page_title: Great Industrial Exposition of Berlin
section_title: The exhibition
hierarchical_section_title: Great Industrial Exposition of Berlin / The exhibition
caption_attribution_description: English: Berlin - industrial exhibition 1896, situation plan Deutsch: Berlin - Gewerbeausstellung 1896, Lageplan
context_page_description: The Great Industrial Exposition of Berlin 1896 was a large exposition that has also been dubbed "the impeded world fair".
  Under the official name of a Berlin Industrial Exposition - borrowing the name from earlier exhibitions - the Universal Exposition of Berlin took place between May 1 and October 15, 1896 in the Treptow borough of Berlin.
  The exposition featured one of the largest and longest Great refractors up-to that time, and it was preserved after the exposition and survived to the 21st century.
context_section_description: The construction work started in 1894 with the intention to create a show room for the German industry - Germany was at the height of technological advancements and Berlin was at the center of science, industry and services. When the area was completed it occupied over 900,000 square meters - larger than any other fair in the world before. The "New Lake" ("Neuer See") in the middle was created as an artificial water basin occupying 10,000 square meters (it was roughly situated where the central area of the Soviet War Memorial (Treptower Park) is now). It required its own electrical tramway route to get around on the large fair ground. The 3,780 exhibition companies had areas in 23 different topic groups. The largest building with 13 groups was the "Haupt-Industrie-Gebäude" (Main Industry Building) at one end of the New Lake while others were run in pavilions along the lake sides. The electrification of the area required a dedicated power plant on the fair ground - the electric illumination of the complete area was a sensation of its own at the time.
  The exhibition was marketed worldwide - although it was rainy on 120 of the 168 exhibition days there were seven million visitors coming to the fair ground.
caption: fairground map (showing a length of about 2 km with the river Spree at the top)
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