More than four-hundred years ago, Joachim III Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg, decided that a shipping canal was needed to connect the city of Berlin with the Baltic Sea. There was a lot of international commerce then, but roads were scarce and traffic was slow.

So what do you do if you have a river going north (the Havel), and not too far from it and parallel to it another river (the Oder) with its seaport of Stettin? Especially if half the distance is already covered by that little river, the Finow, with its access to the plenty of lumber and clay, exactly what you need to build a big city?