Ich Bin Kein Berliner

Less than 47% of people who live in Berlin were born in the German capital. The vast majority of Berliners were born outside of the city. You can view where all these newcomers to Berlin originally came from in a new interactive map from the German broadcaster RBB.

The Cities and Countries Where Berliners Come From is a dot map showing the places around the world where Berliners were born. Each dot on the map represents 10,000 people, so obviously it only shows locations where more than 10,000 Berliners were born. If you click on a location on the map the graph below the map updates to show the percentage of Berliners who were born in that town or city.

Brandenberg is the top region where Berliners come from. As it is the federal state surrounding Berlin that isn't too surprising. The German city which exports the most of its citizens to Berlin is Hamburg. 22,779 people born in Hamburg are now living in Berlin. Poland and Turkey (in that order) are the top two countries of birth (outside of Germany) where people in Berlin were born. Poland is a special case - over a third of Berliners born in Poland were born before 1946 - so many of them were actually born as Germans.


Two years ago the Berliner Morgenpost also mapped out where people in Berlin were originally born. Their interactive map, Zugezogenen Atlas, also allows you to explore where these newcomers to Berlin were originally from.

The map shows locations around the world where at least 100 Berliners were born, based on the population register of June 2015 (the RBB map is more up-to-date and is based on the 2017 data). Hamburg, Dresen and Leipzieg are the top three German cities where non-native Berliners were born according to the newspaper's map. When you rank cities around the world by the number of people now living in Berlin, then the top foreign city is Szczecin (Poland), followed by Wroclaw (Poland) and Moscow. Paris is ranked 82nd, London is 96th and New York is 123rd.