on whether the
seat of government should move to Berlin. Many believed that
Bonn should remain the seat of government – a situation analogous to that of the
Netherlands, where
Amsterdam is the capital but
The Hague is the seat of government. In 1991, after an
emotional debate, the Bundestag voted to move the seat of government to Berlin by 1999. However, six ministries remained in Bonn, each with a second office in Berlin. The German constitution was amended in 2006 to explicitly state that Berlin is the capital of Germany. == See also ==