Index

Once a year, during the Berlinale film festival, the world of the silver screen focuses its attention on Berlin. And the city’s inhabitants are used to global interest. After all, the people of Berlin have lived in a capital city since 1458. However, there is also a shady side to the city’s history: the rule of the National Socialists and the East German regime, which built a wall right through the heart of the city. Since German unification in 1990, Berlin has once again been the undivided capital city. The Museum Island, the Berlin Philharmonic and more than 50 theaters ensure the city is unique in terms of cultural life. The “academic capital” boasts 39 universities and institutes of higher education, while also being home to businesses such as Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, while ITB, the worlds leading travel trade show, accentuates the slogan “Berlin is worth seeing”.

Capital: Berlin
Population: 3,866,385
Surface area: 892 km2

The Federal Government and cabinet is made up of the Federal Chancellor and the Federal Ministers. While the Chancellor holds the power to issue directives, the ministers have departmental powers, meaning that they independently run their respective ministries in the framework of those directives. Moreover, the cabinet abides by the collegial principle, in disputes the Federal Government decides by majority. The affairs of state are managed by the Chancellor.

Germany is a federal state. Both the central federal government and the 16 federal states have independent areas of jurisdiction. The government in Berlin is responsible for foreign policy, European policy, defense, justice, employment, social affairs, tax and health. The federal states are responsible for internal security, schooling, tertiary education, administration and local government. Central government’s area of responsibility is mainly limited to legislation, in which the federal states are involved through their presence in the Bundesrat. It is the duty of the federal administration systems, on the other hand, to enforce not only the laws that apply in their own particular state, but those of central government as well.

The reasons for this task sharing lie in the past: The German nation state emerged in 1871 through the union of several independent states. This made the establishment of a larger central administration system superfluous. The three city states are a peculiarity among the 16 federal states. Their territory is limited in each case to the major cities of Berlin, Bremen/Bremerhaven and Hamburg, whereas the other larger states comprise a number of city and rural municipalities.

In 2021, company spending on research and development rose to 75.8 billion Euros. The automotive industry accounts for a large share of these investements.

Universities with an especially strong technical focus operate as Technical Universities (TU) or Technical Colleges (TH). They attach greater importance to basic research than do universities of applied science. The nine leading TUs have joined ranks to form the TU9 Initiative. They have an especially strong international focus and coordinate their numerous courses on offer outside Germany.

→ tu9.de