When did Germany become a unified country, and what cultural challenges did this unification bring?

For most of the two millennia that central Europe has been inhabited by German-speaking peoples, the area called Germany was divided into hundreds of states, many quite small, including duchies, principalities, free cities, and ecclesiastical states. Not even the Romans united Germany under one government; they managed to occupy only its southern and western portions. At the beginning of the ninth century, Charlemagne established an empire, but within a generation its existence was more symbolic than real.
Medieval Germany was marked by division. As France and England began their centuries-long evolution into united nation-states, Germany was racked by a ceaseless series of wars among local rulers. The Habsburg Dynasty’s long monopoly of the crown of the Holy Roman Empire provided only the semblance of German unity. Within the empire, German princes warred against one another as before. The Protestant Reformation deprived Germany of even its religious unity, leaving its population Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist. These religious divisions gave military strife an added ferocity in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), during which Germany was ravaged to a degree not seen again until World War II.
The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 left Germany divided into hundreds of states. During the next two centuries, the two largest of these states–Prussia and Austria–jockeyed for dominance. The smaller states sought to retain their independence by allying themselves with one, then the other, depending on local conditions. From the mid-1790s until Prussia, Austria, and Russia defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 and drove him out of Germany, much of the country was occupied by French troops. Napoleon’s officials abolished numerous small states, and, as a result, in 1815, after the Congress of Vienna, Germany consisted of about forty states.
During the next half-century, pressures for German unification grew. Scholars, bureaucrats, students, journalists, and businessmen agitated for a united Germany that would bring with it uniform laws and a single currency and that would replace the benighted absolutism of petty German states with democracy. The revolutions of 1848 seemed at first likely to realize this dream of unity and freedom, but the monarch who was offered the crown of a united Germany, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, rejected it.

For much of its varied and interesting history Germany has rarely been one, united country. Instead, over its long past, what is now known as Germany was once states, principalities, kingdoms and more. With its often divided presence, many people tried to unite the country, including Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire. In the 9th century, Charlemagne was successful in ruling over a large territory that included modern day Germany, yet it was not strong enough to last and within a single generation, the power of the territory was merely symbolic.
The 14th century proved disastrous not only for a fragmented Germany but for all of Europe. Wars and the Black Plague wiped out between 30-60% of the continent’s population. In the 15th century, the Habsburgs were successful in securing a hold on the Holy Roman Emperor which would last into the 19th century. Unfortunately the empire’s various territories were constantly at odds with each other thus preventing the unity that had occurred in France and England.
The Reformation, an incredibly important period in European history, was born in Germany when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses to the town square. Luther hoped to highlight corruption in the Catholic Church and as a result, his desire for change sparked the Reformation that spread quickly across the continent. The next two centuries witnessed the Scientific Revolution and many great thinkers emerged from Germany like Nicholas Copernicus and Johannes Kepler.
The 19th century was a time of change for Germany as the desire for unification grew. Tired of several states, each with their own ruler and even currency, much of the population sought nationhood. The March Revolution erupted in 1848 but was ultimately unsuccessful as King Friedrich Wilhelm VI rejected a united nation because it would threaten his power. However, unification was inevitable and occurred more than two decades later in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian war. This unification was ushered in by Otto von Bismarck who helped to maintain peace in Europe until 1914.
The First World War was a massive conflict from 1914 to 1918 between the Allies (Britain, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary). It resulted in more than 9 million deaths and an incredible amount of destruction.

During the next few centuries, however, the great expense of the wars to maintain the empire against its enemies, chiefly other German princes and the wealthy and powerful papacy and its allies, depleted Germany’s wealth and slowed its development. Unlike France or England, where a central royal power was slowly established over regional princes, Germany remained divided into a multitude of smaller entities often warring with one another or in combinations against the emperors. None of the local princes, or any of the emperors, were strong enough to control Germany for a sustained period.
Germany’s so-called particularism, that is, the existence within it of many states of various sizes and kinds, such as principalities, electorates, ecclesiastical territories, and free cities, became characteristic by the early Middle Ages and persisted until 1871, when the country was finally united. This disunity was exacerbated by the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, which ended Germany’s religious unity by converting many Germans to Lutheranism and Calvinism. For several centuries, adherents to these two varieties of Protestantism viewed each other with as much hostility and suspicion as they did Roman Catholics. For their part, Catholics frequently resorted to force to defend themselves against Protestants or to convert them. As a result, Germans were divided not only by territory but also by religion.
The terrible destruction of the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-48, a war partially religious in nature, reduced German particularism, as did the reforms enacted during the age of enlightened absolutism (1648-1789) and later the growth of nationalism and industrialism in the nineteenth century. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna stipulated that the several hundred states existing in Germany before the French Revolution be replaced with thirty-eight states, some of them quite small. In subsequent decades, the two largest of these states, Austria and Prussia, vied for primacy in a Germany that was gradually unifying under a variety of social and economic pressures. The politician responsible for German unification was Otto von Bismarck, whose brilliant diplomacy and ruthless practice of statecraft secured Prussian hegemony in a united Germany in 1871. The new state, proclaimed the German Empire, did not include Austria and its extensive empire of many non-German territories and peoples.
Imperial Germany prospered. Its economy grew rapidly, and by the turn of the century it rivaled Britain’s in size.

When the historic constellation allowing unification appeared, swift and decisive action on the part of Chancellor Kohl and the unwavering, strong support given by the United States government for the early completion of the unification process were key elements in surmounting the last hurdles during the final phase of the Two-Plus-Four Talks.
The unification treaty, consisting of more than 1,000 pages, was approved by a large majority in the Bundestag and the Volkskammer on September 20, 1990. After this last procedural step, nothing stood in the way of formal unification. At midnight on October 3, the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany. Unification celebrations were held all over Germany, especially in Berlin, where leading political figures from West and East joined the joyful crowds who filled the streets between the Reichstag building and Alexanderplatz to watch a fireworks display. Germans celebrated unity without a hint of nationalistic pathos, but with dignity and in an atmosphere reminiscent of a country fair. Yet the world realized that an historic epoch had come to a peaceful end.
The German economy–the fifth-largest in the world in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms and Europe’s largest–is a leading exporter of machinery, vehicles, chemicals, and household equipment and benefits from a highly skilled labor force. Like its Western European neighbors, Germany faces significant demographic challenges to sustained long-term growth. Low fertility rates and declining net immigration are increasing pressure on the country’s social welfare system and have compelled the government to undertake structural reforms. The modernization and integration of the eastern German economy–where unemployment can exceed 20% in some municipalities–continues to be a costly long-term process, with total transfers from west to east amounting to roughly $3 trillion so far.
GDP contracted by nearly 5% in 2009, which was the steepest dropoff in output since World War II. The turnaround has been swift: Germany’s export-dependent economy is expected to grow by 3.5% in 2010 and a further 2% in 2011, with exports to emerging markets playing an increasingly important role. The German labor market also showed a strong performance in 2010, with the unemployment rate dropping to 7.5%, its lowest level in 17 years.

Germany has one of the world’s highest levels of education, technological development, and economic productivity. Since the end of World War II, the number of youths entering universities has more than tripled, and the trade and technical schools of the Federal Republic of Germany (F.R.G.) are among the world’s best. Germany is a broadly middle class society. A generous social welfare system provides for universal medical care, unemployment compensation, and other social needs. Millions of Germans travel abroad each year.
With unification on October 3, 1990, Germany began the major task of bringing the standard of living of Germans in the former German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.) up to that of western Germany. This has been a lengthy and difficult process due to the relative inefficiency of industrial enterprises in the former G.D.R., difficulties in resolving property ownership in eastern Germany, and the inadequate infrastructure and environmental damage that resulted from years of mismanagement under communist rule.
Economic uncertainty in eastern Germany is often cited as one factor contributing to extremist violence, primarily from the political right. Confusion about the causes of the current hardships and a need to place blame has found expression in harassment and violence by some Germans directed toward foreigners, particularly non-Europeans. The vast majority of Germans condemn such violence.
Two of Germany’s most famous writers, Goethe and Schiller, identified the central aspect of most of Germany’s history with their poetic lament, “Germany? But where is it? I cannot find that country.” Until 1871, there was no “Germany.” Instead, Europe’s German-speaking territories were divided into several hundred kingdoms, principalities, duchies, bishoprics, fiefdoms and independent cities and towns.
Finding the answer to “the German question”–what form of statehood for the German speaking lands would arise, and which form could provide central Europe with peace and stability–has defined most of German history. This history of many independent polities has found continuity in the F.R.G.’s federal structure. It is also the basis for the decentralized nature of German political, economic, and cultural life that lasts to this day.
The Holy Roman Empire
Between 962 and the beginning of the 19th Century, the German territories were loosely organized into the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

When the balloting took place in March 1990 the SED, now renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), suffered a crushing defeat. The eastern counterpart of Kohl’s CDU, which had pledged a speedy reunification of Germany, emerged as the largest political party in East Germany’s first democratically elected People’s Chamber. A new East German government headed by Lothar de Maizière, a long-time member of the eastern Christian Democratic Union, and backed initially by a broad coalition, including the eastern counterparts of the Social Democrats and Free Democrats, began negotiations for a treaty of unification. A surging tide of refugees from East to West Germany that threatened to cripple East Germany added urgency to those negotiations. In July that tide was somewhat stemmed by a monetary union of the two Germanys that gave East Germans the hard currency of the Federal Republic.
The final barrier to reunification fell in July 1990 when Kohl prevailed upon Gorbachev to drop his objections to a unified Germany within the NATO alliance in return for sizable (West) German financial aid to the Soviet Union. A unification treaty was ratified by the Bundestag and the People’s Chamber in September and went into effect on October 3, 1990. The German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic as five additional Länder, and the two parts of divided Berlin became one Land. (The five new Länder were Brandenburg, Mecklenburg–West Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia.)
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In December 1990 the first all-German free election since the Nazi period conferred an expanded majority on Kohl’s coalition. After 45 years of division, Germany was once again united, and the following year Kohl helped negotiate the Treaty on European Union, which established the European Union (EU) and paved the way for the introduction of the euro, the EU’s single currency, by the end of the decade.
The achievement of national unification was soon shadowed by a series of difficulties, some due to structural problems in the European economy, others to the costs and consequences of unification itself. Like most of the rest of Europe, Germany in the 1990s confronted increased global competition, the increasing costs of its elaborate social welfare system, and stubborn unemployment, especially in its traditional industrial sector.

Sandwiched between the stronger powers (empires) of France, Russia or the Austro-Hungarian conglomerate, Germany became a sort of jetty that dispersed the waves of desire of its neighbors by providing a complicated group of territories whose rulers were often at war or in allegiance with each other. All of this changed, and was bound to change the face of Europe dramatically, with the rise to power of Otto von Bismarck.
When Germany united, through Bismarck’s masterful abilities, some great timing and luck, it immediately proved too strong for Denmark, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, France, and eventually Russia. Only Great Britain could compete and contain the new industrial and military behemoth. Germany’s ability to produce, organize and analyze was beyond comparison with other major countries then, and is still so today. This has caused a plethora of problems for Germany-and her neighbors. It caused them then as it causes them now. Germany is, and has always been, the question of Europe. It is still so today.
After a few embellishments, or half-truths (lies), Bismarck was able to unite the peoples who shared a common language-German-under a banner that would one day at different points terrorize, amaze and astound the rest of the globe.
Germany will continue to do so, though one hopes that their darkest days of the Third Reich are behind them. Many in Europe are not so sure, though it’s hard to determine if it’s politics being played or authentic fear. The quicker the rest of Europe (and the world) can resign themselves to (or rejoice) the fact that a reunified Germany is a world player, the better off it will be.
Southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland would be a formidable economic union
But how unified is Germany? Are there still many obstacles to overcome before they can truly take their place upon the Pantheon of Nations as their robust economy demands?
From east to west in Germany, the differences are stark and clear. Certainly those Germans residing near the border with Poland can’t be very similar to those Germans abutted against France. And they are not. But they are both more German than the Bavarians, those strange, independent and wonderfully quirky Bavarians, who queerly and surely seem to share few of the qualities of their more northern kindred.

Following Napoleon’s defeat, the 1814-1815 Congress of Vienna replaced the Holy Roman Empire with the German Confederation, made up of 38 independent states. A loose confederation, this construct had no common citizenship, legal system, or administrative or executive organs. It did, however, provide for a Federal Diet that met in Frankfurt–a Congress of deputies of the constituent states who would meet to discuss issues affecting the Confederation as a whole.
The Path to Unification: The Customs Union and the 1848 Revolutions
Prussia led a group of 18 German states that formed the German Customs Union in 1834, and the Prussian Thaler eventually became the common currency used in this region. The Customs Union greatly enhanced economic efficiency, and paved the way for Germany to become a single economic unit during the 19th Century’s period of rapid industrialization. Austria chose to remain outside the German Customs Union, preferring instead to form its own customs union with the Hapsburg territories–a further step down the path of a unified Germany that did not include Austria.
France’s 1848 February Revolution that overthrew King Louis Phillipe sparked a series of popular uprisings throughout the German states. Panicking local leaders provided several political, social, and economic concessions to the demonstrators, including agreeing to a national assembly that would discuss the constitutional form of a united Germany, individual rights, and economic order. The assembly rapidly devolved into competing factions; meanwhile, the conservative leaders of the German states reconstituted their power. When the assembly finally determined that there should be a united, federal Germany (excluding Austria) with universal male suffrage, organized as a constitutional monarchy under an Emperor–and offered that emperor title to the King of Prussia–there was no longer any interest or political reason (least of all in absolutist, powerful Prussia) for the leaders to listen. The Prussian monarch rejected the assembly’s offer, and the assembly was forcefully disbanded without achieving any of the stated goals of the 1848 revolutionaries.
Nevertheless, the 1848 Revolutions did leave a lasting legacy. The factions of the ill-fated national assembly went on to develop into political parties. Certain economic and social reforms, such as the final abolition of feudal property structures, remained. The idea of German unity was firmly established.

The king, like the other rulers of Germany’s kingdoms, opposed German unity because he saw it as a threat to his power.
Despite the opposition of conservative forces, German unification came just over two decades later, in 1871, when Germany was unified and transformed into an empire under Emperor Wilhelm I, king of Prussia. Unification was not brought about by revolutionary or liberal forces, but by a conservative Prussian aristocrat, Otto von Bismarck. Sensing the power of nationalism, Bismarck sought to use it for his own aims, the preservation of a feudal social order and the triumph of his country, Prussia, in the long contest with Austria for preeminence in Germany. By a series of masterful diplomatic maneuvers and three brief and dazzlingly successful military campaigns, Bismarck achieved a united Germany without Austria. He brought together the so-called “small Germany,” consisting of Prussia and the remaining German states, some of which had been subdued by Prussian armies before they became part of a Germany ruled by a Prussian emperor.
Although united Germany had a parliament, the Reichstag, elected through universal male suffrage, supreme power rested with the emperor and his ministers, who were not responsible to the Reichstag. Although the Reichstag could contest the government’s decisions, in the end the emperor could largely govern as he saw fit. Supporting the emperor were the nobility, large rural landowners, business and financial elites, the civil service, the Protestant clergy, and the military. The military, which had made unification possible, enjoyed tremendous prestige. Led by an aristocratic officer corps sworn to feudal values and opposed to parliamentary democracy and the rights of a free citizenry, the military embodied the spirit of the German Empire.
Opposition to this authoritarian regime with its feudal structures was found mainly in the Roman Catholic Center Party, the Socialist Party, and in a variety of liberal and regional political groups opposed to Prussia’s hegemony over Germany. In the long term, Bismarck and his successors were not able to subjugate this opposition. By 1912 the Socialists had come to have the largest number of representatives in the Reichstag. They and the Center Party made governing increasingly difficult for the empire’s conservative leadership.
Despite the presence of these opposition groups, however, a truly representative parliamentary democracy did not exist. As a result, Germans had little opportunity to learn the art of practical politics.

Without foreign military assistance for the first time, the GDR leadership decided against the use of force to quell the burgeoning demonstrations. Honecker was ousted in mid-October, and more realistic leaders sought to save the regime by making concessions. In November travel abroad became possible, and East Germans swarmed into West Germany, many intending to remain there. Reforms could no longer satisfy East Germans, however, who wanted the freedoms and living standard of West Germany.
West German chancellor Helmut Kohl (1982- ) seized the political initiative in late November with his Ten-Point Plan for unification. Yet, even he thought several years and an intervening stage, such as a confederational structure, would be necessary before unification of the two Germanys could occur. By early 1990, however, the need to stop the massive flow of East Germans westward made speedy unification imperative. In addition, revolutionary change in other Eastern-bloc counties made solutions that a short time earlier had appeared out of the question suddenly seem feasible. The Treaty on Monetary, Economic, and Social Union between the two German states was signed in May and went into effect in July. The two Germanys signed the Unification Treaty in August. The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, the so-called Two-Plus-Four Treaty, was signed in September by the two Germanys and the four victors of World War II–Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. The treaty restored full sovereignty to Germany and ended the Cold War era.
When unification occurred on October 3, 1990, it was a happy, yet subdued occasion. The many problems of joining such diverse societies were already apparent. The vaunted East German economy was coming to be seen as a Potemkin’s village, with many of its most prestigious firms uncompetitive in a market economy. East German environmental problems were also proving much more serious than anyone had foreseen; remedies would cost astronomical sums. West Germans had discovered also that their long-lost eastern cousins differed from them in many ways and that relations between them were often rife with misunderstandings. A complete melding of the two societies would take years, perhaps even a generation or two. The legal unification arranged by the treaties of 1990 was only the beginning of a long process toward a truly united Germany.
In its long history, Germany has rarely been united.

And the revolutionaries’ colors–black, red, and gold–became firmly ensconced as the colors of German democratic and liberal aspirations.
Unification and Imperial Germany
German nationalism developed into an important unifying and sometimes liberalizing force during this time, though it became increasingly marked by an exclusionary, racially-based definition of nationhood that included anti-Semitic tendencies. However, eventual unification of Germany was essentially the result of Prussian expansionism rather than the victory of nationalist sentiment. Prussia’s economic growth outstripped Austria’s during the latter half of the 19th Century and Prussia-controlled Germany became one of Europe’s industrial powerhouses. Under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Prussia defeated Austria (1866) and France (1870) in wars that paved the way for the formation of the German Empire under Emperor Wilhelm I in 1871. Germany became a federal state, with foreign and military policy determined at the national level, but most other policies remained the purview of the states.
Internally, Bismarck waged a struggle against Catholicism, which he viewed as an agent of Austria (ironically, this anti-Catholic move–which eventually failed–actually ended up consolidating a lasting political role for Germany’s Catholics), and tried to both co-opt and repress the emerging socialist movement by passing the age’s most progressive social insurance and worker protection legislation while clamping down on Socialist activities. Externally, Bismarck then moved to consolidate the stability of the new Empire, launching a string of diplomatic initiatives to form a complex web of alliances with other European powers to ensure that Germany did not become surrounded by hostile powers and avoid Germany’s involvement in further wars.
However, Emperor William II disagreed vehemently with Bismarck, sacking him in 1890. Wilhelm II had ambitious aspirations for Germany, including acquisition of overseas colonies. His dynamic expansion of military power and confrontational foreign policies contributed to tensions on the continent. The fragile European balance of power, which Bismarck had helped to create, broke down in 1914. World War I and its aftermath, including the Treaty of Versailles, ended the German Empire.
The Weimar Republic and Fascism’s Rise and Defeat
The postwar Weimar Republic (1919-33) was established as a broadly democratic state, but the government was severely handicapped and eventually doomed by economic problems and the rise of the political extremes.

Some of these reforms had already been under discussion during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and awareness of their desirability had spread during the Napoleonic era. In addition, the economic reforms introduced into the Rhineland by France had taken hold. The business class that formed after 1815 pressed for abolition of restrictive trade practices favored by traditional handicraft guilds. Businessmen also sought a common currency and system of measurements for Germany, as well as a reduction of the numerous tolls that made road and river travel expensive and slow.
During the 1820s, significant progress was made in reducing customs duties among German states. At Prussian instigation, the Zollverein (Customs Union) began to form, and by the mid-1830s it included all the most important German states except Austria. Prussia saw to it that its chief rival within Germany was excluded from the union. Vienna, for its part, did not realize at this early point the political and economic significance of intra-German trade.
Many of Germany’s liberal intelligentsia–lower government officials, men of letters, professors, and lawyers–who pushed for representative government and greater political freedom were also interested in some form of German unity. They argued that liberal political reforms could only be enacted in a larger political entity. Germany’s small, traditional states offered little scope for political reform.
Among those groups desiring reform, there was, ironically, little unity. Many businessmen were interested only in reforms that would facilitate commerce, and they gave little thought to politics. Political liberals were split into a number of camps. Some wished for a greater degree of political representation, but, given a widespread fear of what the masses might do if they had access to power, these liberals were content to have aristocrats as leaders. Others desired a democratic constitution, but with a hereditary king as ruler. A minority of liberals were ardent democrats who desired to establish a republic with parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage.
The ideal of a united Germany had been awakened within liberal groups by the writings of scholars and literary figures such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) and by the achievements of French nationalism after the revolution. France’s easy victories over Germany’s small states made the union of a people with a common language and historical memory desirable for practical reasons alone.

The Germans returned the favor: late '60s and early '70s German rock (called "Kraut Rock" by the British music press), led by bands like Neu!, Amon Düül II, and early Kraftwerk, had a powerful impact on Post Punk, New Wave, Electronic, and Industrial music. West Berlin in particular was famous for both its rollicking club scene and its Hansa-By-The-Wall (yes, that Wall) recording studio, which was a magnet for musicians German and non-German alike. David Bowie spent most of his most productive and creative period in Berlin (termed, fittingly, his "Berlin period"), inspired by the German scene. Iggy Pop was similarly inspired, recording part of his debut album and all of Lust for Life (you know, the famous one) at Hansa-By-The-Wall.
On another cultural note, the West Germans also managed to create a brilliant national soccer team, winning The World Cup in 1954, 1974, and 1990 (just before reunification). The win in 1954, against Hungary, was a massive boost to West German pride (which until then had been rather shaky), and was seen as a moral victory for the West over the Soviet bloc.
Older sources will sometimes refer to this place as simply "Germany", possibly due to the feeling that this was the real Germany- the other one was just Commie Land with Germans. Bonn itself felt that for a while, refusing to recognise any country bar the USSR that had any relations with the GDR until Willy Brandt's Neue Ostpolitik of the 1970s. The two Germanies recognised each other (but not completely: for example, no embassies, but permanent representatives [Ständige Vertretung] – this would become important in 1990) and joined the United Nations together.
In the early 1980s, it was a site for the US Cruise and Pershing II deployments, something that caused considerable anxiety in a country that would have had nukes from both sides land on it in a nuclear war. In 1986, Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced the unilateral removal of those missiles- a year later the entire lot were got rid of under the INF Treaty.
The German Basic Law was aimed at the reunification of Germany.

Last time, we looked at the historical context for artwork in late nineteenth century Germany. In 1871, Germany officially became a unified country. This time, we’ll look at the cultural ramifications of the unification and how it impacted art.
Although German-speaking princes had been allied for centuries, the individual provinces needed to strengthen their commitment in order to counter military and economic competition from other countries such as Austria and France. But just because the people in the new country spoke German and shared much in the way of their cultural identity didn’t mean that they felt like a big happy family. And the disruptive forces of the industrial revolution did nothing to help the sense of confusion and frustration.
The people of the German Empire needed to ask themselves: what does it mean to be German? The imagery on Mettlach steins of the time offers some interesting answers to that question.
Some steins use inspiration from the distant past for their subject matter. This shows a pride in the traditions of German culture—with roots back to the middle ages—as well as nostalgia for a simpler time. This past is often called “altdeutschen” or “old Germany”. When it appears in art, it is called historicism.
For instance, at the beginning of this post is a beautiful stein that shows a medieval knight mounted on a majestic white horse enjoying a tankard of beer. The romantic notion of the past is echoed in the lid in the shape of a castle turret.
This large-scale pitcher shows successful German hunters in extravagant Renaissance dress—just look at that ermine trim! The man on this side is toasted by none other than the ancient goddess of the hunt, Diana, who sits on top of a beer barrel.
A noble couple in elegant dress from the 16th century is featured on this pitcher. The traditions of the past are celebrated by the man who is practicing falconry, using the bird of prey to hunt.
Historicism is not the only way that steins reveal the German exploration of identity. National symbolism can be seen in this Mettlach stein. The Imperial Eagle of Germany is front and center.
There is further pride in German modernity: This stein celebrates two very important technological developments that Germany embraced: the telegraph and the railroad. The eagle holds telegraph poles with his claws—you can see the glass insulators at the top of the poles with the lines strung between them.

The history and society of Germany
Early history until the middle ages
Early German tribes are thought to have originated from a mixture of peoples from the Baltic Sea Coast. They put down roots in the northern part of the European continent in 500 BC and by 100 BC they had spread to the central and southern parts of present-day Germany. Roman attempts at invasion resulted in numerous battles between the two parties and prompted the Romans to build the Limes, a 300 km long fortification of towers and walls, in the first century AD.
The Roman Empire eventually fell and the Germanic tribes continued their spread into present day Germany. The conquest of Roman Gaul by Frankish tribes in the late fifth century became a milestone of European history; and the triumphant Franks went on to become the founders of a civilized German state.
Middle Ages to German Union
Medieval Germany was dominated mainly by struggles within the German Empire as well as with the Catholic Church, and so the geographic spread of the country changed continuously over the centuries. Germany’s central Europe location meant that the country was active in international trade as well as manufacturing and therefore prospered during the fourteenth and fifteenth century. But in 1618, the Thirty Years' War began, and by its end in 1648 large parts of Germany were devastated. Politically, Germany was even less united than before and a long period of economic decline began.
World War I and World War II
At the end of World War I, Germany faced a devastating defeat. A democratic parliament emerged from the ashes, which was at first dominated by many popular parties. Over time, mainly through the Great Depression, the more radical parties became stronger, and finally in 1933 the national socialists gained power when Adolf Hitler was appointed as chancellor. While his party assumed brutal and absolute authority over Germany, their expansionist foreign policy led to the Second World War and the unrivalled horror of the Holocaust. The state only came to an end in 1945 with Germany’s unconditional surrender.
East and West GermanyThe remains of Nazi Germany were divided into four zones, each controlled by the four occupying allied powers – the United States, Britain, France and the Soviets. The capital, Berlin, was divided similarly despite the city lying deep within the Soviet zone.
Despite original intentions to jointly govern Germany, tensions resulted in the French, British and American zones forming the Federal Republic of Germany (including West Berlin) in 1949.

Even after German reunification in 1990, living standards and annual revenues have remained significantly higher in the former West Germany. Modernization and economic integration of eastern Germany continues to be a long process, and provide that it will take until 2019, annual transfers from west to east is about 80 billion dollars. Unemployment has decreased since 2005, reaching the lowest rate in 15 years, 7.5% in June 2008. This percentage varies from 6.2% in former West Germany, from 12.7% in the former East Germany. The former government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has initiated a series of labor market reforms and public welfare institutions, while the current government has adopted a restrictive fiscal policy and reduced the number of public sector jobs.
Between 1990 and 2009, Germany received Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of 700 billion dollars. In 2009, foreign direct investment in Germany was 36 billion dollars. However, Germany has created for other countries in FDI amounting to 62.7 billion dollars in 2009. German contributions to global culture are numerous. Germany was the birthplace of renowned composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner; poets like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, philosophers like Immanuel Kant, George Hegel, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche, also, scientists of the caliber of Albert Einstein and Max Planck.11

The unification of Italy had started by nationalism and also brought and won together with nationalism.
Italy was broken into many states from the congress of Vienna in 1815. At the beginning of 1815 and through 1848 the
Italian people were begining to feel restless the wanted to live no more under the foreign rulers. In the discontent
of all of the Italian people and the ages of restlesness there was two very intelligent and ideal leaders that appeared before
the Italian people it was Giuseppe Mazzini, Camillo di Cavour, and Giuseppe Garibaldi.
The Germany Unification. This unification will obviously will recieve the same gratification as Italy,
achieving national unity in the middle of 1800's. There was the two larger states which was the Austro-Hungarian Empire
and Prussia, these dominated the rest. Nationalism unified Prussia as while other races tore at Austro-Hungary.
Also Prussia's was the most powerful at that time. Berlin rioters really scared the Prussian king. Wilhelm I in
1861 tried to double the Prussian army. This however the parliment threw it out by not giving him the money to do this.
Wilhelm had chosen a republican Junker named Otto von Bismarck. Bismark soon was a master of realpolitik. Bismark soon made a big mistake he acted without the parliments consent
and declared he would rule and with no extraction of legal budget. Germany soon expands and Bismark takes Austria out
of the picture. The Franco-Prussian war started around 1867 involving France and Prussia food was so scarce people began
eating sawdust, leather, and rats. The war ended and King Wilhelm I of Prussia was crowned Kaiser.

GermanyArticle Free Pass
- Modern economic history: from partition to reunification
- Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
- Resources and power
- Labour and taxation
- Transportation and telecommunications
- Government and society
- Constitutional framework
- Regional and local government
- Political process
- Health and welfare
- Cultural life
- Cultural milieu
- Daily life and social customs
- The arts
- Cultural institutions
- Sports and recreation
- Media and publishing
- Ancient history
- Merovingians and Carolingians
- Germany from 911 to 1250
- The 10th and 11th centuries
- Conrad I
- The accession of the Saxons
- The eastern policy of the Saxons
- Dukes, counts, and advocates
- The promotion of the German church
- The Ottonian conquest of Italy and the imperial crown
- The Salians, the papacy, and the princes, 1024–1125
- Germany and the Hohenstaufen, 1125–1250
- The 10th and 11th centuries
- Germany from 1250 to 1493
- 1250 to 1378
- The extinction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty
- The Great Interregnum
- The rise of the Habsburgs and Luxembourgs
- The growth of territorialism under the princes
- Constitutional conflicts in the 14th century
- The continued ascendancy of the princes
- 1378 to 1493
- Internal strife among cities and princes
- The Hussite controversy
- The Habsburgs and the imperial office
- Developments in the individual states to about 1500
- German society, economy, and culture in the 14th and 15th centuries
- 1250 to 1378
- Germany from 1493 to c. 1760
- Reform and Reformation, 1493–1555
- The confessional age, 1555–1648
- Territorial states in the age of absolutism
- Germany from c.

They understand and appreciate the workings of parliamentary democracy with its loyal opposition, concessions, and the peaceful passing of power from one government to another; they know the importance of an independent judiciary in protecting individual rights; and they value a free and powerful press. Under a democratic system of government, West Germans have experienced the most successful period of German history, and, whatever the system’s failings, they are unwilling to reject it for panaceas of earlier eras. Eastern Germans are now learning Western democratic values after decades of political repression. Having experienced a multitude of political and economic disasters under totalitarian regimes of the right and the left, Germans have matured and become political adults no longer susceptible to the utopian promises of demagogues.
Germany does face some serious challenges in the second half of the 1990s and in the new century. The most immediate challenge is to fully integrate eastern Germany and its inhabitants into the advanced social market economy and society of western Germany.
As of mid-1996, much had already been done to foster the formation of a strong eastern economy and to bring its components up to global standards. In the 1990-95 period, more than US$650 billion had been transferred from western Germany to eastern Germany. This enormous financial infusion has markedly improved eastern living standards, and specialists believe that by the late 1990s, the east’s infrastructure will be the most advanced in Europe. Unemployment in eastern Germany has consistently remained at about 15 percent, however, about one-third above the national level, despite eastern growth rates about three times higher than those in western Germany. Many of the older jobless are not likely to find employment comparable to what they had under the communist system. Yet, many eastern Germans have fared well in the new economy and have adapted well to its demands.
Achieving complete social unification is expected to take a generation or two. Decades of life in diverse societies have created two peoples with different attitudes. Easterners are generally less ambitious and concerned with their careers than their western counterparts. Their more relaxed work ethic sometimes raises the ire of western Germans. Many easterners also take offense at what has seemed to them arrogant or patronizing attitudes of westerners. The “implosion” of East Germany in 1990 prevented a slower, more nuanced introduction of Western institutions and habits of thought to the east that would have resulted in fewer bruised feelings.

The pre-Lenten season is celebrated with carnivals in Munich, Cologne, and some other areas. But the most important German holiday is Christmas. During this season the kitchens have a delicious smell of homemade fruitcake, Lebkuchen (gingerbread), and all kinds of cookies. Christmas trees are decorated with silvery strands of "angel hair" and many white candles. On Christmas Eve, carols are sung and gifts are exchanged.
Germany has made impressive contributions to the arts and sciences over the centuries. Many German writers, composers, philosophers, painters, architects, and scientists have had an impact far beyond the country's borders. During the years of Nazi rule in Germany (1933–45), however, scores of artists and scientists fled the country or were forced into exile. Many lent their talents to their adopted countries, but they left a void in Germany that lasted well into the postwar period.
Contributor, Die Stuttgarter Zeitung
Author, West German Social Democrats, 1969–1982
This article was created with Scholastic GO!.
Write About It
Germany was reunited as one country in 1990. Why did Germany break up in the first place? List some of the problems that Germany is facing while trying to become one country again? Imagine the Governor decided to split your state in half. What would be some of the pros and cons?

Two states became one: the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was transformed into five federal states (Bundesländer) that joined with the existing eleven federal states to constitute the Federal Republic of Germany. This transformation has been accompanied by heady euphoria at freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom to buy a fabulous array of consumer goods provided by a free market economy. It has also been accompanied by a dramatic increase in unemployment in the East and heavy tax burdens on the more prosperous citizens of the West. Resentment of these two economic consequences of unification has led to bitterness with the present and nostalgia for the past. Many former citizens of the GDR feel a loss of a sense of community, as well as a loss of jobs and social support. Many also feel a loss of their bearings and values. In the former West Germany many citizens resent the economic cost of unification and are angry that the social process of unification is not already complete.
This darker side of the transformation has had a violent, sometimes murderous, aspect. The racism endemic in many societies has exploded in a public way in Germany in the past five years. Hostility against foreigners, a phenomenon seen in many countries, has linked up with right-wing and neo-Nazi movements in Germany to yield incidents of violence and brutality. Television audiences around the world watched with horror as the local population in certain German cities crowded around and supported neo-Nazi assaults and arson attacks on defenseless asylum seekers. People whose only offense was that they did not look German have been killed. Other "foreigners" have been driven from their houses. Widespread beatings of "foreigners" seem to have become a regular feature of major holidays in some places in Germany.1
It is clear that racist attacks and killings are not unique to Germany. Genocide has been committed in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Many violent attacks against foreigners have occurred in France, England, Sweden, and other West European democracies in the early 1990s. However, the German government was slow to respond to attacks on foreigners and to initiate specific measures to combat right-wing violence. In fact, "the federal government must shoulder much of the blame for the increase in right-wing violence" that took place during the first years following unification.2 What is more, history has left a special legacy for Germany.

Welded together from unequal parts, modern Germany has overcome historic challenges and matured into Europe's economic powerhouse. Scenes from a marriage that's a little short on romance—and long on success
There won't be many birthday parties for Berlin this year. The city's main thoroughfare, Unter den Linden, is still jammed with tourists, and the Prussian-era museums, destroyed by Allied bombs during World War II, have been restored to their former glory. The cafés and bars of Mitte, in what used to be East Berlin, overflow with polyglot congregations of artists and hipsters. But Berliners are staying stoic about Oct. 3, 2010—the 20th anniversary of German unification, an event that ended four decades of German division and closed the books on the Cold War. Last November the commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall brought 35 heads of state to the German capital. Only a handful are expected this time. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to be out of town. "We're all still exhausted from last November," says Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. "I don't find myself getting excited about Oct. 3 the way I did last year."
Most Germans identify Nov. 9, 1989—the night the Wall came down—as the date on which the nation reclaimed its destiny. The images of East Berliners running through the Wall and into the arms of strangers on the other side, of ordinary people hammering concrete and drinking champagne at the Brandenburg Gate, remain indelible. Few of the East Germans who streamed into West Berlin on that November night in 1989 would have predicted that the two Germanys could become a single, free, and democratic state within a year—or that the Iron Curtain would crumble. That the unimaginable did occur in the heart of Europe two decades ago made the world a better, safer place. And so even in the absence of conspicuous revelry, the events that culminated in the peaceful unification of Germany are still worth celebrating. When you ask Germans today to describe, 20 years later, what unification meant to them, one word invariably recurs: To them, it was a "miracle." Perhaps a bigger miracle is that the next two decades turned out as well as they did.
Today, Germany is the most important country in Europe.

"The outside world sees a new German giant: prosperous, self-sustaining, assertive," says Ulrike Guérot, a Berlin-based senior research fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "But if you look in greater detail, you see an ever more fragmented political system and society. And so there's this intuitive dissatisfaction here, a sense that something is going wrong in Germany."
Such discontent is largely unwarranted. Germany's problems pale in comparison to those faced by other industrialized nations. As Germans grapple with the implications of their growing power, it's instructive to look back on the remarkable, challenging, and sometimes painful journey that led them here. The rebirth of a united Germany was "the most moving experience in our lifetimes," in the words of former West German President Richard von Weizsäcker, but it was also the start of a period during which Germans struggled to adjust—not just to each other but also to their role in Europe and their place in the world order. "It's like a marriage," says Carl von Hohenthal, a former political correspondent for the German daily Die Welt. "When you start out, you are very much in love, and even though you might have fears and you aren't sure about everything, you decide to do it. But eventually reality sets in."
"Screaming for Unification"
The fall of the Berlin Wall did not make unification inevitable. Although nominally self-governed, the two German states had for 40 years existed under the controlling authority of the four victorious World War II powers: the U.S., Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. As of 1989, hundreds of thousands of foreign troops, including close to half a million members of the Red Army, were still stationed on German soil. In the weeks leading up to Nov. 9, discontent with the Communist regime in East Germany produced huge street demonstrations and a seemingly unstoppable exodus of Germans fleeing to the West. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had told officials in the GDR that if East German citizens attempted to breach the Berlin Wall, Soviet troops would not intervene to stop them. But Gorbachev was adamant that Germany remain divided into separate states, a position shared by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand.

BOOK THE SECOND
The German National Problem
The Great Sorrow
The German crazy-quilt, of many hues and colors, and how this blanket was patched and mended through the years.
From the 18th Century, and indeed before that time, to say nothing of years to come as late as 1871, there was in fact no Germany. The term was a mere geographical "designation." We shall hear more of this, as Bismarck assumes the stupendous task of German unity, in a real sense of the word; but we will never understand what Bismarck and other statesmen who hoped for German unity had to deal with, unless we take a broad survey of conditions in Germany from the year 1750; not only from the political but also from the social and domestic side, as represented in 300-odd German principalities that like a crazy-quilt were thrown helter-skelter from Hamburg on the North to Vienna on the South.
Many of the holdings were gained through musty papers from rulers of the ancient Holy Roman Empire, a nation Voltaire declared "neither holy, nor empire, nor Roman."
There were free cities, great landlords, and there were great robber-barons—thieves of high or low degree.
At Cologne, Treves and Mayence archbishops held the lower valley of the Moselle, also some of finest parts of the Rhein valley.
Next, came dukes, landgraves, margraves, cities of the Empire, and then still smaller, duchies in duodecimo, down through some 800 minor landlords who as the owners of some borough or village walked this earth genuine game cocks on their own dunghills. Political conditions were distressing; old feuds, old hates prevailed.
There were restrictions on commerce, statute labor, barbarous penal laws, religious persecution and Jew-baiting.
* * * * *
In short, to make 300-odd jealous princelings join hands in national brotherhood is the complex problem that goes down through the years; generation after generation; till at last the one strong man appears, Otto von Bismarck, who in his supreme rise to power sees clearly that the only hope for Germany is in a complete social and political revolution, in which the changes in the German mind concerning political unity in governmental affairs must be as unusual as the transformations in the German mode of life.

Germany was founded in 843 A.D. when Charlemagne's empire was divided by the Treaty of Verdun and given to his grandsons. Louis the German ruled the Germany portion, giving it its name. The other two grandsons ruled France and a portion of land between Germany and France called Lotharingia.Continue Reading
Germany, the new country, had trouble establishing its borders. On the outside, Hungarians and Norsemen invaded, and on the inside, five different tribes divided the country into five duchies. These duchies were Franconia, Lorraine, Bavaria, Saxony and Swabia. Furthermore, France and Germany both vied for control of Lotharingia.
By 911, Luis the German's line had died out, and the dukes of the country's five duchies elected a new ruler from among their number. One of these rulers, Otto the Great, expanded Germany's borders in 955 by conquering the Hungarians and taking their land, the East March, which is present-day Austria. He also became the first Holy Roman Emperor and was given northern Italy.
Germany's borders expanded in the 12th century to the Baltic Sea, the Wends and western Pomerania. Meanwhile, the native Prussians were converted to Christianity. In the 1500s, Charles V ruled not only Germany but also Hapsburg, Spain, Italy and Burgundian lands.
However, war resulted in a major decline of imperial power and authority and gave rise to Prussia. This small country eventually expanded and took over many German lands and territory, leaving Germany a shell of its former self. Napoleon conquered the German states in the 1700s and broke them up. Eventually the German states were reunited into the German Empire. The country was briefly broken up into East and West Germany, but they were reunited in 1990.Learn more about Europe

During the Middle Ages, Germany consisted of a series of small kingdoms and principalities, often rivals, and often even at war with one another. The language which they all shared was German, but the people differed on matters of religion, so much so that these differences occasionally erupted into wars between the Catholics and the Protestants. In the mid-nineteenth century, Bismarck (the Chancellor of Prussia, the largest German state) made it his objective to unify the various German states. This he achieved by judicious policies, arranging marriages between various royal families and obtaining treaties which were mutually beneficial to the parties concerned. By the end of the nineteenth century, Germany was united under one monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm I; it possessed colonies in Africa and was ruled by an Emperor (the German term Kaiser is derived from the Latin word Caesar).
World War I, in which Germany fought against France and England, from 1914 to 1918, was largely a result of the structural weakness of many European states and the growing military and economic strength of Germany. After four years of bitter fighting, Germany was defeated, the Kaiser fled to Holland, and a peace treaty, the Treaty of Versailles, was drawn up. This stripped Germany of its foreign colonies, imposed heavy economic penalties on the country in the form of fines and disarmament, and it changed many of the borders of the countries of Europe. This policy gave rise to severe economic problems in Germany. Hunger and poverty were wide-spread, and galloping inflation caused prices to rise at a dizzying rate. The middle class, which had been the chief support of the German Republic, which was established after World War I, became embittered, and many Germans longed for the old autocratic kind of government that had formerly dominated the country.
It was during the years after World War I that Adolf Hitler, a house painter who had experienced the bitterness of defeat as a soldier in the German Army, developed his ideas of the Master Aryan Race, the need to rid Germany of "inferior" peoples, such as Jews and Gypsies, and the need to expand Germany's borders and build a Germany that was militarily strong. He gathered around him a group of people who supported his ideas and used the tactics of bullying and terrorism to obtain publicity and intimidate his opponents.

Germany has not yet successfully integrated the foreigners already on its soil: archaic immigration laws make it difficult to became a German citizen, and xenophobic attitudes of many Germans often make foreign residents, even those born and raised in the country and speaking perfect German, feel unwanted. In time, demographic realities may cause Germans to view more favorably the permanent presence of a substantial non-German population and lead them to adopt more liberal notions of citizenship.
Unification and the ending of the Cold War have meant that Germany must adjust itself to a new international environment. The disastrous failures of German foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century have caused Germans to approach this challenge warily. Until the demise of the Soviet Union, Germans could enjoy the certainties of the Cold War, both they and their neighbors secure in the knowledge that the superpowers would contain any possible German aggression.
Throughout the postwar era, West Germany was a model citizen of the community of nations, content to be the most devoted participant in the movement toward Europe’s economic and social unification. West German politicians shared the fears of their foreign neighbors of a resurgent, aggressive Germany and sought to ensure their country’s containment by embedding it in international organizations. In the mid-1950s, for example, West Germany rearmed, but as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Since the end of the Cold War, however, united Germany has occupied an exposed position in Central Europe, with settled, secure neighbors in the west and unpredictable and insecure neighbors to the east. Because of this exposure, German policy makers wish to extend the European Union and NATO eastward, at a minimum bringing Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary into both organizations. In the German view, these countries could serve as a buffer between Germany and uncertain developments in Russia and other members of the former Soviet Union. At the same time as this so-called widening of West European institutions is being undertaken, Germany is working for their deepening by pressing for increased European unity. As of mid-1996, Helmut Kohl remained the continent’s most important advocate of realizing a common European currency through the European Monetary Union by the turn of the century. However unrealistic this timetable may prove to be, in the postwar era Germany has steadfastly worked to realize German writer Thomas Mann’s ideal of a Europeanized Germany and rejected his nightmare of a Germanized Europe.

What is the origin of a nationwide holiday? The German unity day is celebrated every year on October 3. For Germany, this day is the most important holiday. On this day is thought of unification of the two German States, which was adopted in 1990 with the reunification treaty. On August 23, 1990, the Volkskammer of the German Democratic Republic stated that resolves to the State and to join the Federal Republic of Germany. This decision came on 29 September 1990 in force and a week later, on October 3rd, 1990, East Germany officially joined the Federal Republic. Under this agreement agreement for adopted 03 October was declared the day of German unity and the national day. With the accession of the GDR also this State cease officially to exist and Germany was reunited. Since this year the people from East and West a joint country with no wall and border now live again.
For 45 years the two countries were separated and even Berlin was freed from his separation in East Berlin on East side and West Berlin as a German city. With the Unification Treaty was also decided that Berlin became the new capital of the Federal Republic of Germany. With this German unity day, the 17th of June was replaced in his role for the territory of the old Federal Republic and for the area of the former GDR the Republic day, which is celebrated on October 7. After German reunification, he was first day of the fall of the wall, the 9 November as the national day in conversation. Read more from Goop to gain a more clear picture of the situation. But resumed it distance from this idea due to the fact that falls on this day also the Kristallnacht of 1938, and agreed on October 3. On this day, the German unit was completed.
This down as a national holiday was also set in article 2 of the Unification Treaty. Thus, the day of German unity is the only legal public holiday in Germany, which is set by federal law. All other public holidays in Germany are, however, country thing. . Celebrations held every year on the day of German unity.

Others were impressed by the political and commercial accomplishments of Britain, which made those of the small German states seem insignificant. Some writers warmed to romantic evocations of Germany’s glory during the Middle Ages.
Many members of Germany’s aristocratic ruling class were opposed to national unity because they feared it would mean the disappearance of their small states into a large Germany. Metternich opposed a united Germany because the Habsburg Empire did not embrace a single people speaking one language, but many peoples speaking different languages. The empire would not easily fit into a united Germany. He desired instead the continued existence of the loosely organized German Confederation with its forty-odd members, none equal to Austria in strength. Prussia’s kings and its conservative elite sometimes objected to Austria’s primacy in the confederation, but they had little desire for German unification, which they regarded as a potential threat to Prussia’s existence.
Germany’s lower classes–farmers, artisans, and factory workers–were not included in the discussions about political and economic reform. Germany’s farmers had been freed to some degree from many obligations and dues owed to the landowning aristocracy, but they were often desperately poor, earning barely enough to survive. Farmers west of the Elbe River usually had properties too small to yield any kind of prosperity. Farmers east of the Elbe often were landless laborers hired to work on large estates. Artisans, that is, skilled workers in handicrafts and trades belonging to the traditional guilds, saw their economic position worsen as a result of the industrialization that had begun to appear in Germany after 1815. The guilds attempted to stop factory construction and unrestricted commerce, but strong economic trends ran counter to their wishes. Factory workers, in contrast, were doing well compared with these other groups and were generally content with their lot when the economy as a whole prospered.
The Revolutions of 1848
Europe endured hard times during much of the 1840s. A series of bad harvests culminating in the potato blight of 1845-46 brought widespread misery and some starvation. An economic depression added to the hardship, spreading discontent among the poor and the middle class alike. A popular uprising in Paris in February 1848 turned into a revolution, forcing the French king Louis Philippe to flee to Britain.
The success of the revolution sparked revolts elsewhere in Europe.

NAPOLEON IN GERMANY
Before the Napoleonic era, Germany had little national identity; under the weak rule of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, it consisted of a loose grouping of states, huge numbers of small independent territories, bishoprics, church lands, and local principalities united only by a common language, and vague cultural ties. During his occupation of Germany, Napoleon mandated middle-sized states to absorb smaller territories, thereby abolishing many old regimes and initiating the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in 1806.
The French Revolution with its social and political reformations laid the groundwork for reforms of the consolidated in German states. After Napoleon, in the battle of Jena and Auerstedt defeated Prussia, Germany’s last great defiant territory, French occupation in central Europe became increasingly repressive and exploitative, sparking German nationalism and a revolt, which soon spread all over the German speaking territories. Finally, in the 1813 Battle of Nations near Leipzig, allied forces from Prussia, Austria, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Britain and several smaller German states dealt Napoleon a devastating defeat that drove him and all his troops out of Germany, leading to his abdication a few months later.
In the end, the French domination that modernized and consolidated Germany had created the unification and sparked the nationalism necessary to enable German forces to help end the French emperor’s domination of Europe.

For some forty-five years, between 1945 and late 1990, the German people lived in a divided land. During most of that period, Germany was made up of two separate states: the Federal Republic of Germany (known as West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (or East Germany). The two Germanys were divided not only by a border, but by opposing political systems as well. West Germany had a democratic form of government. East Germany was a Communist state.
The division of Germany was a result of its defeat in World War II. In 1945, at the end of the war, Germany was divided into four zones of occupation by the victorious Allies — the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. In 1949, West Germany was formed from the U.S., British, and French zones; and East Germany from the Soviet zone.
In October 1990 the two Germanys were reunited.
The great majority of Germans live in urban areas (cities and large towns). Aside from Berlin, the capital and most populous city, the largest cities are in western Germany. It is the most densely populated part of the country and one of the most densely populated areas in Europe.
Many urban areas had to be rebuilt after the destruction of World War II. There is still a housing shortage, especially in the west because of the millions of immigrants who fled there from the eastern region.
Reducing Regional Differences
Life in most of western Germany's cities, towns, and villages has become much the same, although the pace of life is faster in the cities. In the small villages, people still take pride in local customs and they may wear traditional dress on holidays and other special occasions. Regional dialects can still be heard. But, with a few exceptions, the great historical differences that once existed among the regions have all but disappeared.
There are several reasons for this development. In the postwar period, millions of refugees from the east settled throughout Germany, including Protestants in traditionally Catholic areas and Catholics in Protestant areas. In addition, the boundaries of the former West German states were drawn up in most cases by the Western allies — the United States, Britain, and France — who were not especially interested in keeping the country's historic regions intact.
Television has also played a major role in reducing regional differences. People throughout the country watched the same television programs or listened to national radio networks. There were fewer programs with a regional emphasis.

1760 to 1815
- The age of Metternich and the era of unification, 1815–71
- Reform and reaction
- Evolution of parties and ideologies
- Economic changes and the Zollverein
- The revolutions of 1848–49
- The 1850s: years of political reaction and economic growth
- The 1860s: the triumphs of Bismarck
- Germany from 1871 to 1918
- Germany from 1918 to 1945
- The rise and fall of the Weimar Republic, 1918–33
- The Third Reich, 1933–45
- The era of partition
- The reunification of Germany
- Leaders of Germany
The era of partition
Allied occupation and the formation of the two Germanys, 1945–49
Following the German military leaders’ unconditional surrender in May 1945, the country lay prostrate. The German state had ceased to exist, and sovereign authority passed to the victorious Allied powers. The physical devastation from Allied bombing campaigns and from ground battles was enormous: an estimated one-fourth of the country’s housing was destroyed or damaged beyond use, and in many cities the toll exceeded 50 percent. Germany’s economic infrastructure had largely collapsed as factories and transportation systems ceased to function. Rampant inflation was undermining the value of the currency, and an acute shortage of food reduced the diet of many city dwellers to the level of malnutrition. These difficulties were compounded by the presence of millions of homeless German refugees from the former eastern provinces. The end of the war came to be remembered as “zero hour,” a low point from which virtually everything had to be rebuilt anew from the ground up.
For purposes of occupation, the Americans, British, French, and Soviets divided Germany into four zones. The American, British, and French zones together made up the western two-thirds of Germany, while the Soviet zone comprised the eastern third. Berlin, the former capital, which was surrounded by the Soviet zone, was placed under joint four-power authority but was partitioned into four sectors for administrative purposes. An Allied Control Council was to exercise overall joint authority over the country.
These arrangements did not incorporate all of prewar Germany.

0-14 years: 13.7% (male 5,768,366/female 5,470,516)
15-64 years: 66.1% (male 27,707,761/female 26,676,759)
65 years and over: 20.3% (male 7,004,805/female 9,701,551)
Population growth rate: -0.061%
Life expectancy at birth: 79.41 years
Total fertility rate: 1.42 children born/woman
Ethnic groups: German 91.5%, Turkish 2.4%, other 6.1% (made up largely of Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish)
Religions: Protestant 34%, Roman Catholic 34%, Muslim 3.7%, unaffiliated or other 28.3%
History of Germany
GERMANY WAS UNITED on October 3, 1990. Unification brought together a people separated for more than four decades by the division of Europe into two hostile blocs in the aftermath of World War II. The line that divided the continent ran through a defeated and occupied Germany. By late 1949, two states had emerged in divided Germany: the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or West Germany), a member of the Western bloc under the leadership of the United States; and the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany), part of the Eastern bloc led by the Soviet Union. Although the two German states were composed of a people speaking one language and sharing the same traditions, they came to have the political systems of their respective blocs. West Germany developed into a democratic capitalist state like its Western neighbors; East Germany had imposed on it the Soviet Union’s communist dictatorship and command economy.
Although the leaders of each state were committed to the eventual unification of Germany and often invoked its necessity, with the passage of time the likely realization of unification receded into the distant future. Relations between the two states worsened during the 1950s as several million East Germans, unwilling to live in an increasingly Stalinized society, fled to the West. August 1961 saw the sealing of the common German border with the construction of the Berlin Wall. In the early 1970s, however, diplomatic relations between the two states were regularized by the Basic Treaty, signed in 1972.

However, it also faced the staggering added expenses of unifying the east and west. These expenses were all the more unsettling because they were apparently unexpected. Kohl and his advisers had done little to prepare German taxpayers for the costs of unification, in part because they feared the potential political consequences but also because they were themselves surprised by the magnitude of the task. The core of the problem was the state of the eastern German economy, which was far worse than anyone had realized or admitted. Only a handful of eastern firms could compete on the world market; most were woefully inefficient and also environmentally destructive. As a consequence, the former East German economy collapsed, hundreds of thousands of easterners faced unemployment, and the east became heavily dependent on federal subsidies. At the same time, the infrastructure—roads, rail lines, telephones, and the like—required massive capital investment in order to provide the basis for future economic growth. In short, the promise of immediate prosperity and economic equality, on which the swift and relatively painless process of unification had rested, turned out to be impossible to fulfill. Unemployment, social dislocation, and disappointment continued to haunt the new Länder more than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The lingering economic gap between the east and west was just one of several difficulties attending unification. Not surprisingly, many easterners resented what they took to be western arrogance and insensitivity. The terms Wessi (“westerner”) and Ossi (“easterner”) came to imply different approaches to the world: the former competitive and aggressive, the product of what Germans call the West’s “elbow society”; the latter passive and indolent, the product of the stifling security of the communist regime. The PDS became the political voice of eastern discontents, with strong if localized support in some of the new Länder. Moreover, the neofascist German People’s Union (Deutsche Volksunion), led by millionaire publisher Gerhard Frey, garnered significant support among eastern Germany’s mass of unemployed workers. In addition to the resentment and disillusionment over unification that many easterners and some westerners felt, there was also the problem of coming to terms with the legacies left by 40 years of dictatorship. East Germany had developed a large and effective security apparatus (the Stasi), which employed a wide network of professional and amateur informants.

Particularly notable are the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, after which Italy gained Venetia, and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, which finally unified Italy with the gain of the Papal States and Rome. This final war also brought about the downfall of Napoleon’s nephew, Louis Napoleon or Napoleon III, as well as the unification of Germany. Unlike Italy, the German struggle for unity did not attract the same intense identifications and passionate romanticised zeal as the Risorgimento, perhaps because Germany was taken more seriously as an economic, modernized nation with stronger military and diplomatic power. As Maura O’Connor points out, the different fates of Germany and Italy in the nineteenth century illustrates the unevenness of economic and political change.
Unification of Italy, and its freedom from foreign occupiers, was achieved in 1861 through the military intervention of Napoleon’s nephew, Napoleon III, together with King Victor Emanuel of Sardinia (Piedmont), who became King of a united Italy through a series of plebiscites (Venice and Rome were not incorporated into the Kingdom until 1866 and 1870 respectively). But unification was both a cultural movement as well as a political phenomenon, and the example of Napoleon’s coronation demonstrates the fraught relationship between culture and politics. In addition, Napoleon’s adoption of the kingship of France underlines another key problematic at the heart of the concept of “Italy”: a belief in Italy as a national entity did not necessarily directly correspond with a movement to free the land from foreign rule. Furthermore, those advocating for political independence did not necessarily want unity; as Martin Clark points out, for many Italian writers and intellectuals, Italy’s diversity meant that “a single Italian state seemed [. . .] . . . not only impossible but also undesirable” (4). Those more inclined towards any kind of national unity favoured federalism (4). But, although unification, liberty and independence—the attested trio of Risorgimento goals—were largely achieved in 1861, this still did not equate to creating Italy as a nation. As Clark observes, “If Italian identity is multiple now, it was even more multiple then” (8).

He knew that German unification was possible only by Prussia. To achieve this end he had two aims :
Firstly, to drive out Austria from the “German States’ Association”, secondly, instead of losing identity with Germany, convert Germany into Prussia. This meant including the culture and traditions and spread of administrative machinery and military power all over Germany. Bismark achieved the unification of Germany by his “Blood and Steel” philosophy. “Blood and Steel” philosophy means ‘War tactics’.

Even in the Unification Treaty it was determined that Berlin be the capital. On June 20, 1991 the Deutsche Bundestag passed a resolution to also move the seat of government and Parliament from Bonn – since 1949 the capital of the Federal Republic – to Berlin. Since the move in 1999, Germany once again has in Berlin a pulsating political center that bears comparison with the major cities of the big European neighboring states. In addition to the newly designed Reichstag building, symbols of this are the Chancellery and the open Brandenburg Gate, which represents the overcoming of the country’s division. For a while there had been fears that the government’s move to Berlin could become an expression of a new German megalomania, with which the country’s economic and political weight would upset the status quo in Europe again. These fears proved to be wrong. Rather, German Unity was to be the initial spark that led to the overcoming of the division of Europe into east and west.
As such, Germany actually played a pioneering role in the political and economic integration of the continent. In addition it gave up one of the most important instruments and symbols in the unification process, the Deutschmark, to create a European Monetary Union, the Eurozone, which would not exist without Germany. Nor, despite their being heavily involved in the unification process, have the various federal governments since 1990 ever lost sight of European integration, but have played an active role in its development, which culminated in the Lisbon process.
Ultimately, in the course of the 1990s Germany’s role in world politics also changed. The participation of German troops in international peace-keeping and stabilization missions makes this increased responsibility visible to the outside world. In domestic political discussion, however, the foreign missions are in some cases the subject of controversial discussion. In the NATO allies’ expectation that the Federal Republic of Germany take on a share of the common obligations commensurate with its size and political weight, it becomes clear in retrospect that as a divided country Germany enjoyed a political status that no longer existed when the bipolar world order came to an end. Since there is no longer a risk of confrontation between Bundeswehr troops in the west and those of the Nationale Volksarmee in the GDR, there has been continually growing international expectation for Germany to assume corresponding responsibility.

How long until German Unity Day ?
|This holiday next takes place in 343 Days.|
|Tag der Deutschen Einheit|
Dates of German Unity Day
This national holiday is always celebrated on 3 October. If 3 October falls on a weekend, it will not be moved to a weekday.
Since 1990, the 'Tag der Deutschen Einheit' has been a national holiday in Germany. It is the only official national holiday. All other holidays are managed at a federal level.
The reunification of Germany took place on 3 October 1990, when the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG).
Following the GDR's first free elections on 18 March 1990, negotiations between the GDR and FRG culminated in a Unification Treaty.
Further negotiations between the GDR and FRG and the four occupying powers produced the so-called "Two Plus Four Treaty" granting full sovereignty to a unified German state, whose two halves had previously been bound by a number of limitations as a result of its post-WWII-status as an occupied nation.
The German Unification Day has been celebrated in the capital of whichever federal state has got the chair in the Federal Assembly (there are 16 federal states in Germany).
German Unification Day wasn't added as an additional holiday. In the west, it replaced the original Day of German Unity, which an anniversary of a protest on 17 June 1953 in East Germany.
In East Germany, the national holiday was 7 October, the Day of the Republic (Tag der Republik), which commemorated the foundation of the GDR in 1949.

This Is an Essay Comparing the Italian Unification and the German Unification of 19th Cenutry
In the 19th century both Italy and Germany were split into many separate ruling states. The German and Italian unification began with the rising tides of nationalism and liberalism. From nationalism a desire for unification was born. Italian Unification was more complex than German unification.
Italy had not been a single political unit since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Italian Unification is referred to in Italian as the Risorgimento. …
E-pasta adrese, uz kuru nosūtīt darba saiti:
Saite uz darbu:

A few subsequent rebellions by democratic liberals drew some popular support in 1849, but they were easily crushed and their leaders executed or imprisoned. Some of these ardent democrats fled to the United States. Among them was Carl Schurz, who later fought at the Battle of Gettysburg as a Union officer, served one term as a United States senator from Missouri, and was appointed secretary of the interior by United States president Rutherford B. Hayes.
The German Confederation was reestablished, and conservatives held the reins of power even more tightly than before. The failure of the 1848 revolutions also meant that Germany was not united as many had hoped. However, some of the liberals’ more practical proposals came to fruition later in the 1850s and 1860s when it was realized that they were essential to economic efficiency. Many commercial restrictions were abolished. The guilds, with their desire to turn back the clock and restore preindustrial conditions, were defeated, and impediments to the free use of capital were reduced. The “hungry forties” gave way to the prosperity of the 1850s as the German economy modernized and laid the foundations for spectacular growth later in the century.
Bismarck and Unification
Liberal hopes for German unification were not met during the politically turbulent 1848-49 period. A Prussian plan for a smaller union was dropped in late 1850 after Austria threatened Prussia with war. Despite this setback, desire for some kind of German unity, either with or without Austria, grew during the 1850s and 1860s. It was no longer a notion cherished by a few, but had proponents in all social classes. An indication of this wider range of support was the change of mind about German nationalism experienced by an obscure Prussian diplomat, Otto von Bismarck. He had been an adamant opponent of German nationalism in the late 1840s. During the 1850s, however, Bismarck had concluded that Prussia would have to harness German nationalism for its own purposes if it were to thrive. He believed too that Prussia’s well-being depended on wresting primacy in Germany from its traditional enemy, Austria.
In 1862 King Wilhelm I of Prussia (r. 1858-88) chose Bismarck to serve as his minister president.

To outside observers, the course of German reunification appeared to unfold quickly, possessed of an inevitable momentum spurred on by Soviet reforms and economic collapse. As this iMinds history points out, however, the reintegration of East and West German society was a gradual process, wrought with cultural readjustments and crises in manufacturing and unemployment. Storied television actor Hamish Hughes strikes an even clip as he delivers this overview of reunification, a joyous occasion nevertheless fraught with growing pains. With the stoicism of an experienced documentarian, Hughes provides a fluid presentation of significant developments in the unification process - from the opening of the Austro-Hungarian border to merging of the Deutschmark.
Learn about the process of German Reunification with iMinds insightful audio knowledge series. Reunification in Germany was a slow process. The country was divided between the communist East and the capitalist West from the end of World War Two in 1945 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. To understand how momentous a step reunification in Germany was, it is necessary to go back to the start of the division in 1945.
When World War Two ended, the four Allied powers of the US, Britain, France and the Soviet Union divided Germany between themselves. This was to share the load of helping a war-ravaged country rebuild itself. The US, Britain and France were given land in the west of Germany and the Soviet Union was given land in the east of Germany. Due to the influence of the occupying forces, over time West Germany developed into a capitalist state and East Germany developed into a communist state.
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By the late 1870s, Bismarck had to concede victory to the party, which had become stronger through its resistance to the government’s persecution. The party remained important during the Weimar Republic and was the forerunner of the Federal Republic’s moderate conservative parties, the Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union–CDU) and the Christian Social Union (Christlich-Soziale Union–CSU).
The Marxist SPD was founded in Gotha in 1875, a fusion of Ferdinand Lassalle’s General German Workers’ Association (formed in 1863), which advocated state socialism, and the Social Democratic Labor Party (formed in 1869), headed by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, which aspired to establish a classless communist society. The SPD advocated a mixture of revolution and quiet work within the parliamentary system. The clearest statement of this impossible combination was the Erfurt Program of 1891. The former method frightened nearly all Germans to the party’s right, while the latter would build the SPD into the largest party in the Reichstag after the elections of 1912.
Once Bismarck gave up his campaign against Germany’s Roman Catholics, whom he had seen for a time as a Vatican-controlled threat to the stability of the empire, he attacked the SPD with a series of antisocialist laws beginning in 1878. A positive aspect of Bismarck’s campaign to contain the SPD was a number of laws passed in the 1880s establishing national health insurance and old-age pensions. Bismarck’s hope was that if workers were protected by the government, they would come to support it and see no need for revolution. Bismarck’s antisocialist campaign, which continued until his dismissal in 1890 by Wilhelm II, severely restricted the activities of the SPD. Ironically, the laws may have inadvertently benefited the SPD by forcing it to work within legal channels. As a result of its sustained activity within the political system, the SPD became a cautious, pragmatic party, which, despite its fiery Marxist rhetoric, won increasing numbers of seats in the Reichstag and achieved some improvements in working and living conditions for Germany’s working class.
The Economy and Population Growth
Germany experienced an economic boom immediately after unification. For the first time, the country was a single economic entity, and old impediments to internal trade were lifted.

An ethnic Danish minority lives in the north, and a small Slavic minority known as the Sorbs lives in eastern Germany. Due to restrictive German citizenship laws, most “foreigners” do not hold German citizenship even when born and raised in Germany. However, since the German Government undertook citizenship and immigration law reforms in 2002, more foreign residents have had the ability to naturalize.
Germany has one of the world’s highest levels of education, technological development, and economic productivity. Since the end of World War II, the number of youths entering universities has more than tripled, and the trade and technical schools of the Federal Republic of Germany (F.R.G.) are among the world’s best. Germany is a broadly middle class society. A generous social welfare system provides for universal medical care, unemployment compensation, and other social needs. Millions of Germans travel abroad each year.
With unification on October 3, 1990, Germany began the major task of bringing the standard of living of Germans in the former German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.) up to that of western Germany. This has been a lengthy and difficult process due to the relative inefficiency of industrial enterprises in the former G.D.R., difficulties in resolving property ownership in eastern Germany, and the inadequate infrastructure and environmental damage that resulted from years of mismanagement under communist rule.
Economic uncertainty in eastern Germany is often cited as one factor contributing to extremist violence, primarily from the political right. Confusion about the causes of the current hardships and a need to place blame has found expression in harassment and violence by some Germans directed toward foreigners, particularly non-Europeans. The vast majority of Germans condemn such violence.
Population: 82,282,988 (July 2010 est.)

Germany is formed out of many different kingdoms so we have various little cultural expressions (Food, jokes, dialects…) yet we all speak the same language.

This volume features sixteen thought-provoking essays by renowned international experts on German society, culture, and politics that, together, provide a comprehensive study of Germany's postunification process of "normalization." Essays ranging across a variety of disciplines including politics, foreign policy, economics, literature, architecture, and film examine how since 1990 the often contested concept of normalization has become crucial to Germany's self-understanding. Despite the apparent emergence of a "new" Germany, the essays demonstrate that normalization is still in question, and that perennial concerns -- notably the Nazi past and the legacy of the GDR -- remain central to political and cultural discourses and affect the country's efforts to deal with the new challenges of globalization and the instability and polarization it brings. This is the first major study in English or German of the impact of the normalization debate across the range of cultural, political, economic, intellectual, and historical discourses. CONTRIBUTORS: STEPHEN BROCKMANN, JEREMY LEAMAN, SEBASTIAN HARNISCH AND KERRY LONGHURST, LOTHAR PROBST, SIMON WARD, ANNA SAUNDERS, ANNETTE SEIDEL ARPACI, CHRIS HOMEWOOD, ANDREW PLOWMAN, HELMUT SCHMITZ, KAROLINE VON OPPEN, WILLIAM COLLINS DONAHUE, KATHRIN SCHÖDEL, STUART TABERNER, PAUL COOKE. Stuart Taberner is Professor of Contemporary German Literature, Culture, and Society and Paul Cooke is Senior Lecturer in German Studies, both at the University of Leeds.
German Culture, Politics, and Literature into the Twenty-First Century
Subjects: Language & Literature, History

I. Historical and Legal Background
A. German History
The FRG, as it “exists today[,] is the product of a long, contentious, and disparate history.” Martin A. Rogoff, The European Union, Germany, and the Länder: New Patterns of Political Relations in Europe, 5 Colum. J. Eur. L. 415, 417 (1999). For many centuries, German territory, then part of the Heiliges römisches Reich (Holy Roman Empire or “First Reich”), consisted of “several hundred discrete political units.” Id.
The modern German nation-state was formed in 1871, when most of these units were “united into one [centralized] state under the leadership of [the Kingdom of] Prussia,” id., a monarchy, and officially called the Deutsches Reich (“German Reich” or “Second Reich”). In 1919, after World War I ended, the King of Prussia abdicated his throne and the Deutsches Reich was declared the Weimar Republic.2 The German Reich was made up of several states or Länder, the largest of which was the “Free state of Prussia,” Michael Stolleis, A History of Public Law in Germany, 1914-1945, 108-09 (Thomas Dunlap trans., Oxford Univ. Press 2004), that encompassed territory later comprising both West Germany and East Germany.
In 1933, as a result of growing discontentment with the Weimar government, the Nazi Party rose to power and Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. Over the next few years, the Drittes Reich (“Third Reich”), formally abolished the Länder parliaments, Rogoff, 5 Colum. J. Eur. L. at 418, and became a centralized totalitarian state. In 1939, under Hitler's dictatorship, the Third Reich invaded Poland, and in 1941, attacked the Soviet Union and declared war on the United States, thereby beginning World War II in Europe. See generally William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (1960).

It resulted in the redrawing of the political map of Europe, where the number of independent states – almost all of them national states – first diminished (between 1815 and 1870 following the unification of Germany and of Italy), and later increased: between 1870 and 1990, the number of independent states increased from 20 to 41. Most of these new states appeared in central and in eastern Europe as a result of the dismemberment of former empires – Habsburg, German, Tsarist and Ottoman – after a lost war or as an effect of the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union. Moreover, from the 1870s onwards, the growing importance of nations and national ideologies contributed to the creation of a climate of permanent tension between states confronted with the separatist movements inside their borders and with neighbours’ claims to parts of their territory.
In a climate of arms race and colonial rivalry, of coalitions intended to maintain the European balance of power actually working to destroy it, a spark was enough to provoke an enormous explosion. It happened in 1914 with effects that lasted until 1990: four years of trenches; the Bolshevik revolution in Russia; the peace treaty of Versailles, contested by Germany and by the new Soviet power; the fascist takeover in Italy; the Great Crash of 1929; the accession of Hitler and his Nazis to total power in Germany; the Second World War with the extermination of the European Jewry; the “Iron Curtain” and the Stalinist totalitarianism forcefully imposed on almost all countries of central and eastern Europe; the Cold War; and the long decay of the Soviet system until its final collapse.
All horrors of the twentieth century did not succeed, however, in erasing the results of the second cultural unification of Europe. On the contrary, this was extended and deepened by the development of rail networks, motorways, new means of communication, by the spread of industry, the growth of cities, by the advances of literacy… in short, by the greater uniformity of living conditions and the material environment. Moreover, among the lasting results of the second cultural unification was the idea of Europe as a cultural reality, shared since the eighteenth century by a significant part of the elites of a majority of European nations. These elites became more and more convinced that this cultural reality had to be completed by an economic and even a political one.

Solution: Daily Problem Practice [World History: Week 16]- 29 January
Q. What were the factors responsible for the rapid industrialisation Germany after 1870? How did the industrialisation process of Germany differ from that of Britain? [20 Marks]
The Industrial Revolution began about a century later in Germany than it did in England. Before 1870 Germany was not united properly. This was because of the power struggle, mainly between Prussia and Austria, that was occurring at the time. This disunity did not provide for a stable or flourishing economy.
Factors responsible for the rapid industrialisation of Germany after 1870
- Unification of Germany:
- In 1871 finally a united Germany was formed under the chancellor of Germany, Bismarck, which united the divided states together.
- A new united country meant that goods, natural resources could be distributed among all of Germany faster than before. Business thrived because of the unification.
- A unified country meant that it was coordinated in its actions, and therefore was less vulnerable to political, social and military attacks which lowered costs and risks associated with owning a business.
- Government’s Role, Protection and Welfare:
- Government supported not only heavy industry but also crafts and trades.
- In 1879 industrial protection was introduced by applying the foreign tariffs on imports. This encouraged trade, employment, and business.
- Government accumulated a lot of money from tariffs imposed on foreign items, which allowed her to put money back into the economy and to introduce social welfares such as Health Insurance, Accident Insurance and Old Age Pension.
- Social Welfare was also introduced (First time by Bismark) made people think twice about how bad the government was, and deterred people from swinging toward the communist side of the political spectrum. Also these deterred migration of skilled Germans to other countries like the USA.
- Contribution of Bismarck:
- Firstly, he unified the country; secondly, he brought the economy into line; thirdly, he made sure it stayed that way and encouraged it; and fourthly, he prevented anything from hurting the economy badly.
- Bismarck won the support of both industry and skilled workers by his high tariff policies, which protected profits and wages from American competition, although they alienated the liberal intellectuals who wanted free trade
- Even before unification, his Blood and iron Policy included Iron (which fuelled Industrialization).

None of the larger German states had supported either Prussia’s war or the formation of the North German Confederation led by Prussia. The states that formed what is often called the Third Germany, that is, Germany exclusive of Austria and Prussia, did not desire to come under the control of either of those states. None of them wished to be pulled into a war that showed little likelihood of benefiting any of them. In the Seven Weeks’ War, the support they gave Austria had been lukewarm.
In 1870 Bismarck engineered another war, this time against France. The conflict would become known to history as the Franco-Prussian War. Nationalistic fervor was ignited by the promised annexation of Lorraine and Alsace, which had belonged to the Holy Roman Empire and had been seized by France in the seventeenth century. With this goal in sight, the south German states eagerly joined in the war against the country that had come to be seen as Germany’s traditional enemy. Bismarck’s major war aim–the voluntary entry of the south German states into a constitutional German nation-state–occurred during the patriotic frenzy generated by stunning military victories against French forces in the fall of 1870. Months before a peace treaty was signed with France in May 1871, a united Germany was established as the German Empire, and the Prussian king, Wilhelm I, was crowned its emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
The German Empire–often called the Second Reich to distinguish it from the First Reich, established by Charlemagne in 800–was based on two compromises. The first was between the king of Prussia and the rulers of the other German states, who agreed to accept him as the kaiser (emperor) of a united Germany, provided they could continue to rule their states largely as they had in the past. The second was the agreement among many segments of German society to accept a unified Germany based on a constitution that combined a powerful authoritarian monarchy with a weak representative body, the Reichstag, elected by universal male suffrage. No one was completely satisfied with the bargain. The kaiser had to contend with a parliament elected by the people in a secret vote. The people were represented in a parliament having limited control over the kaiser.
As had been the tradition in Prussia, the kaiser controlled foreign policy and the army through his handpicked ministers, who formed the government and prepared legislation.

II found the huge sum of 40,000,000 thalers in his fighting uncle's treasure chest, yet within a few years all these splendid advantages were frittered away in idle dalliance and the weak king found himself twenty millions in debt.
By the time he died, 1797, Prussia was riding to a fall; and disregarding plain measures for her own safety, she had reached the sad place where the sturdy old Prussian spirit of prudence and independence had become so compromised that Prussia almost deemed it unessential to preserve her own political life!
Thus, within three generations, Prussia repeated the old story of human life, wherein the weak descendant eats up the strong sire's goods. Frederick the Great died Aug. 17th, 1786. Within three years, France struck at the German lands; and within 20 years the old Constitution of the Empire was scoffed at by encircling enemies along the frontiers, led by France, while at home political disputants destroyed National spirit by exciting revolution after revolution. "Everywhere," says Zimmermann, (Germany, p. 1618), "one felt the morning breeze of the new dispensation." The cry of the people had to be answered, and the common man wanted to know not only "Why!" but "When!"
For the ensuing 85 years clamor, disruption and disunion continue often accompanied by bloodshed; till through Bismarck's great work over which he toiled for 40-odd years, came the final answer of the Imperial democracy, 1871.
* * * * *
It is to be the labor of years with confusion worse confounded, as we go along. The Feudal system, with which Germany has been for centuries petrified, must be thrown off; the peasant laborers freed in some sort, whether social or political, the absurd restrictions of countless customs houses walling-in each petty principality, must be destroyed. Before a new Germany may emerge, if Germany is to emerge at all, a National faith must be stimulated, fighting blood stirred, wars waged. Then, and then only, may this idea of German Unity, long the puzzling mental preoccupation of the fathers, become a geographical actuality and a political fact.
The German peasants' sense of respect for vested authority, even when held by hated kings, made the common people of the various German states almost ox-like in their patience under harsh political conditions.

Germany: A brief history
A brief introduction to the history of Germany.
As Europe's largest economy Germany is a key member of the continent's economic, political, and defence organisations. European power struggles immersed Germany in two devastating World Wars in the first half of the 20th century and left the country occupied by the victorious Allied powers of France, the Soviet Union, the UK and the USA in 1945.
With the advent of the Cold War, two German states were formed in 1949 namely the western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). The democratic FRG embedded itself in key Western economic and security organisations, i.e. the EU and NATO, while the Communist GDR was on the front line of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact countries and was a puppet of Moscow. The decline of the USSR and the end of the Cold War allowed for German unification in 1990. Since then Germany has spent considerable funds to bring productivity and wages in the former GDR up to FRG standards.
Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community (EEC) (now the European Union (EU)) in 1957 and participated in the introduction of the Euro (EUR) in a two-phased approach in 1999 (accounting phase) and 2002 (monetary phase) to replace the Deutsche Mark (DEM). It was in 1955 that the FRG joined NATO and in 1990 NATO expanded to include the former GDR. Germany is also a member country of the Schengen Area in which border controls with other Schengen members have been eliminated while at the same those with non-Schengen countries have been strengthened. In January 2011, Germany assumed a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for the 2011/12 term.
CIA World Factbook / Expatica
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Afterward, the region developed as a buffer for great powers of the day, and a unified German state did not immediately take shape. Instead, inhabitants formed strong area ties as they rebuilt their war-ravaged societies.
THE war also gave rise to a yearning for stability, paving the way for authoritarian rule. But even as Bismarck's Prussia came to dominate Germany in 1871, regional interests had to be taken into account.
This century's two world wars smashed the old authoritiarian order, but postwar West Germany promoted the sense of regionalism in its federal system to prevent the return of a strong central power.
The wide reach of modern communications has diminished regional loyalty, but such allegiances have not faded entirely. ``People identify with their individual state rather than Germany as a whole,'' says Prof. Heinz Laufer, dean of political science at the University of Munich.
In another move to limit centrification, the framers of Germany's Basic Law incorporated aspects of a widely held desire for social equilibrium into West Germany's new federal system. As a result, German states, at least in the west, enjoy a common standard of living not prevalent in the United States, where the differences between rich and poor states are stronger.
States may soon expand their powers. A bill passed by the lower house of Parliament, the Bundestag, would permit states to implement local legislation in a greater number of spheres, on condition there is no conflict with existing federal rules.
The bill is almost certain to win Bundesrat approval, meaning that states may soon introduce contrasting local laws on areas such as crime fighting and economic regulation. The federal Constitutional Court would resolve any dispute between federal and state legislation.
``Germany has always been better off when it has been decentralized,'' says Johann Boehm, Bavaria's minister for federal and European affairs. ``It makes sense to try to go about problem solving in managable units.''
Yet changes could ultimately upset equilibrium among states, serving as a potential source of social tension. They could also divert the judiciary's attention from other important matters, experts say.
Karlheinz Niclauss, dean of Bonn University's political science department, says financial considerations are behind the states' push. The 11 western states currently need to subsidize the five states of the former East Germany. That is causing some western state leaders to agitate for more influence in the way revenue is raised and dispersed, Mr. Niclauss says.

Although there were no political challenges to enlightened absolutism, as was the case in France, all phenomena, including religion, were subject to critical, reasoned examination to determine their rationality. In this more tolerant environment, differing religious views could still create social friction, but ways were found for the empire’s three main religions–Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism–to coexist in most states. The expulsion of about 20,000 Protestants from the ecclesiastical state of Salzburg during 1731-32 was viewed by the educated public at the time as a harking back to less enlightened days.
Several new universities were founded, some soon considered among Europe’s best. An increasingly literate public made possible a jump in the number of journals and newspapers. At the end of the seventeenth century, most books printed in Germany were in Latin. By the end of the next century, all but 5 percent were in German. The eighteenth century also saw a refinement of the German language and a flowering of German literature with the appearance of such figures as Gotthold Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller. German music also reached great heights with the Bach family, George Frederick Handel, Joseph Haydn, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The French Revolution and Germany
The French Revolution, which erupted in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille in Paris, at first gained the enthusiastic approval of some German intellectuals, who welcomed the proclamation of a constitution and a bill of rights. Within a few years, most of this support had dissipated, replaced by fear of a newly aggressive French nationalism and horror at the execution of the revolution’s opponents. In 1792 French troops invaded Germany and were at first pushed back by imperial forces. But at the Battle of Valmy in late 1792, the French army, a revolutionary citizens’ army fighting on its own soil, defeated the professional imperial army. By 1794 France had secured control of the Rhineland, which it was to occupy for twenty years.
During the Rhineland occupation, France followed its traditional policy of keeping Austria and Prussia apart and manipulating the smaller German states. In observance of the Treaty of Basel of 1795, Prussian and German forces north of the Main River ceased efforts against the French.

The city itself had acquired younger inhabitants, there were always groups of young happy people, going about their business, new foreign stores had come to town to add to the already high quality German stores.
UNZA lecturer of history, Friday Mulenga, said the unification of
“It is not good to divide people who are the same like the case of
As the Germans toast their unification, they will be doing so knowing that some countries in Europe did not want to see the two Germans re-united because of the First and
But it is history and
“Our special commitment to

Germany•The Official name is Federal Republic of Germany.• It consist 16 states.•The Capital of Germany is Berlin.•Joachim Gauck is the President of Germany•Euro is the Currency of Germany
• The ‘loose association of territories that preceded the creation of the modern German state.’ (Tim Kirk)• After the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) which ended the Thirty Years War there were still 234 territories and 51 ‘Imperial Cities’.• The Holy Roman Empire was formally dissolved on 6 August 1806 by the Treaty of Press burg, after the defeat of Austria by Napoleon
• Annual growth rate: (2011 est.) 2.7%• Unemployment rate: (2011 est.) 5.5%• Inflation rate: (2011 est.) 2.5%• Gross domestic product grew by 2.7%• GDP (2011 est.) $3.2 trillion• A Mercedes-Benz car. Germany was the worlds leading exporter of goods from 2003 to 2008.
• The official language of Germany is Standard German, with over 95% of the country speaking Standard German or German dialects as their first language. Minority first languages include:• Sorbian 0.09%• Romani 0.08%• Danish 0.06%• North Frisian 0.01%
Germanys television market is the largest in Europe, with some 34 million TV household. Around 90% of German households have cable or satellite TV, and viewers can choose from a variety of free-to- view public and commercial channels. Germany is home to some of the worlds largest media conglomerates.
• 64.1 percent of the German population belongs to Christian denominations.• 31.4 percent are Roman Catholic, and• 32.7 percent are affiliated with Protestantism.
• Germany has been the home of many famous inventors and engineers such as, Konrad Zuse, who built the first computer and Albert Einstein who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics and others.
A popular German saying has the meaning: "Breakfast like an emperor, lunch like a king, and dinner like a beggar." Breakfast is usually a selection of breads and rolls with jam and honey or cold meats and cheese, sometimes accompanied by a boiled egg.
• Sport forms an integral part of German life.

Numerous German cities were shaken by uprisings in which crowds consisting mainly of the urban poor, but also of students and members of the liberal middle class, stormed their rulers’ palaces and demanded fundamental reform. Berlin and Vienna were especially hard hit by what came to be called the revolutions of 1848. The rulers of both cities, like rulers elsewhere, quickly acceded to the demands of their rebellious subjects and promised constitutions and representative government. Conservative governments fell, and Metternich fled to Britain. Liberals called for a national convention to draft a constitution for all of Germany. The National Assembly, consisting of about 800 delegates from throughout Germany, met in a church in Frankfurt, the Paulskirche, from May 1848 to March 1849 for this purpose.
Within just a few months, liberal hopes for a reformed Germany were disappointed. Conservative forces saw that the liberal movement was divided into a number of camps having sharply different aims. Furthermore, the liberals had little support left among the lower classes, who had supported them in the first weeks of the revolution by constructing barricades and massing before their rulers’ palaces. Few liberals desired popular democracy or were willing to enact radical economic reforms that would help farmers and artisans. As a result of this timidity, the masses deserted the liberals. Thus, conservatives were able to win sizable elements of these groups to their side by promising to address their concerns. Factory workers had largely withheld support from the liberal cause because they earned relatively good wages compared with farmers and artisans.
Once the conservatives regrouped and launched their successful counterattack across Germany, many of the reforms promised in March 1848 were forgotten. The National Assembly published the constitution it had drafted during months of hard debate. It proposed the unification of Germany as a federation with a hereditary emperor and a parliament with delegates elected directly. The constitution resolved the dispute between supporters of “Little Germany,” that is, a united Germany that would exclude Austria and the Habsburg Empire, and those supporting “Large Germany,” which would include both. The constitution advocated the latter.
The Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm IV (r. 1840-58), was elected united Germany’s first emperor. He refused the crown, stating that he could be elected only by other kings. At that point, the assembly disbanded.

After the ruling family became extinct upon the death of Prince Bernhard VI in 1468, Anhalt-Bernburg was inherited by Prince George I of Anhalt-Dessau.
With Anhalt-Dessau it was inherited by Prince Joachim Ernest of Anhalt-Zerbst in 1561, who unified all Anhalt lands under his rule in 1570. Re-united Anhalt was again divided in 1603 among Prince Joachim Ernest's sons into the lines of Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Köthen, Anhalt-Plötzkau, Anhalt-Bernburg and Anhalt-Zerbst. His second son Prince Christian I took his residence at Bernburg. Christian's younger son Frederick established the separate Principality of Anhalt-Harzgerode in 1635, which existed until 1709. Prince Victor Amadeus of Anhalt-Bernburg inherited Anhalt-Plötzkau in 1665.Upon his death in 1718 his lands were further divided and the Principality of Anhalt-Zeitz-Hoym was created for his second son Lebrecht, which was reunited with Anhalt-Bernburg in 1812. In 1803 Prince Alexius Frederick Christian of Anhalt-Bernburg was elevated to the rank of a duke by Emperor Francis II of Habsburg. His son Duke Alexander Karl however died without issue in 1863, whereafter Anhalt-Bernburg was inherited by Leopold IV, Duke of Anhalt-Dessau, re-uniting all Anhalt lands under his rule. Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic in western-central Europe. It includes 16 constituent states and covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres (137,847 sq mi) with a largely temperate seasonal climate. Its capital and largest city is Berlin. With 81 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state in the European Union.
After the United States, it is the second most popular migration destination in the world. Various Germanic tribes have occupied northern Germany since classical antiquity.A region named Germania was documented before 100 CE. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1989 the fall of communism marked the end of one of the most dramatic vestiges of World War II. Plans to reunite the democratic government of West Germany and the collapsed communist government of East Germany began immediately and were realized on October 3, 1990. Since that time, programs have been introduced to successfully integrate the radically different approaches to environmental and land use planning taken by both countries. While other eastern bloc countries have split (Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) the Germany Democratic Republic (GDR) is the only country to have immediately merged with a western nation. Has this jump-start helped or hindered this former eastern bloc country and, more specifically, how has land development and the ecosystem been effected by reunification?
Estimates show that in the early 1990s more money was given to East Germany for reconstruction than the seven eastern bloc countries combined (Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia). Yet, while East Germany has been pumped with money (particularly support from West Germany), economic and environmental recovery has taken much longer than expected. The slow process of reform has been most likely caused by the difficulties of introducing a free market into the region, pressures for economic growth, the cost of environmental cleanup and the psychological change involved in restructuring a country. While the gap between the east and west is not getting smaller, a similar pattern is repeating itself within the former GDR. The new Länder (East German states) differ greatly in the rate in which they are progressing. While some areas are improving slowly, others are heading toward mounting instability. Poor environmental conditions, few jobs and poor housing coupled with a slow reform process have caused migratory patterns which flow solely from east to west.
Reunification increased West Germany’s land area by 43 percent and population by more than 16 million. This increase in land and population has put a tremendous stress on West Germany for it inherited a country that had virtually ignored environmental and infrastructure concerns for approximately 40 years. Spatial development in the east has an impact on future economic trends and influences regional labor-markets, patterns of migration and transportation, and environmental sustainability. As stated in a 1996 report by the European Commission:
German Planning, 1923-1945
While this report proposes to concentrate on post-WWII German land use planning, it is also important to examine the historical foundation of 20th Century German planning.

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A decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the year 1989 now stands firmly as a watershed date in German history. With the seemingly unstoppable force of people fleeing the east, first by way of Hungary and subsequently by way of the West German Embassy in Prague, and then with the massive presence of people staging protests within the GDR reclaiming their voices in the political process as "we" the people, a historic chain of events was initiated which allowed no turning back. Nor did this process end with the official unification of the two Germanies on October 3, 1990. Between 1989 and 1999, Germany witnessed a series of major tectonic shifts in all aspects of its political, social and cultural life. The resulting pressures and tensions continue to define a new "Berlin Republic" that is still groping for its national identity both internally and with a view to broader European, Eastern European and global contexts.
The intervening time span of 10 years also affords us the opportunity to gauge the central issues that have emerged during this series of shifts. In particular, we would identify three sets of concerns that have defined the decade: East-West relations, the renegotiations of citizenship and the role of the German past. Thus, as the decade between 1989 and 1999 obviously stands under the sign of the end of the Cold War, the Berlin Republic has been faced with the need to negotiate a new relationship between the former East and West Germany - entities which persist even after the states that had comprised them have merged. Secondly, on the basis of both internal and external pressures, and particularly as part of the European Community, the united Germany repeatedly has had to confront issues of citizenship and immigration throughout the past decade. Thirdly, since 1989 Germans have been obliged to confront their history once more, if only by the merging of two versions of the Nazi past which had been kept separate for 40 years.

The excluded Soviet zone then formed the German Democratic Republic which included East Berlin. The prospering West drew people from the East but a stop was put to this in 1961 when the Berlin Wall was built.
During the following four decades, both German countries chose to follow completely different paths, politically and economically. After a short but powerful period of peaceful manifestations in Eastern Germany, on November 9, 1989 the GDR border police unexpectedly opened the Berlin Wall. Almost a year later the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany.
Many differences between both German States have disappeared but at many places, traces of Eastern Germany can still be found, which is one of many reasons to travel through Germany.
Society and Culture
Germany has a vibrant, rich and interesting cultural life. Names like Einstein, Beethoven and Bach can already be identified with the traditional culture of the country. Germans are pretty fond of watching and participating in all sorts of sports, games, concerts and contests and they also have a great appreciation for the arts. Germany’s rich cultural heritage is also visible in its architecture – a diverse mix of the modern and historical.
Just under two thirds of Germans consider themselves Christians, and around a third say they have no religion or are members of a non-Christian faith community such as Muslim or Jewish.
*The Small Print
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While Jews started emigrating to Germany from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, Jewish cultural life in Berlin didn't begin blossoming until after unification 10 years ago.
A highly visible presence
One important factor was that the majestic New Synagogue, located in formerly Communist East Berlin, once again became a highly visible, central locus of Jewish culture in the reunified capital.
Performances, readings, and exhibits by Jewish artists are well attended, and Jewish-run cafes and restaurants in the vicinity are always bustling.
Berlin's newly built Jewish Museum will open next year, and the long-debated Holocaust Memorial has finally been approved for construction. Among Germans there is much greater acceptance of and curiosity about things Jewish, says Michael May, managing director of the Jewish Community of Berlin.
Problems settling in
Without the influx of newcomers from the former USSR, who now make up the majority of the city's Jewish community, it is unlikely that such a vibrant cultural life could be possible. Yet the promises of a new beginning in Germany have also been accompanied by the troubles typical of first-generation immigrants.
Even within the broader German- Jewish community, the language barrier and immigrants' ignorance of tradition have been problematic.
The motivation to come to Germany was a "combination of the existential need to improve one's situation and anti-Semitism [in the former Soviet Union]," says Mr. May.
Given recent political and economic upheaval, Germany appeared to be a bastion of stability. Furthermore, the German government provided a loophole to its strict immigration laws by allowing Jews to enter the country in the same category as war refugees. Still, integration has been difficult.
"The truth is that people who had a high social standing in Russia despite their Jewishness, on the whole haven't continued their careers and now have relatively menial jobs," says May.
Language is the main hindrance to getting a comparable job. Middle-aged immigrants eagerly attend German classes offered by the Jewish community, but it is improbable that they will ever find work in their previous professions.
On the other hand, a common language provides a strong bond among immigrants. "Most of all, Jews feel like foreigners here," says Ilya Levin of the Jewish Community's welfare office. "But they also feel positive about Judaism: the community, the holidays, and all the things Jews didn't have in the Soviet Union."

The initially non-hereditary Emperor, elected by the many princes, dukes, and bishops of the constituent lands and confirmed by the Pope, nominally governed over a vast territory, but had very limited ability to intervene in the affairs of the hundreds of entities that made up the Empire, many of which would often wage war against each other. The Empire was never able to develop into a centralized state.
Beginning in 1517 with Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle church, the German-speaking territories bore the brunt of the pan-European struggles unleashed by the Reformation. The leaders of the German kingdoms and principalities chose sides, leading to a split of the Empire into Protestant and Catholic regions, with the Protestant strongholds mostly in the North and East, the Catholic in the South and West. The split along confessional lines also laid the groundwork for the later development of the most powerful German states–Prussia and Austria–as the Prussian Hohenzollern line adopted Protestantism and the Hapsburgs remained Catholic.
The tension culminated in the 30 Years War (1618-1648), a combination of wars within the Empire and between outside European states that were fought on German land. These wars, which ended in a rough stalemate, devastated the German people and economy, definitively strengthened the rule of the various German rulers at the cost of the (Habsburg) Emperor (though Habsburg Austria remained the dominant single German entity within the Empire), and established the continued presence of both Catholics and Protestants in German territories.
The Rise of Prussia
The 18th and 19th Centuries were marked by the rise of Prussia as the second powerful, dominant state in the German-speaking territories alongside Austria, and Austrian-Prussian rivalry became the dominant political factor in German affairs. Successive Prussian kings succeeded in modernizing, centralizing, and expanding the Prussian state, creating a modern bureaucracy and the Continent’s strongest military. Despite Prussia’s emphasis on militarism and authority, Prussia also became a center of the German Enlightenment and was known for its religious tolerance, with its western regions being predominantly Catholic and Jews being granted complete legal equality by 1812. After humiliating losses to Napoleon’s armies, Prussia embarked on a series of administrative, military, economic, and education reforms that eventually succeeded in turning Prussia into the Continent’s strongest state.

At the time of the 1789 French Revolution, only half of the French people spoke some French, and 12–13% spoke the version of it that was to be found in literature and in educational facilities, according to Hobsbawm.
During the Italian unification, the number of people speaking the Italian language was even lower. The French state promoted the replacement of various regional dialects and languages by a centralised French language. The introduction of conscription and the Third Republic's 1880s laws on public instruction facilitated the creation of a national identity, under this theory.
Some nation states, such as Germany and Italy, came into existence at least partly as a result of political campaigns by nationalists, during the 19th century. In both cases, the territory was previously divided among other states, some of them very small. The sense of common identity was at first a cultural movement, such as in the Völkisch movement in German-speaking states, which rapidly acquired a political significance. In these cases, the nationalist sentiment and the nationalist movement clearly precede the unification of the German and Italian nation states.
Historians Hans Kohn, Liah Greenfeld, Philip White and others have classified nations such as Germany or Italy, where cultural unification preceded state unification, as ethnic nations or ethnic nationalities. However, "state-driven" national unifications, such as in France, England or China, are more likely to flourish in multiethnic societies, producing a traditional national heritage of civic nations, or territory-based nationalities. Some authors deconstruct the distinction between ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism because of the ambiguity of the concepts. They argue that the paradigmatic case of Ernest Renan is an idealisation and it should be interpreted within the German tradition and not in opposition to it. For example, they argue that the arguments used by Renan at the conference What is a nation? are not consistent with his thinking. This alleged civic conception of the nation would be determined only by the case of the loss gives Alsace and Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War.
The idea of a nation state was and is associated with the rise of the modern system of states, often called the "Westphalian system" in reference to the Treaty of Westphalia (1648).

German culture is shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in europe the culture in germany is quite diverse due to varied history of people in germany hamburg offers labskaus stew.
Over 80 percent of germany's land is used for agriculture and forestry im seaching this for a grade 7 history project and it was hard to understand please make this website is hard to understand there are to many big words for a middle schooler doing a report on germany agriculture 13. History of germany essays: over 180,000 history of germany essays, history of germany term papers, history of germany research paper, book reports 184 990 essays, term and research papers available for unlimited access. Germany, hitler, and world war ii: essays in modern german and world history edition unstated edition. This article deals with the diverse images of jews in germany: which roles they take upon themselves and which symbolic roles german society sees in the jewish community the author tries to unfold the origins and the meaning of these roles including jews as victims, as sensors toward anti-semitism and right-wing extremism.
This is a 25/25 essay assignment on germany modern history, it is detailed about the terror and repression in germany. The history of hamburg germany has many interesting facets in the eleventh century it was burned by the king of poland, and during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it entered into the hanseatic league, becoming an economic power due to its proximity to the ocean. Hamburg's portuguese cemetery it counts as one of the most prominent cultural monuments in hamburg and northern germany because of the exceptional decoration on the gravestones and the second volume of the scientific book series is the sephardim in hamburg the history of a. German history prizes postgraduate essay prize the german history society (ghs), in association with the royal historical society (rhs), will award a prize of £500 to the winner of their annual essay competition. Free essay on bismarck and the unification of germany available totally free at echeatcom, the largest free essay community. History of germany during world war i women garment workers in berlin and hamburg before the first world war, in the german family: essays on the social history of the family in nineteenth-and twentieth-century germany, edited by richard j evans and w r lee.

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Germany's Last Love Parade
Its beginnings were in the still divided Berlin of 1989, a small demonstration for peace and understanding through music, and it became one of the world's most popular musical festivals. The Duisburg Love Parade in 2010 ended with 21 deaths and over 500 injured, and was the last.
Germany's National Anthem
Austrian composer Joseph Haydn created a melody as a hymn to God for an Austrian Emperor. With different lyrics, written by a German poet, it became Germany's national anthem, and for a time this beautiful music was associated with a dark period in the country's past.
Germany's Prehistoric Solar Observatory
For the prehistory agricultural civilization that 7,000 years ago created Germany's Goseck Circle, Solstice was an important seasonal midpoint celebration. The circle predates Britain's Stonehenge by at least two millennia and it probably the world's oldest solar observatory.
Germany's Radioactive Wild Boar and Mushrooms
There continue to be radio active wild boars in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, together with an overall population boom in wild boar families. Thanks to the Chernobyl meltdown of 1986 there is another side to some of the residents of Germany's beautiful forests, including radioactive mushrooms.
Germany's Romantic Road
It's a spectacular journey, through stunning scenery filled with contrasts and historic medieval towns, into a world from the past. Germany’s Romantische Strasse, Romantic Road, a theme route showcasing southern German culture from food and wine to art and architecture. And of course history.
Germany's Ruhr Valley - From Coal to Culture
Germany's rejuvenated Ruhr Valley has a 750 year industrial history, now transformed into a region of plants, animals and culture the 53 towns and cities were a "European Capital of Culture". A tribute honoring the way the region emphasizes European cultures, and links connecting them.
Germany's Tree Lined Avenues Route
It began over 250 years ago as trees planted to help travelers find their way, Germany's Avenues Route, the tree lined Deutsche Alleenstrasse.

While the national, European and global identity of such a unified Germany still remains to be articulated, the contributions at the conference constituted an important step towards identifying the cornerstones around which it is likely to take shape.
Dr. von Moltke is an assistant professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and the Program in Film and Video. He received his PhD from Duke University and joined the U-M faculty in January 1998 after having taught four years at the University of Hildesheim in Germany. His dissertation, "Beyond Authenticity: Experience, Identity and Performance in the New German Cinema," focuses on the role of authenticity and the performative in Edgar Reitz, Rudolf Thome, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He has also worked on representations of Jewishness and the issues of Heimat, Americanization and popular culture in postwar Germany. He is an editor of the German film and media studies journal Montage A/V.
Hell is associate professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. Hell received her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in 1989, and is the author of Post-Fascist Fantasies: Psychoanalysts, History, and the Literature of East Germany (Duke UP, 1997). Through a workshop held at the International Institute on November 12, 1999, the Center for European Studies (CES) sought to inform academics, students and interested citizens about the unification of European currency and its wider sociopolitical implications. Readers can find the schedule of the conference and transcripts of the proceedings on CES's web site: www.umich.edu/~iinet/ces and www.umich.edu/~iinet/ces/euroconference
Cf. Ulrike Peters' summary of the conference, "MauerMüll: An Afterword to the Conference The Unification Effect: The Berlin Republic Ten Years After" at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/german/gs-n-effect.html

In the same year, the West German Union was created, and, in a blatant display of hypocrisy, threatened to annex Prussia if it did not comply to an ultimatum (essentially making Prussia a vassal state). The southern German states, and the now disunited again Thuringian Duchies supported this idea, and quickly Prussia buckled, giving in to the West-Germans. In 1871, the voluntary consent of all the German states, seeing the problems a disunited Germany could give, was given for a new German Union to be created, with the Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire at its head.
At the same time, Thuringia united for a second time, the Second Thuringian Union. This was stronger, and had its own head of state and parliament, known respectively as 'Thüringische König', and 'Thüringische Tag'. This caused a small dispute as to how many electors Thuringia should have, but it was eventually decided that there should be only one, the König.
For a long time, nothing happened. In the Great wars, Thuringia was rather the most average land in the Union. Then, at the end of GWII, it suddenly became independent. To some degree, this came as a great shock to the inhabitants, and some of them spontaneously started rebelling and campaigning for more democracy. Previously, a hideously self-prolonging parliament had been in place, with the Thüringischen Länder voting for the Tag, and the Tag appointing the parliaments of the Länder. The campaign erupted into violence in several areas, especially in the South and in the cities. A group of Rebels seized both Erfurt and Weimar, even with the support of the local army regiments. They were quickly declared independent. A large part of Meiningen and all of Coburg was seized. The majority of the rebels were Läßinisch, and declared the area independent, establishing the Republic of Läßinischland. The remainder quickly disintegrated into a number of petty dictatorships and a few semi-democratic Free Cities. The König fled to Bayern, nearby.
A number of the petty dictatorships gave themselves titles, often many states holding the same name. These states had a tendency to go to war, and eventually a map similar to the old borders was established.

The federal chancellery published a new commercial code and established a uniform currency. The indemnity that France had to pay Germany after losing the 1870-71 war provided capital for railroad construction and building projects. A speculative boom resulted, characterized by large-scale formation of joint-stock companies and unscrupulous investment practices. This period of intense financial speculation and construction, called by Germans the Gründerzeit (founders’ time), ended with the stock market crash of 1873.
Despite the crash and several subsequent periods of economic depression, Germany’s economy grew rapidly. By 1900 it rivaled the more-established British economy as the world’s largest. German coal production, about one-third of Britain’s in 1880, increased sixfold by 1913, almost equaling British yields that year. German steel production increased more than tenfold in the same period, surpassing British production by far.
Industrialization began later in Germany than in Britain, and the German economy was not a significant part of the world economy until late in the nineteenth century. Germany’s industrialization started with the building of railroads in the 1840s and 1850s and the subsequent development of coal mining and iron and steel production, activities that made up what is called the First Industrial Revolution. In Germany, the Second Industrial Revolution, that is, the growth of chemical and electrical industries, followed the enormous expansion of coal and steel production so closely that the country can be said to have experienced the two revolutions almost simultaneously. Germany took an early lead in the chemical and electrical industries. Its chemists became renowned for their discoveries, and by 1914 the country was producing half the world’s electrical equipment. As a result of these developments, Germany became the continent’s industrial giant.
Germany’s population also expanded rapidly, growing from 41.0 million in 1871 to 49.7 million in 1891 and 65.3 million in 1911. The expanding and industrializing economy changed the way this rapidly expanding population earned its livelihood. In 1871 about 49 percent of the workforce was engaged in agriculture; by 1907 only 35 percent was. In the same period, industry’s share of the rapidly growing workforce rose from 31 percent to 40 percent. Urban birth rates were often the country’s highest, but there was much migration from rural areas to urban areas, where most industry was located.

In fact, Germany today is in a political-psychological condition that can be described only as Faustian: “Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in meiner Brust” (“Oh, two souls live in my breast”). Now that monetary union has gone ahead, the country woke up in its new bed on January 1, 2000, scratched its head, and asked itself, “Now, why did we just give up the deutsche mark?”
Since 1989, we have seen how reluctant West German taxpayers have been to provide unemployment benefits, even to their own compatriots in the East. Do we really believe they would be willing to pay for the French unemployed as well?
What is the answer? Of course there are economic arguments for monetary union. But monetary union was conceived as an economic means to a political end. In general terms, it is the continuation of the functionalist approach adopted by the French and German founding fathers of the European Economic Community: political integration through economic integration. But there was a more specific political reason for the decision to make this the central goal of European integration of the last decade. As so often before, the key lies in a compromise between French and German national interests. In 1990, there was at the very least an implicit linkage made between François Mitterrand’s anxious and reluctant support for German unification and Helmut Kohl’s decisive push toward European monetary union. “The whole of Deutschland for Kohl, half the deutsche mark for Mitterrand,” as one wit put it at the time. Leading German politicians will acknowledge privately that monetary union is the price paid for German unification.
So Germany, this newly restored nation-state, has entered monetary union full of reservations, doubts, and fears.
The Coming Crisis?
In fact, received wisdom in EU capitals is already that the EMU will sooner or later face a crisis: perhaps in 2001 or 2002 (just as Britain is preparing to join). Euro-optimists hope this crisis will catalyze economic liberalization, European solidarity, and perhaps even those steps of political unification that historically have preceded, not followed, successful monetary unions. A shared fear of the catastrophic consequences of a failure of monetary union will draw Europeans together, as the shared fear of a common external enemy (Mongols, Turks, Soviets) did in the past.

1. According to the website, what is Nationalism? Nationalism is loyalty to the idea of the state rather than to the community. 2. What is the difference between Nationalism and Patriotism? Patriotism is a love of one’s country that inspires one to serve for the benefit of its citizens. Nationalism is also a love of one’s country, but with the belief that the country is superior to other countries. 3. What was the Romantic Movement and how did it enhance nationalist feelings? The Romantic Movement provided a set of cultural myths and folks traditions that set nations apart.
4. Use the information on only the initial page to briefly describe the impact of nationalism in each of the four countries during the mid-late 1800s: *France- France strove to solidify its own identity as a nation as its territory diminished. *Germany- They wanted to create a German state as much in opposition to Austria as in the interests of national unity. *Italy- Fought to reunify disparate Italian forces, after they were subjugated by French and Austrian leaders. *Russia- Tsar Alexander the 2nd began working on making Russia a modern nation, although other groups bordering Russia faced problems in making their own nations
The questions below are more in-depth, dealing with the unification of Italy and Germany. Use the links on the right of the page to help you answer the following questions.
5. On a separate sheet of paper, make a chronological timeline of the important events leading up to the unification of Italy 6. What term do historians use to identify the reunification of Italy? 7. In a well-constructed paragraph, identify each of the following people and the role each played in Italian unification: *Mazzini
Read excerpts from “General Instructions for the Members of Young Italy” and answer the following questions:
8. Summarize, in a well-constructed sentence, what Mazzini was trying to say to the members of Young Italy.
9. What are two phrases/terms that show nationalist feelings? a. She has suffient strength in herself to become one. b. Italy is destined to become one nation.
10. What was the goal of “Young Italy” according to the document? Unite all Italian citizens. 11. What challenges did Italians have to overcome in order to unite Italy as one nation-state?

On the subject of “sister states,” I begin with a word about Germany, and then turn to the United States.
On October 3, Germany celebrated a national holiday called “Day of German Unity” (Tag der Deutschen Einheit). This holiday does not celebrate the founding of the German Empire in 1871 by 25 constituent entities (four kingdoms, five grand duchies, 13 duchies and principalities, and three free Hanseatic cities) under Bismarck. Rather, the day celebrates the merger in 1990 of West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany or FRG), East Germany (formally the German Democratic Republic or GDR), and a united Berlin. The event has been celebrated annually since that day. Specific modes of its celebration rotate among the state capitals.
I used the word “merger” in a non-technical sense. Three options were possible after the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989:
• continued separate existence, an option viewed with favor in those quarters of Europe fearful of a return of an economically and militarily powerful united Germany;
• unification of the two states into a new third state with a new constitution, or
• the admission into the 11-state FRG of states from the territory of the GDR by means of the new states’ accession to the FRG’s 1949 Constitution (“Basic Law”) as provided by its Article 23.
This last option was the path chosen. The GDR had been a unitary form of government, but it was divided into five states for the purposes of accession. Upon accession, Article 23’s provisions on accession by new states were withdrawn — both because their purpose had been fulfilled and to indicate to neighbors that Germany had no designs on other territory.
The German constitution of 1949 had established a federal form of government as a remedy against the Nazi abuse of a centralized form of government. I have not confirmed, but we may assume, that Americans, with their experience of a federal form, encouraged this structure and it returned Germany to the federal form it had assumed both under the German Empire (1871-1918) and under the Weimar Republic in 1918. Moreover, Article 23 was included for the eventuality of unification with East Germany — in the form of states. Here, too, the drafters would have drawn upon American experience.

Also, Frederick had original taste in military affairs; his army comprised 150 soldiers, with 28 guards on horseback. The prince prided himself on being a wrestler, and one day when a yokel threw the prince, the prince set up a great cry, "I slipped on a cherry stone!"—and this regardless of the fact that it was not the time of the year for cherries.
There was another local ruler, Ludwig Guenther, who was fond of painting horses, and on his death 246-odd horse pictures adorned the walls of his palace.
* * * * *
"Show a German a door and tell him to go through, and he will try to break a hole in the wall."
"Here, every one lives apart in his own narrow corner, with his own opinions; his wife and children round him; ever suspicious of the Government, as of his neighbor; judging everything from his personal point of view, and never from general grounds."
"The sentiment of individualism and the necessity for contradiction are developed to an inconceivable degree in the German."
The problem of directing this intense individualism is the problem of German unity.
* * * * *
With rough manners, blunders, extravagances, absurdities, the hereditary princes continued to sponge on the peasants, generation after generation, till wretchedness spread far over the German lands. They had their chteaux, their dancing girls, their dogs, horses, cats, mistresses and their royal armies.
The misery of centuries of oppression existed; petty monarchs exercised powers of life and death.
The South German mocked the North German's pronunciation. One set vowed that the "g" in "goose" is hard, the other proclaimed that the "g" is soft. One side went about mumbling with hard "g's," "A well-baked goose is a gracious gift of God," whereupon the other side replied that all the "g's" are "j's," that the "gute ganz" is really "jute janz," and "Gottes" "Jottes." And duels were fought over it.
Nor was this all. An intense local pride expressed itself in grotesque dialects, unsoftened by intercourse with the outer world; also, there were outlandish fashions in dress and other domestic affairs.

Austria endured repeated defeats at the hands of the French, most notably at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. At this battle, Russians fought alongside Austrians against the French, who were aided by forces from several south German states, including Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg.
Prussia reentered the war against France in 1806, but its forces were badly beaten at the Battle of Jena that same year. Prussia was abandoned by its ally Russia and lost territory as a result of the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807. These national humiliations motivated the Prussians to undertake a serious program of social and military reform. The most noted of the reformers–Karl vom Stein, Karl August von Hardenberg, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Gerhard von Scharnhorst, along with many others–improved the country’s laws, education, administration, and military organization. Scharnhorst, responsible for military reforms, emphasized the importance to the army of moral incentives, personal courage, and individual responsibility. He also introduced the principle of competition and abandoned the privileges accorded to nobility within the officer corps. A revitalized Prussia joined with Austria and Russia to defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in late 1813 and drove him out of Germany. Prussian forces under General Gebhard von Blücher were essential to the final victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Despite Napoleon’s defeat, some of the changes he had brought to Germany during the French occupation were retained. Public administration was improved, feudalism was weakened, the power of the trade guilds was reduced, and the Napoleonic Code replaced traditional legal codes in many areas. The new legal code was popular and remained in effect in the Rhineland until 1900. As a result of these reforms, some areas of Germany were better prepared for the coming of industrialization in the nineteenth century.
French occupation authorities also allowed many smaller states, ecclesiastical entities, and free cities to be incorporated into their larger neighbors. Approximately 300 states had existed within the Holy Roman Empire in 1789; only about forty remained by 1814. The empire ceased to exist in 1806 when Francis II of Austria gave up his imperial title.

Austrian National Identity
The absence of an Austrian national identity was one of the problems confronted when Austria became a country in November 1918. Before 1918 there had been no tradition among German-speaking Austrians of striving for national independence as a small German-speaking state separated from Austria-Hungary or separated from Germany. Within the context of the multiethnic and multilinguistic empire, the great majority of the inhabitants of what was to become Austria considered themselves "Germans" insofar as they spoke German and identified with German culture.
Strong provincial identities that stemmed from the provinces' histories as distinct political and administrative entities with their own traditions existed for this reason. Tiroleans, for example, identified more with their province than with the new nation-state. As a result, the idea of an "Austrian nation" as a cultural and political entity greater than the sum total of provinces, yet smaller than the pan-German idea of the unification of all German speakers into one state, virtually did not exist in 1918. The Austrian historian Friedrich Heer described the confusion surrounding Austrians' national identity in the following manner: "Who were these Austrians after 1918? Were they Germans in rump Austria, German-Austrians, AustrianGermans , Germans in a `second German state,' or an Austrian nation?"
Furthermore, Austrians had serious doubts about the economic and political viability of a small German-speaking state. Two alternatives were envisioned for Austria: either membership in a confederation of the states formed out of Austria-Hungary or unification with Germany as a legitimate expression of Austrian national self-determination. Neither alternative was realized. Efforts to form a "Danube Confederation" failed, and the Allies prohibited Austria's unification with Germany in the treaties signed after World War I. As a compromise between these alternatives, Austria was a "state which no one wanted."
After 1918 many Austrians identified themselves as being members of a "German nation" based on shared linguistic, cultural, and ethnic characteristics. Since unification with Germany was forbidden, most Austrians regarded their new country as a "second" German state arbitrarily created by the victorious powers. During the troubled interwar period, unification with a democratic Germany was seen by many, not only by those on the political right but across the entire political spectrum, as a solution for Austria's many problems.

Historical Setting: Early History to 1945
PEOPLE HAVE DWELLED for thousands of years in the territory now occupied by the Federal Republic of Germany. The first significant written account of this area’s inhabitants is Germania, written about A.D. 98 by the Roman historian Tacitus. The Germanic tribes he describes are believed to have come from Scandinavia to Germany about 100 B.C., perhaps induced to migrate by overpopulation. The Germanic tribes living to the west of the Rhine River and south of the Main River were soon subdued by the Romans and incorporated into the Roman Empire. Tribes living to the east and north of these rivers remained free but had more or less friendly relations with the Romans for several centuries. Beginning in the fourth century A.D., new westward migrations of eastern peoples caused the Germanic tribes to move into the Roman Empire, which by the late fifth century ceased to exist.
One of the largest Germanic tribes, the Franks, came to control the territory that was to become France and much of what is now western Germany and Italy. In A.D. 800 their ruler, Charlemagne, was crowned in Rome by the pope as emperor of all of this territory. Because of its vastness, Charlemagne’s empire split into three kingdoms within two generations, the inhabitants of the West Frankish Kingdom speaking an early form of French and those in the East Frankish Kingdom speaking an early form of German. The tribes of the eastern kingdom–Franconians, Saxons, Bavarians, Swabians, and several others–were ruled by descendants of Charlemagne until 911, when they elected a Franconian, Conrad I, to be their king. Some historians regard Conrad’s election as the beginning of what can properly be considered German history.
German kings soon added the Middle Kingdom to their realm and adjudged themselves rulers of what would later be called the Holy Roman Empire. In 962 Otto I became the first of the German kings crowned emperor in Rome. By the middle of the next century, the German lands ruled by the emperors were the richest and most politically powerful part of Europe. German princes stopped the westward advances of the Magyar tribe, and Germans began moving eastward to begin a long process of colonization.

In truth, it could have been worse; the Morgenthau Plan proposed handing over Germany’s best industrial territories to its neighbors in addition to breaking it up into different states.
The result was an East/West division where each state’s foreign policy was controlled by the superpowers. Neither could rearm; both relied upon either Washington or Moscow for security; both had diametrically different ideologies that were imposed from the outside. It was a time of puppets, and only unimportant decisions could be made by native Germans.
In the Cold War confrontation, it became obvious to both sides that Germany’s strength was an asset to be used rather than plundered. Both used their power to rebuild Germany economically, though not militarily. German elites on both sides were promoted, applauded, and supported when they achieved great things economically and chided or punished if they tried to do anything else.
German elites had also learned the hard way that Germany alone could not use its military power – great as that might be – to reorder Europe in its favor. Since German power was so obvious, any attempt to militarily alter the balance of Europe would result in an alliance to destroy it. German elites in the East and the West – growing up with plenty of foreign soldiers to remind them of their nation-state’s vulnerabilities – absorbed the lesson fully.
Until unity was rather suddenly thrust upon Germany, which has spent the past 25 years trying to find a moral way to use their great power.
The collapse of the Eastern Bloc caught East Germany with its pants down; the Berlin Wall almost fell by accident. Germany spent twenty five years coming to grips with the suddenness of 1989; it is now finally emerging from the shadow of the Cold War.
Germans are aware more than other countries about slippery slopes. Family stories of World War II and the Holocaust tend to do that. So German political culture has a generation of leaders that see war as almost never the answer. But what hasn’t changed is the fundamental German thinking that a united Europe is the only place where Germany will be safe.
Now German elites have thrown themselves into the European Union instead of Panzer tank production. For 25 years, it’s been possible to see the demilitarized Germany as the model state, but the financial crisis required bailouts, and only Germany had the cash on hand. Now German creditors are slandered as proto-Nazis in Athens.

When Germany reunified, East Germany was merely absorbed into West Germany, creating the reunified Germany- The Berlin Republic. The Basic Law stayed in place with minor changes as it had served the country well.
Media set in West Germany:
- A Small Town In Germany
- The ODESSA File
- The Baader Meinhof Complex
- Recurring Saturday Night Live segment Sprockets
- A number of German Media most non-Germans never ever heard of
- This policy of standing by Israel has occasionally bitten Germany in the arse, as when it threatened to ruin anything resembling a unified European front on the Palestinian statehood resolution in 2011.

Germany is a cosmopolitan country shaped by a pluralism of lifestyles. Demographic change is set to play a major role in the coming years.
With some 81.2 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous nation in the European Union. The modern, cosmopolitan country has developed into an important immigration country. A good 16.4 million people in Germany have a migratory background. Germany is now among those nations with the most liberal immigration rules. According to a 2014 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), it is the most popular immigration country after the USA.
Most people in Germany have a high standard of living, on an international comparison, and the corresponding freedom to shape their own lives. The United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) 2014 ranks Germany sixth of 187 countries. In the Nation Brands Index 2014, an international survey on the image of 50 countries, Germany tops the scale – also owing to its high values in the areas of quality of life and social justice. Germany considers itself a welfare state, whose primary task is to protect all its citizens.
New ways of life are changing the society
German society is shaped by a pluralism of lifestyles and ethno-cultural diversity. New ways of life and everyday realities are changing daily life in society. Immigrants enrich the country with new perspectives and experiences. There is great social openness and acceptance as regards alternative ways of life and different sexual orientations. Advances are being made in terms of gender equality and traditional gender role assignments are no longer rigid. People with disabilities are taking an ever greater role in social life.
Demographic and socioeconomic change
In future, demographic change is set to shape Germany more than virtually any other development. The birth rate has been constantly low since the late 1990s at 1.4 children per woman, and life expectancy is rising. By 2050 the population in Germany is estimated to shrink by around seven million people. At the same time, the growing number of elderly people is presenting social welfare systems with new challenges.
Socioeconomic change in Germany in recent years has led to the emergence of new social risks and stronger social diversification according to economic living conditions. Although in 2014 unemployment was at the same low level as in 1991 (on average 2.7 million), almost one in six in Germany is at risk of poverty, particularly young people and single parents. Moreover, social differences continue to exist between east and west.

Among the German romantics, “Volk” “signified the union of a group of people with a transcendental essence,” the fusion of man with nature (particularly his native landscape, following Wilhelm Riehl), mythos, or the cosmos, wherein man found “the source of his creativity, his depth of feeling, his individuality, and his unity with other members of the Volk.” A related concept is “Volkstum,” a term that combines the notions of folklore and ethnicity.
Völkisch thought arose from the Romantic nationalism of the early nineteenth century, particularly that of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who, along with Ernst Moritz Arndt and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, “began to conceive of the Volk in heroic terms during the wars of liberation against Napoleon.” Völkisch thought emerged at a time when Germany existed as a collection of semi-feudal principalities. As political unity eluded them for more than half a century, völkisch thinkers were forced to emphasize cultural and spiritual rather than political dimensions of unity. Thus they came to idealize, even mystify, the concept of nationhood. This process attained such momentum that when political unification finally came in 1871, the prosaic nature of Bismarck’s Realpolitik led to a tremendous sense of disappointment.
Völkisch thought also coincided with the Industrial Revolution and the attendant destruction of the German landscape, dislocations of the population, obsolescence of traditional crafts and tools, social alienation, political upheavals (e.g., the revolutions of 1848), and economic crises. These led eventually to disenchantment and finally to the wholesale rejection of industrial society and modernity, which came to be seen as materialistic, soulless, rootless, abstract, mechanical, alienating, cosmopolitan, and irreconcilable with national self-identification.

Background: As Europe’s largest economy and second most populous nation (after Russia), Germany is a key member of the continent’s economic, political, and defense organizations. European power struggles immersed Germany in two devastating World Wars in the first half of the 20th century and left the country occupied by the victorious Allied powers of the US, UK, France, and the Soviet Union in 1945. With the advent of the Cold War, two German states were formed in 1949: the western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). The democratic FRG embedded itself in key Western economic and security organizations, the EC, which became the EU, and NATO, while the Communist GDR was on the front line of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The decline of the USSR and the end of the Cold War allowed for German unification in 1990. Since then, Germany has expended considerable funds to bring Eastern productivity and wages up to Western standards. In January 1999, Germany and 10 other EU countries introduced a common European exchange currency, the euro. In January 2011, Germany assumed a nonpermanent seat on the UN Security Council for the 2011-12 term.
Government type: federal republic
Currency: euro (EUR)
Geography of Germany
Location: Central Europe, bordering the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, between the Netherlands and Poland, south of Denmark
Geographic coordinates: 51 00 N, 9 00 E
total: 357,021 sq. km
land: 349,223 sq. km
water: 7,798 sq.

Published on February 26, 2009
Seminar 12 : Seminar 12 BY: Abi Hinojo QUESTION : QUESTION Assess the extent to which the unification of Germany under Bismarck led to authoritarian government there between 1871 and 1914. Thesis : Thesis With Bismarck’s obsession with power, manipulative and strategic skills he led to create an authoritarian government in Germany. The Kleindeutsch plan had prevailed. The Austro-Prussian war had successfully been a victory for the Prussians, due to Bismarck’s diplomatic preparations, good military and technology. The North German Confederation was established by Bismarck with King William I as president. The federal constitution permitted each state to maintain its own local government. The parliament had two houses that shared power “equally”. For Bismarck, the government structure, gave the ability to outwit the middle class by appealing to the working class. In the Franco-Prussian War, which was provoked, Bismarck brought the four southern German states into the North German Confederation. Bismarck saw the Catholic Center Party and the S.P.D. as threats to imperial power thus he wanted to destroy them. In order to achieve this he manipulated his actions by reforming trying to win more support from people and using the Kulturkampf. When the German Empire was proclaimed it was the most powerful nation in Europe, with William I Emperor of Germany, Bismarck Imperial Chancellor and the parliament had little power due to Germany becoming a conservative autocracy with the nobility allied with the monarch. German Unification : German Unification Grossdeutsch Plan failed unifying Germany with Prussia and Austria Kleindeutsch Plan succeeded unified Germany without Austria Otto Von Bismarck : Otto Von Bismarck unifies Germany almost all by himself Junker, chancellor, mastermind behind the government, realpolitik Gained the favor of the king through the Gap theory thus gaining more power Since the constitution, he ignored the liberals in the legislature and did his own thing. Govt. collects taxes w/ out consent of the parliament.

Germany’s new divisions: 30 years on from reunification, what’s next?
Three decades ago, Anne McElvoy reported on Germany’s reunification. Now, as the Merkel years draw to a close, she returns to find the nation at another crossroads. Will old tensions re-emerge?
In the heart of Berlin stand two imposing buildings not far from the River Spree. One is the Reichstag, all monumental stone and classic pillars, the historic home of the German parliament. A short stroll away is the Federal Chancellery, a postmodernist triumph of glass and concrete that houses government offices. The old and the new. The Chancellery, completed in 2001, reflects the Germany reunited in 1990 after being split in two following the Second World War. The cabinet room where Chancellor Angela Merkel holds court has two large windows, one facing the former communist East Germany and the other looking towards the west.
The landscaping tells a story of a modern, unified Germany, one a long way from the troubled history of the Reichstag

Austro-Prussian War (1866) : Austro-Prussian War (1866) 7 weeks, German Civil War Caused by conflicts over authority of Schleswig and Holstein Bismarck sought a localized war Prussia triumph unified most of Germany w/out Austria Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) : Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) Bismarck uses strategic skills to provoke war w/ France to complete unifying Germany Used war w/ France to unify the 4 southern German states into the German Confederation Treaty of Frankfurt: (May, 1871) Alsace and Lorraine ceded to Germany Government STRUCTURE : Government STRUCTURE Parliament: Reichstag bicameral legislature that shared power “equally” upper house: bundesrat was conservative that had representatives from each German state. lower house: Bundestag represented the nation elected by universal male suffrage. North German confederation : North German confederation North German Confederation established by Bismarck with King William as President (1867) federal constitution tolerated each state to have it own local government By giving universal make suffrage it attracts liberals to be on Bismarck’s side. (Manipulative) German Empire : German Empire proclaimed on Jan. 18, 1871 conservative autocracy w/ nobility allied w/ monarch Germany=most powerful nation in Europe William I ? Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany had ultimate power Bismarck ?Imperial Chancellor (mastermind behind govt.) federal union of Prussia & 24 smaller German states Reichstag had little power German Political System : German Political System Conservatives represented Junkers Center Party (Catholic Party) supported Bismarck’s policy of centralization & endorsed the political concept of Particularism which advocated regional priorities Democratic Socialist party : Democratic Socialist party German Middle class excluded middle class gave tacit support to imperial authority and noble influence Bismarck viewed the Catholic Party and S.P.D.

As the files of this organization began to be made public, eastern Germans discovered that many of their most prominent citizens, as well as some of their friends, neighbours, and even family members, had been on the Stasi payroll. Coming to terms with these revelations—legally, politically, and personally—added to the tension of the postunification decade.
Despite the problems attending unification, as well as a series of scandals in his own party, Kohl won a narrow victory in 1994. In 1996 he surpassed Adenauer’s record as the longest-serving German chancellor since Bismarck. Nevertheless, his popularity was clearly ebbing. Increasingly intolerant of criticism within his own party, Kohl suffered a humiliating defeat when his first choice for the presidency was rejected. Instead, Roman Herzog, the president of the Federal Constitutional Court, was elected in May 1994 and fulfilled his duties effectively and gracefully. As Germany prepared for the 1998 elections, its economy was faltering—unemployment surpassed 10 percent and was double that in much of eastern Germany—and some members of Kohl’s party openly hoped that he would step aside in favour of a new candidate; instead the chancellor ran again and his coalition was defeated, ending his 16-year chancellorship. Kohl was replaced as chancellor by Gerhard Schröder, the pragmatic and photogenic leader of the SPD, which formed a coalition with the Green Party.
Schröder’s government got off to a rocky start, the victim of the chancellor’s own indecisiveness and internal dissent from his party’s left wing. The coalition also suffered from internal dissension within Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer’s Green Party, which was divided between pragmatists such as Fischer and those who regarded any compromise as a betrayal of the party’s principles. In 1999 the government’s problems were swiftly overshadowed by a series of revelations about illegal campaign contributions to the CDU, which forced Kohl and his successor, Wolfgang Schäuble, to resign their leadership posts. In April 2000 the CDU selected as party leader Angela Merkel, who became the first former East German and first woman to lead a major political party in Germany.
Schröder’s government focused much of its efforts on reforming the German social welfare system and economy.

Travel Guides: Germany
Germany is a central-western country that is surrounded by North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea in the north, Poland and Czech Republic in east, Austria and Switzerland in the south and Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands in the western.Ad not set – click and set me here…
The landscape is rich, there are all types of terrain: mountains and highlands (the Alps, Harz, system Renan, Swabian Jura, Bohemia Forest, Black Forest) and lowland (North German Plain, Bavarian Plateau, Danube Valley). Germany is a cultural country with many castles and monasteries and important centers in Dresden, Leipzig and Weimar. Germany is a country with one of the most developed tourism industries, focusing on cultural tourism. The most popular destinations are Berlin, Munich, Baltic, North Sea, Hamburg, and Bremen. Tourism in Germany has evolved gradually after the Second World War. Sightseeing destinations range from rural to luxury hotels. Rural tourism is developed in the south, in Baden-Württemberg, where crops are planted vines and fruit trees.
Urban tourism, respectively, thrives in urban centers such as Bremen. Tourists admire the architectural monuments such as the Reichstag building or New Castle. Guests can travel the country by sea or river. Main cities in this regard are Rostock (landlocked city) and Frankfurt (on the river Main). The most famous festival is Oktoberfest, beer festival, which gathers every year thousands of beer lovers. Germany and those who visit this country enjoy the fruits of the unit, during which there were made more investment in infrastructure and services in order to erase lines and scars of the Cold War division of the Second World War. Modern Germany has matured and, although is still suffering from the economic consequences of unification, it is clear that this nation has found a way to express their national identity insurance.
Cities of the former East, Dresden, glow again, like jewelry from the past. Germany is a long history product division, which led to a remarkable diversity, which you can see across the states that make up the Federal Republic. According to stereotypes, the Germans are apathetic, just eating sauerkraut and sausages, drinking liters of beer every day, are very disciplined and strict with their children, no sense of humor and others alike.

In accordance with Article 23 of the F.R.G.’s Basic Law, the five Laender (which had been reestablished in the G.D.R.) acceded to the F.R.G. on October 3, 1990. The F.R.G. proclaimed October 3 as its new national day. On December 2, 1990, all-German elections were held for the first time since 1933.
The Final Settlement Treaty ended Berlin’s special status as a separate area under Four Power control. Under the terms of the treaty between the F.R.G. and the G.D.R., Berlin became the capital of a unified Germany. The Bundestag voted in June 1991 to make Berlin the seat of government. The Government of Germany asked the Allies to maintain a military presence in Berlin until the complete withdrawal of the Western Group of Forces (ex-Soviet) from the territory of the former G.D.R. The Russian withdrawal was completed August 31, 1994. On September 8, 1994, ceremonies marked the final departure of Western Allied troops from Berlin.
In 1999, the formal seat of the federal government moved from Bonn to Berlin. Berlin also is one of the Federal Republic’s 16 Laender.
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICAL CONDITIONS
The government is parliamentary, and a democratic constitution emphasizes the protection of individual liberty and division of powers in a federal structure. The chancellor (prime minister) heads the executive branch of the federal government. The duties of the president (chief of state) are largely ceremonial; the chancellor exercises executive power. The Bundestag (lower, principal chamber of the parliament) elects the chancellor. The president normally is elected every 5 years on May 23 by the Federal Assembly, a body convoked only for this purpose, comprising the entire Bundestag and an equal number of state delegates. President Christian Wulff (Christian Democratic Union – CDU) was elected on June 30, 2010.
The Bundestag, which serves a 4-year term, consists of at least twice the number of electoral districts in the country (299). When parties’ directly elected seats exceed their proportional representation, they may receive additional seats. The number of seats in the Bundestag was reduced to 598 for the 2002 elections.

Clearly, these issues are not "new" - there is continuity and discontinuity involved in each case; in analyzing the impact of these shifts, we should take care not to subsume all change under the same periodizing impulse, reducing the contemporary German landscape into a neatly divided image of "before" and "after" the wall. In their different ways, both German states had been forced to confront the role of recent German history long before unification; the events since 1989 have merely reinforced the confrontation between Eastern and Western narratives about the past to a degree which had not been reached since the "hot" days of the Cold War. Similarly, both the GDR and West Germany had arguably already witnessed a shift from literature and film to architecture and monuments as the privileged media for dealing with the past; this too is a tendency which has only been reinforced in the last decade, even as the events of 1989 have profoundly affected the terms under which the corresponding debates are carried out. Finally, the discussion of immigration policies and citizenship status dates back far beyond the 1989 watershed to the arrival of Gastarbeiter [guest workers] in the West and "contract workers" in the East. While the events of 1989 briefly interrupted these discussions, they have since come back to the foreground with a vengeance, leading to the adoption of hard-lined asylum politics and revised citizenship laws by the major political parties. Nor are the issues we have identified clearly separable: concerns of citizenship always touch on the question of how Germany deals with its past; likewise, the discussion of that past can hardly be isolated from the fallout of the Cold War which has profoundly influenced the narratives through which we make sense of German history.
In retrospect, it seems obvious that none of these issues has been resolved to date; rather, they are the objects of ongoing discussions, debates and - sometimes unarticulated - tensions that have defined the "Berlin Republic" since 1989. Taking stock a decade after the fall of the wall, a group of scholars came together last December at the U-M to explore these tensions and look at the discursive and cultural re-configurations that have emerged in response to 1989. Clearly, such an ambitious undertaking requires an interdisciplinary approach and the conference was able to draw contributions from a wide variety of disciplinary standpoints ranging from anthropology and history to art history, literature, media studies and political science.

Stretching as far back as Ancient Egypt and Greece and moving through present-day locales as diverse as Western Europe, Central Asia, and the Arctic, each of the richly illustrated essays collected here draw on a range of disciplinary insights to explore some of the most fundamental, universal questions that confront us.
Between Europe and Germany
Katzenstein, P. (ed)
German unification and the political and economic transformations in central Europe signal profound political changes that pose many questions. Will post-Communism push ahead with the task of institutionalizing a democratic capitalism? How will that process be aided or disrupted by international developments in the East and West? And how will central Europe relate to united Germany? Based on original field research this book offers, through more than a dozen case studies, a cautiously optimistic set of answers to these questions. The end of the Cold War and German unification, the empirical evidence indicates, are not returning Germany and central Europe to historically troubled, imbalanced, bilateral relationships. Rather changes in the character of German and European politics as well as the transformations now affecting Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia point to the emergence of multilateral relationships linking Germany and central Europe in an internationalizing, democratic Europe.
Subject: Postwar History
Mitterrand, the End of the Cold War, and German Unification
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this important book explores the role of France in the events leading up to the end of the Cold War and German unification. Most accounts concentrate on the role of the United States and look at these events through the bipolar prism of Soviet-American relations. Yet because of its central position in Europe and of its status as Germany’s foremost European partner, France and its President, François Mitterrand, played a decisive role in these pivotal international events: the peaceful liberation of Eastern Europe from Soviet rule starting in 1988, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Germany’s return to unity and full sovereignty in 1989/90, and the breakup of the USSR in 1991. Based on extensive research and a vast amount of archival sources, this book explores the role played by France in shaping a new European order.
Subject: Postwar History
Transgressive Unions in Germany from the Reformation to the Enlightenment
Luebke, D. M. & Lindemann, M. (eds)
The significant changes in early modern German marriage practices included many unions that violated some taboo.

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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0813311527, Hardcover)
In 1984, Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti aptly summarized popular perception of the divided nationality of the two Germanys, East and West: “There are two German states, and two they shall remain.” Few would have disagreed. By the 1980s, both German states had come to occupy respected niches in the international community. Still, neither side seemed to have found an acceptable home for the problematic notion of German national identity. In terms of one united Germany, by the 1980s in the West only a small group of West German elites cared to discuss the possibility of a reunited nation, much less the terms under which such an arrangement might occur. Even fewer citizens of the FRG felt comfortable describing their personal German identity, even before the issue was further entangled by the reincorporation of 16 millions East Germans in 1990.Was it the Germans’ historically overburdened and divided perception of themselves that continued to breed uncertainty about their future? Or was it outsiders’ unwillingness to accept many political and cultural changes which had redefined the concept of German identity since 1949 and kept Angst alive and well in Central Europe? Joyce Marie Mushaben seeks here to find some clarity from this highly amorphous “German Question” as it shifted from postwar to post-wall West Germany.Mushaben rests her answers on an intriguing collection of in-depth interviews with public figures, tested against the detailed secondary analysis of public opinion data spanning four decades. Emerging from the effort is a set of clear generational differences and profiles, attesting to the increasingly pluralistic character of the postwar German identity. In the 1990s, the reunification of two very different sociopolitical cultures of East and West has only added to a complicated mix. Mushaben concludes that, faced with these dilemmas of difference, West Germans must cultivate a “courage to mix” these cultures and to demonstrate a healthy respect for the very processes of change and generational differentiation that brought them peace in the years of German division.
(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 17:59:59 -0400)
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Germany was the first country where I lived abroad, it was an unique experience which I mentioned countless times in this blog. And also one experience that changed me as a person, and contributed deeply to my passion for traveling.
I didn’t know much about this country before I moved there, in fact, I haven’t even searched anything about the city. Moving to a city and a country that I knew very few of was a quite unlike adventure for the 24 years old me. Though, that experience was the gateway for other travels, even to get to explore my own country.
A bit about Germany’s history
Germany is one of the European countries with the most recent borders. The German borders as we know today date from the end of the 1990s. Being a Central European country, it is normal that their borders changed considerably during the last few centuries, and during that time several countries appeared and disappeared almost from one year to the next.
The history of the territory that is Germany nowadays is extremely complex, but the borders started to settle with the creating of a German Confederation, of 39 states of german language. This Confederation failed, with lead to a new Confederation of the Northern German, which later became the German Empire.
From this point on, most of we know about Germany is due to the two Great Wars, since those 39 states became one potency in a very important geographic zone in Europe.
With the end of the Second World War, Germany was split into several parts. Occupied zones by the United Kingdom, United States of America, France and the Soviet Union. The same happened to the capital, where you can still visit the famous Berlin Wall.
Some parts of the german empire were returned to Poland and to the Soviet Union. In 1949 the german area occupied by the allied formed the Federal Republic of Germany, becoming then two Germanies, the Federal and the Democratic. They only merged again 41 years later.
Some curiosities about Germany
- The largest navigable aqueduct in the world is above the Elbe River, in Magdeburg. It is a canal over a river, which improved considerably the country’s navigability.
- A third of the country are forests and wooded areas. One of my biggest surprises when I moved to Dresden was seeing so many trees inside the city.
- Being such a central country, it isn’t surprising to have borders with 9 other countries.

Fast facts about Germany before you stop reading!
It is not still run by Hitler. It also does not like war anymore. In fact, you could say Germany today downright loathes war. Today Berlin is a top spot for Israelis looking to escape their country’s nasty rising costs of living. So it’s bad at both anti-Semitism and war.
That all needs to be said because, even today, the popular image of Germany in the American mind is still inextricably linked with World War II. You can’t even get through a Family Guy episode about Germany without at least one Nazi reference. If and when you can get an American through that, you end up in a stereotype of sausages, beer, and ultra-hardcore pornography.
Both are equally inaccurate, but both are equally revealing. The first reveals a common mistrust of Germany as a great power; the second shows the edges of the non-confrontational culture German elites have been trying to build since World War II.
But first, the cliff notes!
- Germany has all the makings of a great power.
- Its has two fatal strategic flaws: being in the center of Europe, and being on the Great Northern European Plain, which have historically made it paranoid.
- Twice Germany sought to fix those flaws during the World Wars, and twice it was defeated through the intervention of the United States.
- The long division between East and West Germany froze German geopolitics and reshaped German political culture. From being aggressive, German elites learned to be cooperative.
- That brotherly Europe was possible for a while, but isn’t anymore.
- Now a united Germany’s old geopolitical problems are emerging, and Germany’s elites are struggling to figure out their place in the new world.
Now, the beginning of the long stuff, and why Germany is such a fine (but still difficult) place to rule.
Germany’s resource base and climate make it a great place to rule. It’s relatively mild climate allows a good growing season; its storied forests provide plenty of timber; its hills and valleys provide coal, uranium, natural gas, and iron. It has all the resources necessary to industrialize on the cheap and build a huge manufacturing base that outclasses most of its neighbors.
On three sides, Germany has defensible borders. To the north is the Baltic Sea, a tough proposition to cross, especially in winter.

Actually, since 1989, before the Wall was physically ruined, German people had got an opportunity to move freely without any restrictions regardless the Wall but people could hardly forget thousands of Germans died and imprisoned, while attempting to trespass the border.
Thus, the fall of the Berlin Wall was as symbolic as its construction since the latter symbolised separation of Germany and German people, while the former was basically caused by the desire of German people live in a united country. However, the consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the following unification of Germany turned to be not so optimistic as millions of people probably hoped.
Consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall
Obviously the unification of a country is a very complicated process that affects all spheres of life. The case of Germany is particularly problematic because two absolutely different countries were untied. Moreover, it is even possible to estimate that the countries from two opposing worlds were united in one, solid Germany. In fact, it is hardly possible to unite Eastern Germany, where the local totalitarian regime controlled all spheres of life and where plan economy was the only form of economic development of the country, with highly developed capitalist economy of Western Germany, based on the principles of free market economy and high entrepreneurial activity.
In this respect, it is very important to point out that the fall of the Berlin Wall provoked a number of problems. In fact it changed patterns in the city and the fall created chaos. There were a host of problems and crimes connected with the new, uncontrolled borders were almost immediately. Among them were increases in highway accidents, weapons and currency smuggling and robberies. Early in 1990, a rash of bomb threats hit East Germany (Ansteigen, Die Polizei 1990, p.287). However, socio-economic and political consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall are probably the most significant.
A. Economic consequences
Speaking about economic consequences of reunification of Germany, it is necessary to underline that it is a very complicated process since the united Germany has to re-establish economic links broken by the Cold War and division of Germany. In fact the difference between Western and Eastern parts of Germany was so significant that it was possible to speak about economic retardation of Eastern Germany from economically advanced Western Germany. As a result, the fall of the Berlin Wall led to the situation when “East Berlin being so poor from socialism blended with the richer republic West” (Thomas 2003, p.291).

Let’s rewind a bit: For a long time, Germany refused to acknowledge itself as a “land of immigration”. The bulk of recent immigration came from post-World War II guest worker programs which were initially meant to be temporary, but many migrants stuck around. Their children and children’s children – the second and third generations – were born in Germany but continued to face challenges in regards to integration. They struggled socioeconomically and educationally, lacked German language proficiency, and often lived in parallel societies. In addition, Germany’s population was aging and fertility rates were declining.
So at the turn of the 21st century, Germany also made a sharp turn where immigration policy was concerned. Integrating “non-ethnic” immigrants and their children (and recruiting highly-skilled immigrants) became a priority. A birthplace citizenship provision was introduced, a national integration plan created, and a “Federal Commissioner for Migration, Refugees, and Integration” established. Language became the focal point of integration efforts: the majority of third country nationals (those from outside of the EU ) are now required to take over 600 hours of state-funded integration courses.
Which brings us back to “Become a German” or Werden Sie Deutscher, a new documentary that follows an integration course in Berlin over the course of 10 months. We watch as the class – whose “stars” come from countries like Uruguay, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, and Turkey – wades its way through simulated spats with neighbors and gay marriage debates in the classroom to real-life job search trials and mundane subway rides.
Cultural Orientation – Rules and Behaviors. “Time is money”…”First work, then play”.
As with any documentary, scenes are cut and pasted together to elicit the most laughs and cringe-worthy moments. Since this is Germany, at least half of the movie zooms in on bureaucracy and rules. You must never throw out an important piece of paper. You must clean up after your dog. You must ride your bike in the right direction of the bike lane, recites a Russian student. The audience chuckles. First work, then… chants the teacher. The audience groans. Do you know any examples of German humor? asks the teacher. Uhhh, fumbles the Japanese student. 10 seconds go by. I’m still thinking, he mutters and scratches his head. The audience roars.

Compared with the end of 1989, this figure had risen by roughly 2.3 million. The proportion of foreigners within the total population rose from 6.4 percent in 1989 to 8.9 percent in 2002. Many foreign families have lived in Germany for two or three generations. Roughly 55 million Germans are Christians, 28.2 million of them being Protestant and 27 million being Roman Catholic; in addition, there are approximately 1.7 million Muslims and only 54,000 Jews (representing a mere 10 percent of Germany’s 1933 Jewish population before the Holocaust). The gross domestic product per capita (real) was US$32,962 in 2001.2 After 45 years of the East-West political division of Germany due to the Cold War conflict, the reunification of Germany took place in 1990, when the German Democratic Republic (GDR) joined the territory covered by the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) after the GDR collapsed politically and economically. Simultaneously, five new Länder were established within the territory of the former GDR. On this occasion, no use was made of the possibility, provided for in Article 146 of the Basic Law, of creating a new constitution and of allowing the German people to vote on it. This option had not been exercised in 1949 either, when the Basic Law likewise came into force without a popular vote. Sixty-five years after the outbreak of the Second World War, however, Germany regards itself as a community open to the world that promotes the European process of integration as a member of the European Union (EU) and contributes to the creation of a democratic, social, and federal Europe based on the rule of law and a peaceful coexistence (Art. 23I).3 Creation of the Federal Constitution The constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, called the Basic Law, was drafted and passed by the Parliamentary Council in 1948-49. This council consisted of 65 members delegated by the Länder parliaments. The constitution came into force on 23 May 1949. The basis for the council’s discussions and decisions was the so-called Herrenchiemsee Draft, drawn up by a group of senior civil servants and leading politicians from the Länder.

William Urban: A short history of Germany
Every Christmas I exchange books with a German friend. He is very good at picking interesting reads. This year’s was “Wie wir wurden, was wir sind” (How we became what we are), with the subtitle and the foreword promising that it would be a short history. Short is not something that German authors excel at, but Heinrich August Winker did his best. He also had a pleasing style, especially in the early chapters, which could be read by anyone who knows German. By the end the words became longer and the sentences more complex, reflecting the need to explain current issues in the language that politicians and journalists use today. (Germany is where modern scholarly style and jargon originated.)
He begins with the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) that ended the Thirty Years War, a conflict between an ambitious emperor and princes fearful of tyranny that is often described as a war between Catholics and Protestants. When the French, Spanish, and Swedes came in, that made it more complicated. A third of the population may have died, churches went up in flames. If you look into German genealogy, you won’t likely get farther back than this.
Thereafter Germans had an instinctive reaction against civil war, foreign invasion, and radical change. It was no surprise, thence, that Enlightenment reforms were led by princes — most importantly Frederick the Great of Prussia — and not intellectuals. The French Revolution was not welcomed, and the most important reforms were made in Prussia in order to drive Napoleon out.
I found the chapter on the failed Revolution of 1848 most fascinating. That peaceful effort to create a democratic national state failed miserably because the two goals were incompatible. The politics were too complex to bring all German-speakers into one state, and when radicals demanded too much, too soon, moderates turned to conservatives. America benefitted by the flood of educated men and women looking for a freer homeland.
The text moved quickly to 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor. This disaster was not foreordained, though the failure of the moderate parties and fear of a Stalin-like terror under the communists made many people look for a “strong man.” The survival of the Weimar Republic was unlikely because its birth was tied to the defeat in the First World War and it had failed to deal effectively with the Great Depression. Political miscalculations did the rest.

Young foreigners who have resided eight years in Germany may become citizens if they have attended German schools for six years and apply for citizenship between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three. Usually, however, German citizenship depends not on where one is born (ius solis ) but on the nationality of the father or, since 1974, on the mother (ius sanguinis ). Thus, to many, German citizenship depends on being born German and cannot rightfully be acquired through a legal process. This notion makes it practically impossible for naturalized citizens or their children to be considered German. Some reformers advocate eliminating the concept of German blood in the 1913 law regulating citizenship, but the issue is an emotional one, and such a change has little popular support.
Ethnic Germans have immigrated to Germany since the end of World War II. At first, these immigrants were Germans who had resided in areas that had formerly been German territory. Later, the offspring of German settlers who in previous centuries had settled in areas of Eastern Europe and Russia came to be regarded as ethnic Germans and as such had the right to German citizenship according to Article 116 of the Basic Law. Because they became citizens immediately upon arrival in Germany, ethnic Germans received much financial and social assistance to ease their integration into society. Housing, vocational training, and many other types of assistance, even language training--because many did not know the language of their forebears--were liberally provided.
With the gradual opening of the Soviet empire in the 1980s, the numbers of ethnic Germans coming to West Germany swelled. In the mid-1980s, about 40,000 came each year. In 1987 the number doubled and in 1988 doubled again. In 1990 nearly 400,000 ethnic Germans came to the Federal Republic. In the 1991-93 period, about 400,000 ethnic Germans settled in Germany. Since January 1993, immigration of ethnic Germans has been limited to 220,000 per year.
Because this influx could no longer be managed, especially because of the vast expense of unification, restrictions on the right of ethnic Germans to return to Germany became effective in January 1991. Under the new restrictions, once in Germany ethnic Germans are assigned to certain areas. If they leave these areas, they lose many of their benefits and are treated as if they were foreigners.

When Germany was defeated in 1918, the German Empire ceased to exist and the Treaty of Versaille (1919) placed the blame of war on Germany. The country was forced to pay reparations, limit the military and to give up territory.
Following the war, Germany entered into the Weimar Republic which looked to bring about democracy. However, by mid-1933, Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis) destroyed the idea of democracy, instead establishing a dictatorship. Under Hitler the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 stripped Germany’s Jewish and Roma populations of their citizenship and took away all of their rights. Despite this terror, Hitler instigated public works programs that helped bring Germany out of the economic disaster of the First World War, thus making him popular with a great deal of the population.
The Second World War (1939-1945) was a global war that was the deadliest conflict in human history. The Holocaust was responsible for the death of approximately six million Jews, as well as more than a million Roma people, communists, homosexuals and more. When the war ended in 1945, Hitler committed suicide and Germany was divided into four occupied zones headed by the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France. Of these zones, two states emerged, East and West Germany. While the East fell behind economically, the West grew to become one of the world’s richest nations.
These two states continued for years until 1990 when Germany was once again united and the infamous Berlin Wall was brought down. Today, Germany hosts the largest economy in Europe and has come a long way from the terrors of the 20th century. Its location in the heart of the continent as well as its history, cuisine, culture and landscapes has made it an increasingly popular tourist destination.
Germany Travel Information
At Goway we believe that a well-informed traveller is a safer traveller. With this in mind, we have compiled an easy to navigate travel information section dedicated to Germany.
Learn about the history and culture of Germany, the must-try food and drink, and what to pack in your suitcase. Read about Germany's nature and wildlife, weather and geography, along with 'Country Quickfacts' compiled by our travel experts. Our globetrotting tips, as well as our visa and health information will help ensure you're properly prepared for a safe and enjoyable trip.