The region formerly known as Coln/Berlin (Köln/Berlin) was settled in the 12th century after a people of Slavic origin abandoned the region. The name Berlin is a Slavic work for "swampy area", but the Slavic word sounds like the German word for bear. Hence the the Germanic people adopted the Bear emblem for their misnamed city, claiming it a German place. By the 16th century Electors were sent to claim rights over the relatively free Berliners residing in the area known as Brandenburg. This began the Hohenzollern dynasty lasting until the fall of Germany after WWI.
"The clearest case of the development of absolutism and the enhanced powers of the ruler in an increasingly bureaucratised state -- and the most significant case for the subsequent course of German history -- was that of Brandenburg-Prussia. Starting from rather unpromising beginnings beginnings -- with its capital, Berlin, located in infertile soil of what was known as the 'sand-box of Europe' -- this state rose within a few generations to become one of the major European powers. The Hohenzollern dynasty originated in Swabia, and have by a series of haphazard processes and skilful marriage diplomacy over the centuries acquired a diverse set of territories. Its main centre by the 17th c. was Brandenburg, which gave the rulers the title of 'Elector' of the Holy Roman Empire. The Hohenzollerns also ruled over the old colonial territory of the Teutonic Knights in East Prussia, outside the Holy Roman Empire... (these) Slavic subjects neither spoke German, nor shared German Christian and Roman cultural traditions."
After the 30 year war, and the plague, between 1640 and 1786 the Hohenzollern dynasty (acquiring the title of King in Prussia because of Prussian land acquired outside of the Holy Roman Empire) built up land and a military almost uninterupted until the French Revolution. Frederich Wilhelm I despised the "courtly manner" full of poets, jesters and musicians, the boroque made so popular in the 17th century court of his father. Frederich I, The Soldier King instead built a huge army, literally an army of "giant men." This was a further joke because during this peacetime 80% of the monarchy revenue was spent on a military without enemies. Though Brandenburg was still culturally backwards, it's 1740 invasion of Silesia (an Austrian province of Poland) and later Pommerania (Poland) connected some of the disjointed territories as German (at least in rule) and placed backwoods German militarily in competition with Austria and the great Hapsburg Empire.
Brandenburg-Prussia included wealthy Rheinish area business trades in the west, and impovished non-industrial cities in the east, it was becomming more like a composite of states rather than a nation, at times not even linked geographically. The people of this state included "Calvinist rulers recongnising an established Lutheran church, while there were Catholic populations in the west" and other minorities including exiled French Huguenots, Polish, Lithuanian and other Slavic languages predominated in the east. Jewish people persecuted in territories to the East and South found refuge in the relatively open laws of Berlin. Jewish and other ethnic groups acquired full civil rights in Prussia by the 18th c making Berlin an anomoly for European refuge for a variety of persecuted religous groups.
The son of the Soldier King, Friedrick II, or Friedrick the Great prefered pomp to military. He lead Berlin into the era of the Enlightenment which would build a world class opera, a cathedral for the cities Catholics, the Gendarmenmarkt and the Brandenburg Gate. Mendelssohn and Nickolai, the architect Shinkel arose from this era placing Berlin in a cultural and intellectual position of power with Paris and other grand European cities. The military became so weak during the rule of Fredrick the Great, soon after his predesessor Friedrich Wilhelm III took reign, Napolean and his French army walked through Berlins new Brandenburg Gate claiming it as their own on their way to Russia in 1806.
The psychological damage of the Napolean invasion on defenseless Berliners cannot be understated. The newly enlightened city cracked down with a climate of intense oppression toward foreigners and minorities, fermenting patriotism and fenatisicsm for a physically fit self reliant citizenship, especially youth. Fredrich Wilhelm III also reigned over the beginning of the steam engine, suburban sprawl, countless factories, including the Borsig, and tenement housing. The industrial revolution had begun. With it bringing revolutionary questions of economic freedom and the posibility of democratic rule, even Marxism, by a growing population tied to mass communication. By the 1840's the accession of Friedrich Wilhelm IV was completely ill-prepared to bring Berlin into the modern world it needed to be.
The 1848 Revolutions of Berlin were a complete failure. Restrictions on freedom of the press were issued, manditory military duty and identity cards were required, as well as where one was allowed to live was all further controlled by the government than ever before. Perminent questions of identity and permenance not only for Berliners but issues of what is it to be German in a modern world, and what is Germany. At this time, Prussia was held together by a ruling monarchy, while southern germanic states were ruled by the Austrian Empire (w/non German territories in the East) and a bulk of independent, democratic city-states throughout the south and southwest. Since the monarchy held control, these questions would be put into the hands of the monarchy appointed Otto von Bismark who claimed that Germany will not be united by revolutions, but by blood and iron. Bismark was not popular until he accidently united Germany through military conquest in 1871 becoming the first Chancellor of the Second German Empire. Prussia was no longer necessary. Until then, the 1860's brought relatively good economic conditions under heavy conservative restrictions. Tens of thousands who didn't like this system emmigrated between 1848 and 1870.