Babelsberg

Babelsberg is the largest district of the Brandenburg capital Potsdam in Germany. The affluent neighbourhood named after a small hill on the Havel river is famous for Babelsberg Palace and Park, part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as for Babelsberg Studio, a historical centre of the German film industry and the first large-scale movie studio of the world.

History

A settlement on the small Nuthe creek was first mentioned in the 1375 Landbuch (domesday book) by Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg, who also ruled as Margrave of Brandenburg since 1373. Then called Neuendorf (New Village) after its former West Slavic name Nova Ves, it was shelled several times and was severely damaged during the Thirty Years' War.

In the mid 18th century a new village was founded by King Frederick II of Prussia and settled with Protestant Bohemian expellees, predominantly weavers who as descendants of the Unity of the Brethren had fled from the suppression in the lands of the Habsburg Monarchy under Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. During the Industrial Revolution it developed into a centre of textile manufacturing and, at the premises of Orenstein & Koppel, from 1899 on also of the railway production. For decades German Neuendorf and Bohemian Nowawes (Czech: Nová Ves) bordered on each other but remained separate municipalities until their official unification in 1907. Nowawes received town privileges in 1924.