Bernau bei Berlin is a German town in the Barnim district. The town is located about northeast of Berlin.
History
Archaeological excavations of Mesolithic prove the fact that this area has been inhabited since about 8800 BC. The city was first mentioned in 1232. The true reasons of its founding are not known. According to a legend Albert I of Brandenburg permitted the founding of the city in 1140 because of the good beer which was offered to him. It is true that beer has been brewed with the water of the riverPanke. Therefore, it was forbidden by law to pollute this river with waste and excrement before the days the brewing took place. Bernau had its boom years before the Thirty Years' War. Large parts of the defensive wall with town gate and wet moats are relics of that time. These helped Bernau defend itself successfully against attackers, e.g. the Hussites in 1432. Following the plague and war Bernau was poor and bleak. Frederick I of Prussia settled 25 Huguenotic families in 1699. In 1842 a railway line was opened. One of the first electrical suburban railway lines in the world began operation in 1924. This line of the Berlin S-Bahn connected Bernau with the Stettiner Bahnhof in Berlin. The ADGB Trade Union School, designed by Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer, opened in 1930. It was inscribed as part of the World Heritage Site the Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau in July 2017. The Waldsiedlung is a district of the city where the political leaders of the GDR lived isolated from the people.
Demography
Main sights
Museums
The museum of local history has two locations. One is the town gate with the former prison Hungerturm. It is one of formerly three town gates, that were part of the defensive wall. Today armours and instruments of torture of the Middle Ages are shown there. Common furniture of several epochs and utensils of the executioner are exhibited in the Henkerhaus to demonstrate the life in the small town. In 2005 the Wolf Kahlen Museum opened. Media art from 40 years is shown. In 2005 Annelie Grund created the monument for the victims of witch-hunt.
Buildings
The church St. Marien dominates the skyline of the town. The nave was built in the 15th century. Large parts of the defensive walls and wet moats of the Middle Ages are preserved. The defensive wall is supplemented by several lookout houses, the Pulverturm and a town gate. Until the 1960s the city centre, enclosed by the defensive wall, consisted of small old buildings with timber framed construction. Most of them were in a bad state because no funds were available in the GDR to renovate these buildings. It was decided to change Bernau into an exemplary city of socialist architecture. Nearly all the old houses were torn down in the 1960s and 1970s and new so-called Plattenbauten were built. The new houses had a maximum of four storeys to fit in with the architecture to the historic structure of the city. The former ADGB school is located in the northeast of the town. It is the largest building in the Bauhaus style besides the Bauhaus itself.
Konrad Wolf, film director, President of the Academy of Arts, was the first city commander of Bernau after the Second World War at the age of 19, honorary citizen since 1975