Berlin illustrates the shifting dialectic of center and periphery in European borderland history. Originating in the margraviate of Brandenburg, the city remained peripheral until its elevation under the Hohenzollerns as the capital of Prussia and, later, of the German Empire in the nineteenth century. Its formative identity was rooted in hybridity, situated within the Germania Slavica contact zone where Germanic and Slavic traditions intersected and intermingled. The settlement of Huguenot refugees in the seventeenth century further underscored Berlin’s role as a liminal and generative space of cultural integration. In the twentieth century, Berlin became the quintessential frontier of the Cold War: divided by the Wall, it embodied both ideological confrontation and limited cross-border exchange. Since reunification, Berlin has reasserted its role as the capital of a unified Germany while simultaneously functioning as a symbolic hinge between East and West, its geographic position rendering it one of the EU’s principal capitals located in immediate proximity to Eastern Europe.