Demographics of Berlin
Introduction  Urbanized BerlinIn December 2019, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,769,495 registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 4,227 inhabitants per km2.Berlin is Germany's largest city and the most populous city proper in the European Union.In December 2015, there were 621,075 registered residents of foreign nationality, originating from approximately 190 different countries.
History People running in 1958Population pyramid of Berlin in 1946The city responded to the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. Thanks to its role as the capital of rising Prussia, the population grew steadily: it surpassed the 100,000 mark in 1747 and the one-million mark in 1877.Growth accelerated in the 19th century with the industrialisation after the Napoleonic Wars and the Prussian Reforms. Only about 40% of Berliners in the last quarter of the 19th century were natives of the city. Nevertheless, Berlin's population remained ethnically and even regionally very homogeneous: In 1895, over 98% of inhabitants spoke German as their native language. Among the rest were 12,000 Polish speakers, 700 Russophones and about 2,000 other Slavs. In 1900, most of the 1.9 million Berliners originated from the eastern provinces of Prussia. A fifth hailed from the surrounding province of Brandenburg, 9% from the provinces of West and East Prussia, 7% from Silesia, 6% from Pomerania, 5% from Posen, 4% from Saxony. Only about 3 to 4% had come to the city from other German regions and only about 1,5% from abroad, mostly from Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire.Between 1913 and 1917, the population fell by about 16% down to 1.744 million people, mostly due to men serving in World War I, but recovered somewhat after the armistice, reaching 1.928 million people in December 1919.In December 1917, during the latter part of the war, there were 58,152 military personnel and 4,017 prisoners-of-war in the city.The industrialisation had brought about a rapid expansion of the suburbs, many of them developed explicitly for workers of specific factories, e.g. Siemensstadt and Borsigwalde. The Greater Berlin Act of 1920 (''Groß-Berlin-Gesetz'') boosted the population by incorporating many hitherto autonomous towns and cities, e.g. Spandau and Köpenick at the margins of the modern metropolis, but also Charlottenburg, nowadays almost in the heart of the city. The city approximately reached its modern extent, growing from  to . This expansion made Berlin the most populous city proper of Continental Europe in the interwar period (though not the largest agglomeration) and the third-largest in the world behind London and New York.The four-million mark was surpassed in the 1920s, and in 1942, the officially registered population reached its maximum of 4.48 million, although because of the war conditions, this was an overestimation. More likely estimates based on food rationing data show lower numbers of 3.95 million people in February 1942 and only 3.11 million people in February 1944 (incl. 177,000 foreigners) when aerial attacks approached its most intense phase.In the context of the more general huge population movements in immediately post-war Germany, a significant part of Berlin's pre-war population permanently resettled to other parts of Germany or abroad. A 1946 census counted 436,600 Berliners in the western occupation zones and 306,823 in the Soviet zone. In 1950, this number had risen to 518,218 in what had now become the Federal Republic. Since the end of World War II, the city population has been fluctuating between 3 and 3.5 million, with a low of less than 3.1 million from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s. Between 1950 and 1961, so between the establishment of the Soviet-backed German Democratic Republic and the construction of the Berlin Wall, most of the losses were incurred by East Berlin, while West Berlin showed modest growth of 2.3%.Moving to West Berlin was attractive for those from West Germany who wished to avoid the draft from 1957 to 1990, because the special administrative status of the city meant that the draft could not be enforced there.Asylum policies in West Berlin triggered waves of immigration during the 1960s and 1970s. Berlin is home to about 250,000 Turks (especially in Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Wedding, a locality in the borough of Mitte), the largest Turkish community outside Turkey.During the 1990s, the ''Aussiedlergesetze'' enabled immigration to Germany of residents of the former Soviet Union. Ethnic Germans from countries from the former Soviet Union make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking community. Immigration continues from a number of Western countries, particularly by young people from Germany and other parts of Europe.The number of Arabic speakers in Berlin could be higher than 150,000.There are at least 40,000 Berliners with Syrian citizenship, third only behind Turkish and Polish citizens. The 2015 refugee crisis made Berlin Europe's capital of Arab culture.Berlin is among the cities in Germany that have received the biggest amount of refugees after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. As of November 2022, estimated 85,000 Ukrainian refugees were registered in Berlin, making Berlin the most popular destination of Ukrainian refugees in Germany.=== Statistics ===Chart showing Berlin's population fluctuations since 1880.The spike in population in 1920 is a result of the Greater Berlin Act.Children in a fair in front of the Brandenburg Gate Year Population 1250  1,200 1307  7,000 1400  8,500 1576  12,000 1600  9,000 1631  8,100 1648  6,000 1654  6,197 1685  17,500 1690  21,500 1698  22,400 1700  29,000 1709  55,000 1712  61,000 1750  113,289 1775  136,137 1800  172,132 1825  219,968 December 3, 1840 ¹  322,626 December 3, 1846 ¹  408,500 December 3, 1849 ¹  418,733 Year Population December 3, 1852 ¹  426,600 December 3, 1855 ¹  442,500 December 3, 1858 ¹  463,600 December 3, 1861 ¹  524,900 December 3, 1864 ¹  632,700 December 3, 1867 ¹  702,400 December 1, 1871 ¹  826,341 December 1, 1875 ¹  969,050 December 1, 1880 ¹  1,122,330 December 1, 1885 ¹  1,315,287 December 1, 1890 ¹  1,578,794 December 2, 1895 ¹  1,678,924 December 1, 1900 ¹  1,888,848 December 1, 1905 ¹  2,042,402 December 1, 1910 ¹  2,071,257 December 1, 1916 ¹  1,712,679 Year Population December 5, 1917 ¹  1,681,916 October 8, 1919 ¹  1,902,509 June 16, 1925 ¹  4,024,286 June 16, 1933 ¹  4,242,501 May 17, 1939 ¹  4,338,756 August 12, 1945 ¹  2,807,405 October 29, 1946 ¹  3,170,832 December 31, 1950  3,336,026 December 31, 1960  3,274,016 December 31, 1970  3,208,719 December 31, 1980  3,048,759 December 31, 1990  3,433,695 December 31, 2000  3,382,169 September 30, 2005  3,394,000 December 31, 2010  3,460,725 December 31, 2013  3,517,424 December 31, 2016  3,670,622
City size Population density of the Berlin-Brandenburg metro region in 2015===Municipality===On 31 December 2015, the city-state of Berlin had a population of 3,520,031 registered inhabitants in an area of . Berlin in 2009 was estimated to have another 100,000 to 250,000 non-registered inhabitants. The city's population density was 4,048 inhabitants per km2.Berlin is the most populous city proper in the EU.===Urban area===The urban area of Berlin comprised about 4.1 million people in 2014 in an area of , making it the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union. The urban agglomeration of the metropolis was home to about 4.5 million in an area of .===Metropolitan area===As of 2014, the functional urban area was home to about 5 million people in an area of approximately . The entire Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has a population of more than 6 million in an area of .
Population In 2014, the city state Berlin had 37,368 live births (+6.6%), a record number since 1991.The number of deaths was 32,314.Almost 2 million households were counted in the city. 54 percent of them were single-person households. More than 337,000 families with children under the age of 18 lived in Berlin. In 2014 the German capital registered a migration surplus of approximately 40,000 people.=== Boroughs ===Map of Berlin's twelve boroughs and their 96 localitiesPeople in KreuzbergBorough  Population 2010  Area in km2 Largest Non-German ethnic groups Mitte  332,100  39.47 Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Asians, Western Europeans Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg  268,831  20.16 Turks, Arabs, Africans, Kurds, Chinese Pankow  368,956  103.01 Poles, Italians, French, Americans, Vietnamese, British Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf  320,014  64.72 Turks, Africans, Russians, Arabs Spandau  225,420  91.91 Turks, Africans, Russians, Arabs Steglitz-Zehlendorf  293,989 102.50 Poles, Turks, Croats, Serbs, Koreans Tempelhof-Schöneberg  335,060  53.09 Turks, Croats, Serbs, Koreans, Africans Neukölln  310,283  44.93 Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Russians, Africans, Poles, Albanians Treptow-Köpenick  241,335  168.42 Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Vietnamese Marzahn-Hellersdorf  248,264  61.74Russians, Vietnamese, Eastern Europeans Lichtenberg  259,881  52.29 Vietnamese, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Albanians Reinickendorf  240,454  89.46 Turks, Poles, Serbs, Croats, Arabs, Italians Total Berlin  3,450,889  891.82 Turks, Arabs, Russians, Vietnamese, Poles, Africans=== Nationalities ===Sons and daughters of U.S. embassy staff in 2013Native population by district (2020)As of December 2013 there were approximately 1,000,000 people (about 30 percent of the population) with an immigrant background living in Berlin, with significant differences in their distribution. The immigrant community is diverse, with Middle Easterners (including Turkish and Kurdish people and Arabs), smaller numbers of East Asians, Sub-Saharan Africans and other European immigrants, Eastern Europeans forming the largest groups. Since the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union there has been a Romani influx. About 70,000 Afro-Germans live in Berlin.There are more than 25 non-indigenous communities with a population of at least 10,000 people, including Turkish, Kurdish, Polish, Russian, Croatian, Palestinian, Serbian, Italian, Bosnian, Vietnamese, American, Romanian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Austrian, Ghanaian, Ukrainian, French, British, Spanish, Israeli, Thai, Iranian, Egyptian and Syrian communities. '''Residents by Citizenship''' (31.12.2019) Country Population Total registered residents  3,769,495   2,992,150   98,940   56,573  39,813  31,573  30,824   26,640   24,264 22,694 20,109   20,023   19,072  16,251   15,045  14,625  13,930   13,410  13,301   13,293 12,291   11,886 Other Middle East and Asia 88,241 Other Europe  80,807Africa 36,414 Other Americas  27,491Oceania and Antarctica 5,651 Stateless or Unclear  24,184 Ethnic groups in 2011 % of population '''European:''' '''82.0''' Ethnic German 71.0 Polish 3.0 Former Soviet Union (Russians and Russian-Germans) 3.0 Former Yugoslavia 2.0 European Other (primarily Southern Europeans) 3.0 '''Middle Eastern:''' '''9.0''' Turkish 5.5 Arab 2.0 Iranian 0.5 other 2.0 '''Asian:''' '''3.0''' Southeast Asian 1.5 East Asian 1.0 South Asian 0.5 '''Afro-German''' or Black African '''2.0''' '''Mixed''' or unspecified background '''2.0''' '''Other groups''' (primarily the Americas) '''2.0''' Total population 3,496,082
Employment In 2015, the total labour force in Berlin was 1.85 million. The unemployment rate reached a 24-year low in November 2015 and stood at 10.0% . From 2012 to 2015 Berlin, as a German state, had the highest annual employment growth rate. Around 130,000 jobs were added in this period.
Languages Goethe Institut, German language academy, in Berlin Mitte;GermanGerman is the official and predominant spoken language in Berlin. It is a West Germanic language that derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. German is one of 24 languages of the European Union, and one of the three working languages of the European Commission. ;Berlin dialectBerlinerisch or Berlinisch is a variety of High German. It is spoken in Berlin and the surrounding metropolitan area. It originates from a Brandenburgish variant. The regiolect is now seen more as a sociolect, largely through increased immigration and trends among the educated population to speak standard German in everyday life. ;International languagesThe most commonly spoken foreign languages in Berlin are English, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Polish, Kurdish, Vietnamese, Serbian, Croatian, Greek, and other Asian languages.Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, Serbian and Croatian are heard more often in the western part, due to the large Middle Eastern and former-Yugoslavian communities; Vietnamese, Russian and Polish have more native speakers in eastern Berlin. English, Vietnamese, Russian, and Polish have more native speakers in eastern Berlin.
Religions More than 60% of Berlin residents have no registered religious affiliation. The largest denomination in 2010 was the Protestant regional church body – the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (EKBO) – a United church. EKBO is a member of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and Union Evangelischer Kirchen (UEK), and accounts for 18.7% of the local population. The Roman Catholic Church has 9.1% of residents registered as its members. About 2.7% of the population identify with other Christian denominations (mostly Eastern Orthodox, but also various Protestants).An estimated 300,000–420,000 Muslims reside in Berlin, making up about 8–11 percent of the population. 0.9% of Berliners belong to religions other than Christianity or Islam. Of the estimated population of 30,000–45,000 Jewish residents, approximately 12,000 are registered members of religious organizations.
See also *List of metropolitan areas by population*Largest urban areas of the European Union*List of people from Berlin
References
External links *  Berlin-Brandenburg Statistical Office (Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg)* Schwenk, Herbert, ''Berliner Stadtentwicklung von A bis Z: Kleines Handbuch zum Werden und Wachsen der deutschen Hauptstadt, 2nd edition''. Berlin: Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein, 1998.