I | INTRODUCTION |
Federal Republic of
Germany (German Bundesrepublik Deutschland), major industrialized
nation in Central Europe, a federal union of 16 states (Länder). Germany
has a long, complex history and rich culture, but it was not unified as a nation
until 1871. Before that time, Germany had been a confederacy (1815-1867) and,
before 1806, a collection of separate and quite different principalities.
Germany is the seventh largest country in
area in Europe. It has a varied terrain that ranges from low-lying coastal flats
along the North and Baltic seas, to a central area of rolling hills and river
valleys, to heavily forested mountains and snow-covered Alps in the south.
Several of Europe’s most important rivers, including the Rhine, Danube, and
Elbe, traverse the country and have helped make it a transportation center.
Germany is overwhelmingly urban. Berlin is
the capital and largest city, although Bonn, which was the provisional capital
of West Germany, is still home to some government offices. The principal
language is German, and two-thirds of the people are either Roman Catholic or
Protestant.
Germans have made numerous noteworthy
contributions to Western culture. Among the many outstanding German authors,
artists, architects, musicians, and philosophers, the composers Johann Sebastian
Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven are probably the best known the world over. German
literary greats include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, and
Thomas Mann.
A major industrialized nation, Germany is
home to the world’s third largest economy, after the United States and Japan.
Germany is a leading producer of products such as iron and steel, machinery and
machine tools, and automobiles. Germany is an economic powerhouse in the
European Union (EU), and a driving force behind greater economic integration and
cooperation throughout Europe.
Germany’s central location in Europe has made
it a crossroads for many peoples, ideas, and armies throughout history.
Present-day Germany originated from the ad 843 division of the Carolingian
empire, which also included France and a middle section stretching from the
North Sea to northern Italy. For centuries, Germany was a collection of states
mostly held together as a loose feudal association. From the 16th century on,
the German states became increasingly involved in European wars and religious
struggles. In the early 19th century, French conquest of the German states
started a movement toward German national unification, and in 1815, led by the
state of Prussia, the German states formed a confederacy that lasted until 1867
(see German Confederation).
Once unified under Otto von Bismarck in 1871,
Germany experienced rapid industrialization and economic growth. During the
early 20th century Germany embarked on a quest for European dominance, leading
it into World War I. Germany’s defeat in 1918 triggered political and economic
chaos. An ultranationalist reaction gave rise to the National Socialist (Nazi)
Party (see National Socialism), which gained power in the 1930s under
German leader Adolf Hitler. In 1939 Nazi Germany plunged the world into a new
global conflict, World War II.
In 1945 the Allied Powers of the United
Kingdom, the United States, France, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) defeated Germany in World War II. The Allies agreed to divide the country
into four zones of occupation: the British, American, French, and Soviet zones.
When the wartime alliance between the Western powers and the Soviet Union broke
up in the late 1940s, the Soviet zone became the Communist-led German Democratic
Republic (GDR), or East Germany. The three Western zones formed the Federal
Republic of Germany (FRG), or West Germany. Control of Germany's historic
capital of Berlin was also divided between the two German states, despite its
location deep within East Germany. In 1961 East Germany built the Berlin Wall
and other elaborate border fortifications to stop the exodus of millions of East
Germans to the more prosperous and democratic West Germany.
In 1989 Germans from the East and West
breached the Berlin Wall, an event that symbolized the collapse of Communism in
Eastern Europe and the beginning of German reunification. Amid joyful
celebrations, the two Germanys were reunited on October 3, 1990, as the Federal
Republic of Germany. However, Germany soon faced numerous social and economic
difficulties as it attempted to absorb millions of new citizens and blend
different cultures and institutions. Many of these difficulties—including
chronically high unemployment and reduced levels of economic growth—were among
the most important challenges facing Germany in the early 21st century.
II | LAND AND RESOURCES |
Germany ranks as the seventh largest
country in Europe, with a total area of 356,970 sq km (137,827 sq mi). Germany
is bounded on the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; on the
east by Poland and the Czech Republic; on the south by Austria and Switzerland;
and on the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and The Netherlands.
Stretching from the Baltic and North seas
to the Alps, Germany measures 800 km (500 mi) from north to south; the country
extends 600 km (400 mi) from west to east. In addition to coastline and
mountains, the varied terrain includes forests, hills, plains, and river
valleys. Several navigable rivers traverse the uplands, and canals connect the
river systems of the Elbe, Rhine, see Main, and Danube rivers and link
the North Sea with the Baltic.
A | Natural Regions |
Germany has three major natural regions:
a lowland plain in the north, an area of uplands in the center, and a
mountainous area in the south. The northern lowlands, called the North German
Plain, lie along and between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea and extend
southward into eastern Germany. The lowest point in Germany is sea level along
the coast, where there are areas of dunes and marshland. Off the coast are
several islands, including the Frisian Islands, Helgoland, and Rügen. The flat
area was originally formed by glacial action during the Ice Age and includes an
alluvial belt, southwest of Berlin, which is Germany’s richest farming area.
Farther west, this belt supported the development of the coal and steel
industries of the Ruhr Valley in cities such as Essen and Dortmund.
Historically, the north German lowlands have been wide open to invasions,
migrations, and trade with Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. East of the Elbe
River, they also sustained large-scale agriculture and huge feudal estates once
owned by the Prussian aristocratic elite.
The central uplands feature mountain
ranges of modest height, separated by river valleys. Navigable rivers
facilitated economic development by providing inexpensive transportation before
the age of railroads and trucking. This region is located between the latitude
of the city of Nürnberg and the Main River in the south and the latitude of
Hannover in the north. Much of it is heavily forested and exploited for its
timber. The region is marked by an abundance of waterpower. Intense cultivation
and industrial development have occurred in cities such as Dresden and Kassel,
located in the river valleys.
The mountainous region, or Alpine zone,
in the south includes the Swabian and Franconian mountains, the foothills of the
Alps, and two large forests, the Black Forest in the southwest and the Bavarian
and Bohemian Forest in the east. Germany’s highest point is Zugspitze (2,962
m/9,718 ft) in the Bavarian Alps. Major cities in this area include Stuttgart
and Munich. The region has traditionally relied on small-scale agriculture and
tourism, but many high-technology industries began to develop there during the
1970s.
B | Rivers and Lakes |
Rivers have played a major role in
Germany’s economic development. The Rhine River flows in a northwesterly
direction from Switzerland through much of western Germany and The Netherlands
into the North Sea. It is a major European waterway and a pillar of commerce and
trade. Its primary German tributaries include the Main, Mosel, Neckar, and Ruhr
rivers.
The Oder (Odra) River, along the border
between Poland and Germany, runs northward and empties into the Baltic; it
provides another important path for waterborne freight. The Elbe River
originates in the Czech mountains and traverses eastern and western Germany
toward the northwest until it empties into the North Sea at the large seaport of
Hamburg. The Danube River connects southern Germany with Austria and Eastern
Europe. Since the recent construction of the Rhine-Danube Canal, freight can be
transported by barge from the North Sea to the Black Sea. Smaller rivers such as
the Neisse and Weser also play a significant role as transport routes. There are
several large lakes, including the Lake of Constance (Bodensee) in extreme
southwest Germany and the glacial moraine lakes of Bavaria, but none of them
have rivaled the importance of rivers in German economic development.
C | Coastline |
Germany’s coastline along the North Sea
is characterized by vast stretches of tidal flats and several important
seaports, including Hamburg, Bremerhaven, and Emden. Schleswig-Holstein,
Germany’s northernmost state, is traversed by the vital Kiel Canal, which
carries freight between the Baltic and North seas, eliminating the need for a
shipping route around Denmark. Major seaports of the German Baltic coast include
Kiel and Rostock. The coastline also features recreation areas, some on small
islands off both coasts.
D | Plant and Animal Life |
Once a country of thick forests, Germany
today includes mostly areas that have been cleared for centuries. However,
forest conservation since the 18th century has preserved large areas of oak,
ash, elm, beech, birch, pine, fir, and larch. About one-third of the country is
woodland.
Of the many animals that once roamed the
forests, deer, red fox, hare, and weasel are still common, but these animals and
wilder game such as wild boar, wildcat, and badger depend increasingly on
conservation efforts. Private hunting licenses are very expensive, and even
fishing in the streams and lakes where edible species abound is not encouraged.
Instead, there is a good deal of fish farming, including trout and carp; deer
are also raised commercially to satisfy the demand for venison. Many species of
songbirds migrate to Germany every year, as do storks, geese, and other larger
fowl that fly in over the Mediterranean Sea from Africa. Herring, flounder, cod,
and ocean perch are found in coastal waters.
E | Natural Resources |
The presence of coal and iron ore
encouraged German industrial development in the late 19th century. Most of the
deposits were found in close proximity to one another, allowing for the
convenient use of coal as fuel first to process the iron into steel and then to
manufacture products from the steel. The availability of inexpensive transport
by water, and later by land, facilitated the growth of manufacturing and
encouraged exports. The presence of certain minerals in great quantity, such as
potash and salt, permitted the development of a chemical industry, including the
production of fertilizers and pharmaceuticals. The availability of wood,
petroleum, natural gas, brown coal (also known as lignite), and waterpower
further smoothed the path of German industrial progress.
F | Climate |
Germany has a mostly moderate climate,
characterized by cool winters and warm summers. River valleys such as that of
the Rhine tend to be humid and somewhat warmer in both winter and summer,
whereas mountain areas can be much colder. Precipitation on the average is much
heavier in the south, especially along the Alpine slopes, which force incoming
weather fronts to rise and shed their moisture in the form of rain and
snow.
G | Environmental Issues |
Germany is located amid other heavily
industrial nations whose air pollution and water pollution enter the country
with the wind and rain, and in the rivers. Also every summer many automobiles,
including those from other European countries, drive across Germany’s autobahn
on their way to vacations in southern Europe. Among Germany’s homegrown
environmental problems, the most important are probably those connected with
industrial overdevelopment and automobile traffic.
A densely settled country, Germany has
limited land, air, and water in which to bury and dissipate all the toxic wastes
produced by its intensive industrial development. Factory and automobile exhaust
pollution is blamed for the widespread destruction of forests from acid rain.
Agricultural development results in fertilizer and pesticide runoff into lakes
and streams, burdening the groundwater supply. Germany also received some
nuclear fallout at the time of the 1986 Chernobyl’ reactor meltdown in Ukraine
(Chernobyl’ Accident). Public resistance halted the development of nuclear
energy in Germany as people objected to the proposed sites of nuclear
plants.
With unification, West Germany inherited
the enormous pollution problems of East Germany, whose government had not dealt
with serious environmental damage. Among the worst problems were the open
remnants from strip mining and the legacy of the chemical industry, both located
in southern East Germany. The poisoning of soil and groundwater by uncontrolled
industrial and agricultural development required enormous expenditures for
cleanup. The burning of brown coal, the only kind of coal abundant in East
Germany, has led to health problems, including respiratory ailments and lung and
heart disease.
Germany has developed a number of
measures to address environmental problems of various sorts, ranging from
controls on industrial emissions to identification of additives in food to smog
control devices on vehicles. In the 1970s an environmental protest movement
developed, and the Green Party—a political party that focuses on environmental
issues—was formed. These two events led the major political parties to devote
more attention to the environment because they felt they had to compete with the
Green Party. The most remarkable result of this increased environmental
awareness was the development of an “eco-industry,” a new manufacturing sector
that makes pollution-control devices and other environmentally useful equipment.
This industry has also produced new jobs, helping counter the fears of both
trade unions and existing industries that environmental controls would cost jobs
and handicap business. In addition, Germany has ratified various international
environmental agreements on air pollution, biodiversity, climate change,
endangered species, oceans, the ozone layer, wetlands, and whaling.
III | PEOPLE |
Germany has a total population of
82,369,548 (2008 estimate). As is the case in many industrialized countries, the
German population has grown substantially older on the average since the early
20th century. This is a result of declining birth rates and the shrinking of
family size as Germans have chosen to have fewer children. In addition, the
numbers of single-parent and one-person households are increasing.
The German population is overwhelmingly
urban. Germany has more than three dozen cities exceeding 200,000 residents, and
12 metropolises with more than 500,000 residents. Three of Germany’s federal
states are city-states: Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg. Berlin is the capital and
largest city.
Germany’s population density is highest
in the northwest, especially in North Rhine-Westphalia (Nordrhein-Westfalen),
which includes Germany’s old industrial heartland, the Ruhr Valley, and a number
of large cities. Population density is lower in the former East Germany and in
the more rural states of Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), and
Bavaria.
A | Ethnic Groups |
Several ethnic minorities live in
Germany, including the Danes of northern Schleswig-Holstein and the Sorbs of
southeastern Brandenburg, who are descended from the Slavic tribes called the
Wends. Foreign residents make up about 9 percent of Germany’s population. The
largest group is Turkish, but there are also large numbers of East European
refugees, as well as immigrants from European Union (EU) countries such as
Italy, Spain, and Greece.
B | Immigration |
As a result of being defeated in World
War I and World War II, Germany lost large areas of land. After World War II,
many ethnic Germans fled from lost territories and East European countries to
what remained of Germany. About 8 million refugees fled from East Prussia, the
Czech Sudetenland, and the region between the Oder and Neisse rivers in Poland.
About another 3 million ethnic Germans fled from Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania,
and other parts of Eastern Europe. Most of these ethnic Germans had lived for
centuries in Eastern Europe. However, during and after the wars they were driven
out, often violently, with the loss of an estimated 2 million German lives. This
process began with the collapse of the German Empire (see German
Unification) and Austria-Hungary in 1918 and the establishment of East European
countries such as Czechoslovakia and Poland. The failed attempt of the Nazi
Party to reconquer and expand German ethnic dominance by force led to the final
flight and expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe.
Once they arrived from their trek to
East and West Germany, these millions of ethnic German refugees were rapidly
integrated into German society. Many refugees continued to move from rural to
urban areas, and from east to west as 2.5 million East Germans fled to West
Germany before the Berlin Wall was built in 1961.
A second great population movement
began in the 1950s as the rapidly expanding West German economy demanded a
larger labor supply. To meet this demand, West Germany looked outside the
country to fill labor needs. From 1955, under bilateral treaties with various
countries that had underemployment, West Germany brought in thousands of
so-called guest workers on limited-term contracts to work for a few years. When
Germany’s economic growth slowed in the early 1970s, West Germany stopped
foreign recruitment and expected the guest workers to return to their home
countries. However, most of them—including large numbers of workers from Turkey
and Yugoslavia—did not leave. In addition, many workers had brought their
families with them to share in Germany’s opportunities, living standards, and
welfare benefits.
During the 1980s and 1990s Germany
continued to experience waves of migration. The disintegration of Eastern
European Communist regimes led ethnic Germans from as far away as Kazakhstan,
Ukraine, Russia, and Romania to seek a new life in Germany, where the Basic Law
offers them instant citizenship even if they do not speak the language. The
crumbling of Communist rule in East Germany was also accompanied by a massive
migration of East Germans to West Germany. Finally, in the late 1980s and early
1990s, hundreds of thousands of people a year from Sri Lanka, Lebanon, West
Africa, and other regions sought refuge in Germany under Article 16 of the Basic
Law, which provides asylum for victims of political persecution.
Some Germans have not welcomed these
immigrants; many believe that the immigrants came only to participate in
Germany’s high living standards. Official responses to these different kinds of
immigration challenges have been varied and at times inconsistent, especially
since Germany is a federal country and different states and cities have widely
varying labor needs and problems. Ethnic German “resettlers” and East German
migrants still encounter prejudice even though they are German citizens.
Asylum-seekers have been kept in hostels all over the country, barred from jobs
and social integration while individual cases for political asylum are examined.
This process can take years and has resulted in large numbers of people being
turned away. Restrictive immigration procedures adopted in the early 1990s
reduced the number of annual asylum seekers by two-thirds.
C | Principal Cities |
Germany’s largest cities tend to be
either the capitals of former or present states—for example, Berlin, the capital
of former Prussia; Munich, the capital of Bavaria; and Dresden, the capital of
Saxony (Sachsen). In addition, many of Germany’s largest cities are centers of
important super-regional functions or part of industrial areas. For example, the
Rhine-Ruhr area, the center of German heavy industry, is a vast population hub
with five large cities: Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Dortmund, Essen, and Cologne.
Because many people live in adjacent areas or towns and commute to the city,
each of these urban centers accounts for far more people than just those living
within the city limits.
The cores of many of these large cities
and many smaller ones are quite old and have maintained their historic centers
with authentically preserved old buildings and cathedrals. Many small towns,
such as Rothenburg ob der Tauber in northern Bavaria, boast medieval towers,
gates, and parts of their ancient city walls. Many medium-sized and larger
cities also pride themselves on a rich, publicly subsidized cultural life of
theater, opera, music festivals, and galleries, which add modern refinement to
regional traditions.
D | Language |
The principal and official language of
Germany is German, an Indo-European language (see German Language).
Standard High German is used for official, educational, and literary purposes.
Spoken German, however, differs from High German in the form of dozens of
distinctive dialects and simplified street usage. One version, Low German, or
Plattdeutsch, resembles Dutch and is spoken in the seaboard areas of the
northwest. Southern dialects such as Swabian and Bavarian may be hard to
understand for North Germans or for foreign visitors who learned only High
German in school. There are small language minorities, such as the Sorbs of
southeastern Brandenburg and the Danes of northern Schleswig-Holstein; both of
these groups also have some cultural autonomy. The various immigrant populations
also retain their separate languages, such as Turkish, Greek, Italian, Spanish,
and Croatian. However, the public schools require all children to learn
German.
E | Religion |
Religion in Germany plays a fairly
small role in society. Church attendance in Germany is much lower than that in
the United States. Under German law, all churches are supported by a modest
church tax that is collected by the state.
Roman Catholicism was the dominant
religion in medieval Germany until the major crises and reformation efforts of
the 14th and 15th centuries. After that time, Protestant churches came to power
in the majority of principalities of the north, east, and center of the Holy
Roman Empire. The actual Reformation began with the publication of the
Ninety-five Theses of protest by Martin Luther in 1517. After considerable
religious and political conflict, the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 decreed that
each ruler of the approximately 300 German principalities could determine the
religion of the subjects. The Catholics eventually met the rapid spread of
Protestantism with the Counter Reformation, which involved internal church
reforms and a stricter interpretation of church doctrine. Religious strife
finally culminated in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), which devastated the
country.
Roman Catholics, mainly concentrated in
the south, make up about 35 percent of the German population. Protestants, the
great majority of whom are Lutherans (see Lutheranism), make up about 37
percent of the people. Protestants live primarily in the north. Several German
Protestant churches form a loosely organized federation called the Evangelical
Church in Germany (EKD). About 4 percent of the German population is Muslim
(see Islam).
Only a very small percentage of Germans
are Jewish (See also Judaism). Until the 19th century, the Jewish
community was segregated and barred from many activities in most German states.
In 19th-century Prussia and with the unification of Germany in 1871, German Jews
were granted equal status under the law. At that point, German Jews became
integrated into cultural and economic life. More than 500,000 Jews lived in
Germany in the early 1930s. By the end of World War II in 1945, most of them had
been killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust or had fled the country. By 1970 only
about 33,000 Jews lived in Germany. With the collapse of Communism in Eastern
Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall, tens of thousands of East European and
Russian Jews began to settle in the larger cities of Germany, particularly
Berlin. Today, due to in part to an immigration policy that generally grants
visas to Jews from formerly Communist states, Germany is home to one of the
fastest growing Jewish populations in Europe, now numbering more than
100,000.
F | Education |
Full-time school attendance in Germany
is free and mandatory from age 6 to age 14, after which most children either
continue in secondary schools or participate in vocational education until the
age of 18. Kindergarten is not part of the public school system, although before
unification East Germany had a nearly universal system of childcare facilities.
Under the treaty of unification, the East German public education system was
required to conform to the model in use in West Germany.
Education in Germany is under the
jurisdiction of the individual state governments, which results in a great deal
of variety. Most states in the former West Germany have a three-track system
that begins with four years of Grundschule (primary school), attended by
all children between the ages of 6 and 9. After this period, a child’s further
educational program is determined during two “orientation grades” (ages 10 and
11). Those who are university-bound then enter a track of rigorous preparatory
secondary education by attending a highly competitive, academic Gymnasium
(junior and senior high school). Many Gymnasium students leave school at age 16
to pursue business careers. Others graduate at age 19 after passing a week-long
examination called the Abitur. If they pass, they receive a certificate,
which is a prerequisite for entering a university. The Gymnasium has three
alternative focuses: Greek and Latin, modern languages, and mathematics and
science. Only about one-tenth of German students graduate from the
Gymnasium.
The overwhelming majority of German
students attend either a six-year Realschule (postprimary school), which
offers a mixture of business and academic training, or a five-year
Hauptschule (general school) followed by further skills training and
on-the-job experience in a three-year vocational program, or
Berufsschule. From age 14 nearly all Realschule and Hauptschule students,
both male and female, enroll in trade apprenticeship programs, which combine
training in workshops, factories, or businesses with vocational schooling.
Apprentices are supervised by a trade master and must demonstrate their mastery
of the trade in examinations.
Since the German three-track system has
often been accused of conforming to class distinctions, some states have opted
instead for a comprehensive high school system that combines all the tracks
within the same institution. The result is somewhat similar to an American high
school, but far more competitive. Before unification, East Germany’s polytechnic
high schools also provided a comprehensive program. Since 1990, East German
education has moved in the direction of West German models.
The Abitur is required for university
entrance but there are alternative routes to it. Some students are permitted to
change from one kind of school to another during the course of their education.
Such midcourse changes are easiest at comprehensive high schools. Those who opt
for three years of vocational training after tenth grade can also go on to
specialized trade colleges, or Fachhochschulen. Schools of continuing
education for adults, such as the many Volkshochschulen (German for
“people’s colleges”), offer a variety of adult education courses and have some
programs leading to diplomas.
Enrollments at German universities have
quadrupled since the 1960s, which has caused the expansion of many old
universities and the building of a number of new ones. Germany has quite a few
venerable old universities, such as those of Heidelberg, Freiburg, Munich,
Tübingen, and Marburg.
G | Way of Life |
High living standards, plentiful
leisure time (including three weeks or more of mandatory paid vacation for most
workers), and comprehensive social welfare benefits distinguish German society.
Germany has a highly urbanized society, with lifestyles that emphasize
recreational, leisure, and physical fitness activities. Many Germans enjoy
hiking, camping, skiing, and other outdoor pursuits. Germans are known for their
love of traveling, and millions travel abroad each year. Soccer is the most
popular sport in the nation, and many Germans belong to local soccer clubs.
Germans are also known for their love of food, especially rich pastries, veal
and pork dishes, and many types of sausages and cheeses. German-made wine and
beer are famous all over the world. Also popular are lively social gatherings at
outdoor beer or wine gardens or cellar restaurants where wine or beer is
stored.
German society has undergone vast
changes in recent decades. Since the early 1960s, for example, television has
homogenized popular culture and brought urban ways of thinking to rural areas.
In fact, the rapid spread of automobile ownership in the 1950s and 1960s made
rural isolation a thing of the past. The old village communities, whose cultural
life was dominated by the parish and the elementary school, have almost
disappeared. The one-room schools in which eight grades used to be instructed
simultaneously no longer exist. Young women find that most of the traditional
barriers to a career of their own choosing, in particular barriers to
diversified vocational and higher education, have broken down. Women have also
been freed from the constraints of the traditional family roles of motherhood
and child rearing by birth control and a greatly lowered birth rate. Today,
Germany’s birthrate is among the lowest in the world.
Some people in the former East Germany
look back fondly on the days before unification when their way of life was
modest but also highly egalitarian. Unification brought greater personal freedom
to East Germans, but the capitalistic market economy also brought the heightened
competition and a hectic pace of life common in the West. The former East
Germany still has considerably lower wage levels and living standards than the
more prosperous West Germany. Many large state-owned manufactures and
cooperative agricultural enterprises in East Germany did not survive the
transformation to a market economy, a process that resulted in unusually high
unemployment. The German government continues to invest tens of billions of
dollars every year to modernize the infrastructure of roads, transport,
communications, and housing in the former East Germany.
H | Social Problems |
Germany does not have large pockets of
poverty or great economic disparity. Crime levels are substantially lower than
those in the United States, and the possession of guns is controlled. However,
there are significant numbers of homeless people and problems of violence,
alcoholism, and drug abuse. Nonviolent crimes, such as theft and burglary in
urban areas, have increased since the 1970s.
Since the 1960s youth violence and
crime have increased steadily. Disruptive behavior and gang membership
characterize some urban secondary schools. Neighborhood youth gangs sometimes
engage in vandalism, car theft, and other crimes. Some teens belong to punk and
skinhead groups, which may espouse drug use, violence, or racism. In addition,
gangs of “soccer rowdies” frequently disrupt games or cause riots
afterward.
In the early 1990s the great influx of
foreigners, especially illegal aliens and asylum-seekers, coincided with the
collapse of the East German Communist regime. Unification brought numerous
economic and social problems to Germany, including increased taxes, budget
deficits, housing shortages, strikes and demonstrations, high unemployment, and
rising crime rates. Enormous social changes and economic fears brought
xenophobia (fear of foreigners) to the surface. While an angry public
focused on the unwelcome strangers and competitors for scarce housing and other
benefits, neighborhood youth gangs attacked visible aliens and set fire to their
government-assigned housing shelters. At its peak in 1992 this antiforeign
violence became the object of extraordinary media concern in Germany and abroad,
where it was sometimes interpreted as a sign of German racism and the revival of
Nazi activities. Massive counter-demonstrations drew millions of Germans opposed
to racism and antiforeign violence. Nevertheless, episodes of racist violence
continued into the new millennium, claiming an estimated 100 lives between 1990
and 2000.
IV | CULTURE |
The German people have made many
noteworthy cultural contributions. However, the antecedents of contemporary
German art, music, and literature are so thoroughly embedded in the broader
European intellectual traditions as to defy most attempts to separate any
specifically German cultural roots. A visitor, for example, can see abundant
evidence of early medieval art and architecture in the many splendid cathedrals,
monasteries, and castles of Germany, but these follow the same styles and style
periods that are be found in other European countries—Romanesque, Gothic,
Renaissance, baroque, and so on. German literature and music were similarly part
of the larger European culture.
A | Literature |
From the beginnings of Germany in the
9th century through the Middle Ages, classical Latin was the language of
literature and theology in the country. In the 12th and 13th centuries, a
vernacular literature appeared, particularly of heroic epics told by wandering
minstrel poets. Gottfried von Strassburg wrote Tristan und Isolt (1210)
and Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote Parzival (about 1210), both of which
dealt with Christian themes from the French Arthurian cycle. The two most
important epics of the Middle Ages—the Nibelungenlied (about 1200-1210)
and the Gudrunlied (about 1210)—are based on pagan Germanic
traditions.
Two important events—the construction of
a printing press using movable type around 1450 by German printer Johannes
Gutenberg and the translation of the Bible into German in 1521 by religious
reformer Martin Luther—had a profound impact on Western culture as a whole. They
also opened new possibilities for a specifically German literature, because they
founded a uniform High German language above the regional dialects, and made it
accessible to all who could read. Religious unrest and the Thirty Years’ War put
an end to most German literary efforts until a revival occurred in the 18th
century.
One of the first writers to stand out
beyond Germany was 18th-century dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, whose play
Nathan the Wise (1779; translated 1781) argued for religious toleration.
Philosopher and literary critic Johann Gottfried von Herder was an important
contemporary of Lessing. The revival of German literature was marked by two
great literary movements, classicism and romanticism, which were united in the
works of Germany’s greatest poets, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich
Schiller. The lyrical poetry and novels of Goethe and his drama Faust
(1808-1832; translated 1834) and the plays and poems of Schiller brought
together classical form and the romantic emotions that marked much of the
literature to come. The great inspiration for this golden age of German
literature was classical antiquity, which was considered admirable for its
balance and perfection. The romantics, on the other hand, often used German folk
materials, such as medieval history and the fairy tales collected by the Grimm
brothers. Ancient Greek poetry inspired the romantic poems of Friedrich
Hölderlin. The brothers August Wilhelm von Schlegel and Friedrich von Schlegel
edited Athenaeum, which was the chief journal of the romantic movement,
translated Shakespeare, and produced literary works based on classical
antiquity.
In the mid-1800s the new literary
schools of naturalism and symbolism developed. Naturalism regarded human
behavior as controlled by instinct, social and economic conditions, and
biological factors; it rejected free will. Naturalist playwright Gerhart
Hauptmann explored hereditary factors that shaped the individual, while the work
of symbolist poet Rainer Maria Rilke was marked by mystic lyricism and imagery.
Austrian playwright and poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal created aesthetic moods.
Great German novelists of the early 1900s include Thomas Mann, author of The
Magic Mountain (1924; translated 1927) and other famous novels, and Alfred
Döblin, who is best known for his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929;
translated 1931). The most influential expressionist writer was Franz Kafka,
whose novels and short stories present a world of oppression and despair.
Social criticism was also a common theme
in the early 1900s; it provided the primary focus for the novelist Robert Musil
and the playwrights Arthur Schnitzler and Frank Wedekind. In 1929 Erich Maria
Remarque published the antiwar novel Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet
on the Western Front), with grimly realistic portraits of World War
I. Writers like Hermann Hesse, author of Siddhartha (1922; translated
1951), drew on Indian philosophy and religion. The narrative epic theater of
see Bertolt Brecht during the 1920s in Berlin specifically attacked
capitalist, bourgeois society. German writing, like many German arts, suffered
when the Nazi Party (see National Socialism) took control of Germany in
1933; led by Thomas Mann, many creative minds fled the country and went into
exile.
After World War II a new generation of
German writers, which called itself Group 47, examined themes of overcoming the
Nazi experience. Novelists Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, and Uwe Johnson led this
group. Playwrights Peter Weiss and Peter Handke and poets Ingeborg Bachmann and
Paul Celan made important contributions to German literature in the late 20th
century.
B | Art and Architecture |
Medieval German art and architecture
were embedded in the dominant European styles of the time. No monumental
painting or sculpture, however, has survived from the earliest period except the
9th-century Carolingian cathedral at Aachen, one of the most important circular
buildings in Europe.
The cathedrals of Hildesheim and
Magdeburg, the illuminated manuscripts, the sculpture, and the church paintings
of the 10th century reflect the spirituality of Byzantine art and architecture.
The 11th- and 12th-century cathedrals of Speyer, Goslar, Mainz, and Worms are
outstanding examples of the Romanesque style, with rounded arches and dark
interiors. The cathedrals of Strasbourg, Trier, and Cologne are fine samples of
the Gothic style and its soaring pillars, pointed arches, and flying buttresses.
In the 14th century a family of architects and artists, the Parlers, helped
spread Gothic designs and sculpture throughout southern Germany, from Ulm to
Nürnberg and Prague. During the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries, the
great German artist Albrecht Dürer created extraordinary woodcuts and copper
engravings and pioneered ways of reproducing and disseminating art. Other
well-known artists of the time include the painters Matthias Grünewald, Lucas
Cranach the Elder, and Hans Holbein the Younger, and the superb wood altars and
sculptures of Tilman Riemenschneider.
Another style, the opulently ornamented
baroque, flourished in the Catholic churches and monasteries and the secular
palaces of southern Germany and Austria during the 17th and 18th centuries. Its
rich ornamentation accompanied the renewed style of the Catholic church service
of the Counter Reformation, which was a reaction to the Protestant preference
for stripping churches of statuary and paintings of saints. Andreas Schlüter
designed the Royal Palace in Berlin in 1706, and architect Balthasar Neumann
built the Bishop’s Residence in Würzburg with a great stair hall and a reception
room decorated with ceiling paintings.
Outstanding examples of late baroque, or
rococo style, include the Wies Church near Munich in southern Bavaria, a vision
of light and lightness built by Dominikus Zimmermann, the Benedictine Abbey of
Melk on the Danube, and the Royal Zwinger Palace in Dresden, a creation of
Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann. Rococo is distinguished by its fanciful use of
curves and light, its flowing asymmetric lines, and its pierced shellwork. In
the 19th century, great architects such as the painter and architect Karl
Friedrich Schinkel designed many of the representative buildings in Berlin, and
Gottfried Semper pioneered the revival of Renaissance styles in Dresden and
Vienna. Artists of the German romantic period include Caspar David Friedrich,
who painted meditative landscapes and seascapes, and Carl Spitzweg, who provided
humorous glimpses of small-town life.
At the beginning of the 20th century,
German art and architecture developed a range of new styles, beginning with the
Jugendstil (see Art Nouveau), whose rich and colorful
ornamentation and graceful curves left an indelible imprint on the rest of the
century. The Bauhaus school of design, under the direction first of Walter
Gropius and later of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, pioneered a functional, severely
simple architectural style during the years of the Weimar Republic. The Bauhaus
also attracted great abstract painters such as Paul Klee and famous foreigners
such as the Russian Wassily Kandinsky and the American Lyonel Feininger. In
addition, the early 1900s produced the bitter caricatures of George Grosz, the
tragic graphic art of Käthe Kollwitz, and the expressionist art of groups such
as Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Among the
leading expressionists were painters Max Beckmann, who produced highly dramatic
and energetic paintings, and Emil Nolde, who used contorted brushwork and raw
colors to visually shock the viewer. The Nazis pilloried their work as
“degenerate art.” As with German literature, nearly every leading figure in art
and architecture fled Germany during the Nazi years, and only a few returned
after 1945. In postwar Germany, artists of note include sculptor and performance
artist Joseph Beuys and painter Anselm Kiefer, who explored themes of the German
cultural crisis under dictatorship and total war.
C | Music |
The earliest roots of German music lie
in monastic chants and religious music. In the 12th century the mystic abbess
Hildegard of Bingen wrote stirring compositions and hymns that sought to free
musical expression from narrow conventions. From the 12th century to the 14th
century, wandering nobles and knights called minnesingers wrote and recited
courtly love poems in the tradition of French troubadours and trouvères. Of the
approximately 160 known minnesingers from this time period, the most famous are
Walther von der Vogelweide and Reinmar von Hagenau. In addition to the
minnesingers, a secular folk music tradition also developed. Some collections of
student and vagabond songs survive, including the Carmina Burana verses of
13th-century Bavaria, which in the 20th century were set to music by Carl Orff.
From the 14th to the 16th century the German middle class favored the rigid
musical style composed by the poets and musicians who belonged to the
Meistersinger guild.
During the 16th and 17th centuries,
polyphonic music, in which simultaneous melodies were interwoven, arrived in
Germany in the form of the Protestant chorale. In contrast to the music of the
traditional Catholic service, the rousing Protestant chorale became the
participant music of the faithful. Protestant leader Martin Luther himself
contributed some of the most popular chorales, such as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our
God,” to this genre of sacred songs written in the vernacular. Other leading
religious composers included Heinrich Schütz, Dietrich Buxtehude, and see
Johann Pachelbel.
The age of baroque music, with its
exuberant ornamentation, began with one of Germany’s greatest composers, Johann
Sebastian Bach. Bach’s towering work of the early 1700s was admired for its
artistic use of counterpoint. It includes the formal Brandenburg Concertos; four
orchestral suites; concertos for violin, keyboard, and various wind instruments;
preludes; fugues; and a huge volume of choral works, including his
Christmas Oratorio, The Passion of St. Matthew, The Passion of St.
John, and many cantatas. He also had two musically talented sons, Johann
Christian Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who became well-known composers in
their own right. Two famous contemporaries of Bach were composers Georg Philipp
Telemann and George Frideric Handel—who wrote more than 40 operas, chamber
music, and the famous oratorio Messiah.
By the 1740s princely courts in such
cities as Berlin, Dresden, Mannheim, and Vienna had emerged as sponsors of
orchestral music and of composers and musicians. In Mannheim, for example,
Johann Wenzel Anton Stamitz held the post of court composer. In Vienna, the
Hungarian Esterházy princes extended their patronage to the immensely gifted and
versatile Joseph Haydn, who gave the string quartet, the symphony, and the
sonata their classic form. In Salzburg and also in Vienna in the late 1700s,
child prodigy and musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart experimented with
strains of the dominant Italian musical tradition until he developed his own
unmistakable graceful and lyrical style. In his short but brilliant life he
produced about 50 symphonies; concertos for piano, violin, and wind instruments;
masses; and a requiem. His most famous operas, The Marriage of Figaro
(1786) and Don Giovanni (1787), and lighter operatic pieces, The Magic
Flute (1791) and The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782), still
dominate the operatic stage.
The age of the French and American
revolutions characterized the heroic emotion of the work of Ludwig van
Beethoven, a student of Haydn’s in Vienna, who also revolutionized musical form
and expression in the early 1800s. He used unorthodox harmonies in classical
sonatas and symphonies to inspire exalted moods. His nine symphonies—including
the Eroica (begun 1803) and the Symphony no. 9 (1824), with the famous
Ode to Joy—five piano concertos, his violin concerto of haunting beauty,
an opera, and a large volume of superb chamber music, including his brilliant
string quartets, earned Beethoven a reputation as one of the greatest composers
in the Western tradition. Another musical innovator of the 1800s, Franz
Schubert, created the German lied (art song), usually a piece of romantic
or lyrical poetry—some by Goethe—set to music and accompanied by a pianist.
Schubert’s lieder cycles, such as The Miller’s Beautiful Daughter (1823),
became the model for a long list of other romantic composers, including Hugo
Wolf, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms.
Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert
had found Vienna a musical center of the highest creativity and the most refined
musical tastes. But there was also a burst of more popular music with the
Viennese waltzes of Johann Strauss the Younger and his immortal operettas Die
Fledermaus (1874; The Bat) and Der Zigeunerbaron (1885; The
Gypsy Baron). There were also other operetta masters such as Albert Lortzing
and the Hungarian Franz Lehár, whose Merry Widow (1905) brought operetta
into the 20th century. Other composers such as the prolific Anton Bruckner and
Gustav Mahler—a genius of romantic expression in his song cycles—continued the
Vienna tradition in a serious vein.
Many 19th-century German composers mixed
the style of classicism with the less-structured, more spontaneous style of
romanticism. Brahms, for example, tended more toward the classical in his four
symphonies, his violin and piano concertos, his requiem, and his chamber music.
Schumann’s haunting melodies, including symphonies, piano pieces, and chorales,
were more on the romantic side. His talented wife, Clara Schumann, also composed
romantic pieces. Classicist Felix Mendelssohn produced orchestral, choral, and
chamber works.
German opera of the 19th century enjoyed
a dramatic evolution at the hands of Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner.
Wagner developed a closer linkage between the music and the action on stage by
using such devices as the leitmotiv, which presents a musical theme for each
important figure or recurrent action. Both Weber and Wagner preferred themes
from German history, particularly the Middle Ages. Among Wagner’s best-known
operas are The Mastersingers of Nürnberg (completed 1867), The Flying
Dutchman (1841), and the four-part epic cycle of the Ring of the
Nibelungs (completed 1874). Later, Richard Strauss produced outstanding
operas such as Der Rosenkavalier (1911), and Engelbert Humperdinck
experimented with operas for children. At the same time, Austrian Arnold
Schoenberg and his pupils Anton Webern and Alban Berg devised a revolutionary
twelve-tone music that abandoned traditional melodies and harmonies for emphasis
on rhythm and dissonance. Composer Kurt Weill collaborated with writer Bertolt
Brecht on two of the great works of the German popular stage, The Three-Penny
Opera (1928; translated 1933) and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
(1930; translated 1956). Germany has also produced a multitude of talented
orchestra directors, including Otto Klemperer and Kurt Masur.
As it did in other fields, the rise of
the Nazi Party in the 1930s choked off German musical development. Hundreds of
musical artists fled Germany during the years of the Third Reich. After the war,
only a few new modern composers appeared, notably Karlheinz Stockhausen and his
electronic music, and Hans Werner Henze, known for his lyrical modern operas.
However, the classical music tradition continues in Germany with the
performances and recordings of more than 150 major orchestras, including such
world-renowned groups as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gewandhaus
Orchestra in Leipzig, and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.
D | Libraries and Museums |
German cultural life has flourished in
the many cities that were once the capitals of near-independent states. Their
rulers sponsored the arts, music, and theater, and established many fine
libraries, galleries, and museums that survived long after the dynasties were
gone. The kings of Prussia founded the Prussian State Library (now the Berlin
State Library-Prussian Cultural Heritage), the National Gallery, and the Museum
of Greek and Roman Antiquities in Berlin. In Munich the Bavarian kings founded
the Bavarian State Library, the Alte Pinakothek art gallery, and the famous
Deutsches Museum, a museum of scientific and technological inventions. The kings
of Saxony founded a splendid art collection in the Zwinger Palace in Dresden. In
addition, excellent university libraries and many city and monastery libraries
exist throughout the country. Records of the Nazi period are located in the
Federal Archives in Koblenz and in the Berlin Document Center, which houses 25
million Nazi Party documents. A large number of private archives of businesses
and individuals and fine private museums, such as the Wallraf Museum in Cologne,
are also found in Germany.
E | Contemporary Culture |
The German people have a long tradition
of supporting the arts. Four-fifths of the $2-billion cost of opera performances
annually come from public subsidies. Since unification, however, government
funding for the arts has been dramatically reduced, especially in Berlin. Before
1990 East and West Berlin each supported their respective opera houses with
public monies, particularly East Berlin, which supplied cheap tickets for the
working class. After unification, Berlin ended up with two great opera houses
and the excellent Comic Opera House, but it has only a fraction of the previous
funding.
Popular music in Germany also enjoys a
large audience. The concerts of German rock groups draw tens of thousands.
Germans have their own groups and bands, and have also come to produce fine jazz
in some of the big cities. However, much of the music and many of the artists
are part of the international music scene. The popular music itself is
overwhelmingly of American origin. The same is true of much of popular
television fare in Germany. Germany has made few efforts to limit the market
share of American cultural imports.
The cultural inundation from Hollywood
has long overwhelmed the native motion-picture industry. German films make up
less than 10 percent of those shown in German theaters. The flourishing German
film industry of the Weimar years, which produced well-known directors such as
Fritz Lang, became a wasteland during and after World War II. In the 1960s and
1970s, however, with the help of government subsidies and television contracts,
a few new directors nurtured a modestly successful film industry. Volker
Schlöndorff, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Jürgen
Syberberg, and Margarethe von Trotta were among the new filmmakers honored by
the Young German Film Trust and at international film festivals such as those
held in Berlin and Mannheim. Many Germans, however, are not familiar with their
work.
V | ECONOMY |
When Germany became a nation in 1871, it
was a latecomer in the race toward industrialization (see Industrial
Revolution), which was then dominated by the United Kingdom and France.
Unification under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck resulted in a boom that made
Germany an industrial leader by 1910. Germany’s economic development was based
on an alliance of industrial business leaders with the Prussian aristocracy, who
controlled much of the land. It emphasized the production of coal and steel,
machines and machine tools, chemicals, electronic equipment, ships, and later,
motor vehicles. Well-organized business, labor, and farm associations in league
with the government produced a distinctive “organized capitalism,” different
from the less regulated forms of capitalism in Britain and the United States.
Germany’s strong economy carried it into two world wars in the 20th century.
Despite heavy Allied bombing against German targets that helped end World War II
in 1945, Germany’s industrial base survived largely intact.
After World War II Western powers saw the
need to strengthen European economies to resist the threat of Soviet expansion
and the encroachment of Communism. To this end, the U.S. government in 1947
initiated the European Recovery Program, commonly called the Marshall Plan,
which offered generous investment loans to all European countries devastated by
the war. Under the stewardship of economics minister Ludwig Erhard, the Marshall
Plan helped launch a 20-year economic expansion in West Germany that raised
living standards and industrial production far above prewar levels. This
recovery is often described as West Germany’s “economic miracle.”
East Germany did not participate in the
Marshall Plan and instead constructed a communist economic system, in which
central planning by a state commission set all wages and prices. Most private
industries and farms were turned into state or cooperative enterprises. East
Germany became one of the most industrialized and prosperous Communist
countries.
However, after German unification in 1990,
the enormous differences between the West and East German economic systems
brought East Germany to the brink of collapse. Many East German workers
abandoned their jobs for better opportunities in the West, and East German
consumers spurned their own products for Western goods. To make matters worse,
the overvalued East German currency, the ostmark, was exchanged
one-to-one for the West German deutsche mark (DM), whose street
value was actually seven to ten times higher. This exchange plunged struggling
East German enterprises into the highly competitive West German and
international markets without protection. The East German enterprises now had to
pay their debts and payrolls in higher-value DM while at the same time losing
market share to the superior West German products that were becoming widely
available. A wide range of West German goods became available on East German
shelves. The Eastern European markets for East German exports disappeared, since
many of these countries could not afford to pay in DM for East German goods
previously attained by bartering their own products. Many East German
enterprises failed. New private and public investments, most of them from the
former West Germany, have since flowed into the former East Germany as its
economy was restructured and privatized.
Numerous difficulties have marked Germany’s
economic development since unification. Following unification, Germany began to
pour tens of billions of dollars annually into the infrastructure of former East
Germany. These immense financial transfers are expected to continue into the
second decade of the 21st century. In just the first seven years after
unification, this involved an amount equivalent (in real, uninflated value) to
70 times the Marshall Plan aid to West Germany.
Convergence between the two economies has
slowed since the mid-1990s, and Germany as a whole has experienced relatively
low rates of annual growth—especially following the painful economic downturn in
2002 and 2003. The unemployment rate in the former East Germany remains double
that in the west. Worker productivity in the east still lags far behind that in
the west, and many skilled workers in the east continue to move westward seeking
better-paying jobs. In addition, the east remains dependent on large financial
transfers from the west for economic development and social welfare
assistance.
Since the early 1990s, these structural
economic problems have weakened the German economy—an economy long regarded as
the economic powerhouse of Europe. Nevertheless, with its large and modern
industrial base, Germany’s economy remains the largest in the European Union
(EU). Germany uses the EU’s common currency, the euro, and more than one-half of
German exports and imports are with other EU countries.
A | Labor |
In the past, West Germany had very low
unemployment, and East Germany had full employment under its communist system.
In the early 1990s, however, unemployment in Germany increased. This increase
was due to a number of problems, including industrial restructuring in former
East Germany, declines in export orders brought about by recession in other
countries, and monetary policies designed to curb inflation. In early 1997
unemployment hit a postwar high of 12.2 percent, with more than 4 million
Germans out of work. In the west, the level was more than 9 percent, while
eastern Germany’s rate was about 17 percent. Among the reasons for the
sluggishness in job creation were the high wage rate common in Germany and the
strong trade unions, which seek to protect existing wages and jobs. Unemployment
remains high in Germany with a national rate of 9.8 percent in 2004.
Germany has a history of strong labor
unions (see Labor Union). The first German unions were founded in 1868
and grew into a mighty political and economic force until the Third Reich took
over all labor organization in 1933. After 1945 the unions came back with
redoubled force in the West under the German Trade Union Federation (DGB). In
1949 the DGB had 4.8 million members in 16 industrial federations and 101
unions. By 1989, on the eve of unification, there were 7.9 million DGB members.
German unification briefly raised this figure by 50 percent before the number of
members finally settled at about 9 million. The federations ranged from the
powerful metalworkers and autoworkers to the leather workers. Other important
DGB federations were the Public Service Union and the Chemical, Paper, and
Ceramics Workers. Major labor unions outside the DGB included the White Collar
Employees, the Civil Service Union, and the Christian Workers Union.
East Germany meanwhile had organized the
state-controlled Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB). At its peak, the
FDGB claimed a membership of 9.6 million, including pensioners, students,
production workers, office employees, intellectuals, and professionals. The FDGB
collapsed at the time of unification, and DGB organizers from the west moved in
and offered East German workers their support during the transition to a market
economy, which included waves of dismissals, reduced hours, and early
retirements. The DGB conducted a series of strikes for higher wages and better
working conditions for East German workers, beginning with large strikes of
metalworkers and public employees in 1992 and 1993. However, with the
dismantling of some of the largest East German industrial conglomerates and
agricultural collectives, whole regions became depressed areas of high
unemployment, especially in the north and northeast.
B | Manufacturing and Industry |
Manufacturing and industry have long been
central to German economic development, although recent global and European
trends are forcing changes upon the German economy. Industry helped the country
recover economically from World War II and from the unification of East and West
Germany. Although the economy has gradually moved in the direction of services,
manufacturing and industry are still important in the country and accounted for
30 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006. Germany is a leading
producer of such products as iron and steel, cement, chemical products,
electronics, food and beverages, machinery and machine tools, and motor
vehicles.
Large-scale manufacturing enterprises are
concentrated in several areas. The most important industrial area encompasses
the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which includes the steel-producing Ruhr
region. The Ruhr region is one of the most intensely developed industrial areas
in the world, and a large majority of Germany’s iron, steel, and bituminous coal
comes from this area. Its early and intense development also make this region
the equivalent of a rustbelt area in the United States, where traditional
manufacturing is in decline and unemployment is high. The area around the
confluence of the Rhine and Main rivers forms another major industrial region,
comprising the cities of Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Mainz, and Offenbach.
They produce metals, electronic equipment, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and motor
vehicles. To the south, Stuttgart and Munich are also manufacturing hubs. Their
products include aircraft, textiles and clothing, office machinery, optical
instruments, and beer. Berlin, the Hannover-Brunswick area, and the port cities
of Hamburg, Bremen, Kiel, and Wilhelmshaven are other important industrial
centers.
Since unification, industry in the former
East Germany has suffered from a number of problems stemming from the long years
when it was protected from international competition. Some industries—such as
chemicals and plastics, shipbuilding, textiles, and motor vehicles—lost their
markets to superior or less expensive products made in western Germany or
abroad. Inefficient manufacturing processes in the east made it necessary to cut
the industrial work force in half, leading to mass unemployment. After
unification, Germany broke up most large eastern corporations and transferred
them from state ownership into private hands. Some enterprises were taken over
by their own managers; most were bought in bits and pieces by West German or
foreign investors. By the late 1990s, former East Germany was well on its way in
moving from a manufacturing economy toward a predominantly service-oriented
economy.
C | Mining |
Mining plays a small role in the modern
German economy. Several minerals, however, are produced in sizable quantities.
Hard coal deposits are mined in the Ruhr area and the Saarland. Brown coal, also
known as lignite, is mined in the foothills of the Harz Mountains; near Cologne;
in southeastern Brandenburg; and in central Germany. Before 1990 brown coal
satisfied about three-fifths of East Germany’s energy needs, but caused massive
environmental problems. Since unification, East German brown coal extraction has
declined dramatically. The federal government shut down the least productive
East German mines and covered open strip mines with vegetation. However, brown
coal continues to supply about one-third of the electricity needs of Germany. In
addition, nuclear energy and hard coal, which burns more cleanly than brown
coal, are gaining in importance. The German government subsidizes both the hard
coal and brown coal industries.
Iron ore production had declined in West
Germany by the mid-1980s because it could be imported more inexpensively than
producing it locally. Germany’s potash salts industry ranks as one of the
largest exporters of potash-based fertilizers in the world. The deposits are
located mostly in Thüringen in central Germany. Four-fifths of the potash is
exported. Thüringen also has significant deposits of copper.
D | Farming |
Farming is of limited importance to
Germany’s economy. Together with forestry and fishing, farming accounts for
about 10 percent of the GDP in the former East Germany as compared to 1 percent
in the country as a whole. Only 2 percent of the labor force is involved in
these sectors. Germany imports about one-third of its food. The nation’s
principal crops are wheat, potatoes, sugar beets, and barley. The fruit industry
is also significant, producing apples and grapes, some of which are used to make
Germany’s famous wines. In addition, farmers raise livestock, including hogs,
cattle, sheep, and poultry.
Since 1950 the numbers of farms and
farmers have dropped dramatically. Most farms are quite small—only 2 percent are
larger than 100 hectares (about 250 acres). The smaller farms, located mostly in
the west, are often owned and operated by families who also work other jobs.
In East Germany, a drive for agricultural
collectivization in the 1950s eliminated small and medium-sized farms and
expropriated large landholdings. The Communist government considered farming to
be no different from industrial production. Consequently, it strove for
large-scale mechanization of its large cooperatives and state farms. All farmers
were forced into production cooperatives whose number gradually shrank over the
years.
German unification demonstrated the
economic superiority of well-managed small and medium-sized farms in the West
over the collective and cooperative giant farms of East Germany. The latter
proved inadequate to the tasks of marketing and meeting refined consumer
demands, and they generated a great deal of air and water pollution. They also
failed to inspire desire in their cooperative farmers to take back and maintain
their own original farm properties once the collectives were broken up.
E | Forestry and Fishing |
Environmental management and conservation
have played increasingly important roles in German forestry and fishing. Forests
cover 31 percent of German territory, much of it mountainous. Only 34 percent is
cultivated. The forests sustain timber production and wood products, such as
furniture, construction materials, and toys. The harvesting of timber, however,
has always had to be supplemented with imports.
The law requires forest owners to
maintain their forestland consistently and to replant harvested and thinned-out
areas. Public concern with the depletion of this resource led to the enactment
of the Forest Preservation and Promotion Act of 1975 and to the progressive
withdrawal of forestland from commercial exploitation. Since the early 1980s,
increasing industrial pollution and automobile emissions have been blamed for a
tree blight that has already affected half of the nation’s forests, causing
leaves and needles to drop and slowing tree growth. This damage was discovered,
on unification, to be particularly high in the forests of the former East
Germany, since the Communist government had made no effort to monitor
environmental damage.
Germans consider their woodlands and
forests important recreation areas, especially near cities, where they are
regarded as the ideal antidote for the stresses and pollution of urban life. The
states with the largest forests are Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hessen, and
Rhineland Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz), but there are also densely forested
areas in the northeast and in the south of former East Germany.
The fishing industry of West Germany
declined beginning in the 1970s, reflecting the expansion of other countries’
territorial fishing zones and the depletion of fish stocks in the remaining open
waters. By comparison, the collectivized East German fisheries suffered smaller
losses and built up a large fleet for use in the North Atlantic and the Baltic.
Unification, however, brought major problems to East Germany’s outdated and
inefficient fishing fleets and equipment. Rostock, the chief East German fishing
port, has high unemployment as do several other German fishing ports along the
North Sea and Baltic coasts.
Germany’s annual catch includes marine
fish such as Atlantic herring, blue mussel, Atlantic mackerel, cod, and
varieties of flatfish. Domestic fish production, especially of carp and trout,
has dramatically increased by raising the fish in ponds and by systematic fish
management on rivers and lakes.
F | Energy |
German industrial development in the 19th
century was fueled by coal. The use of coal declined in the 1970s and 1980s.
However, East German brown coal (lignite) remained important into the early 21st
century for electricity production and as fuel, despite being a major source of
air pollution. Petroleum and hydroelectric power (see Waterpower) were
only a small source of public electricity production, but were major energy
sources for heating and manufacturing processes.
German dependence on petroleum imports,
the oil crisis of the 1970s, and an expanding appetite for more energy shifted
attention to the potential of nuclear energy. By the mid-1980s, 19 nuclear
plants were supplying 36 percent of the public electricity needs in West
Germany, and more plants were in the planning stage. Following the Chernobyl’
nuclear disaster in 1986, however, massive environmental protests stiffened
public resistance to nuclear energy (see Chernobyl’ Accident). Further
construction of nuclear power facilities was halted for fear of accidents and
lawsuits and because of the difficulties of disposing of the radioactive waste.
Instead, West Germany embarked on a program of energy savings, including
increasing the efficiency of automobile engines and heating plants. Alternative
and renewable sources of energy, such as wind, solar, and geothermal energy,
have also been developed, but there is little hope that they could ever supply a
major part of Germany’s huge needs.
Nuclear plants still provide 28.13
percent of the nation’s electricity. While many reactors in Germany were shut
down, there were 17 plants that continued to function in 2006. The considerable
uranium deposits in Saxony and Thüringen, which had been strip-mined (see
Mining) and left open to the elements under the East German government, were
sealed up. A government-owned company, Wismut GmbH, worked to complete the
environmental cleanup. The Federal Ministry of Environmental Protection, along
with other Western nations, has raised funds to assist Eastern European
countries with measures to shut down or replace all Chernobyl’-type
reactors.
G | Currency and Banking |
The monetary unit of Germany is the
single currency of the European Union (EU), the euro. Germany is among 12
EU member states to adopt the euro. The euro was introduced in January 1999 for
electronic transfers and accounting purposes only, and Germany’s national
currency, the deutsche mark, or DM, was used for other purposes. On
January 1, 2002, euro-denominated coins and bills went into circulation, and the
deutsche mark ceased to be legal tender.
As a participant in the single currency,
Germany must follow economic policies established by the European Central Bank
(ECB). The ECB is located in Frankfurt, Germany, and is responsible for all EU
monetary policies, which include setting interest rates and regulating the money
supply. On January 1, 1999, control over German monetary policy was transferred
from the central bank of Germany, the Bundesbank, to the ECB.
Germany’s financial institutions include
hundreds of lending banks and savings banks, thousands of larger credit
cooperatives, and dozens of mortgage institutions and banks. Securities are
traded at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The German capital market is
characterized by a large share of fixed-interest securities, in particular local
government and real estate bonds.
H | Foreign Trade |
Germany is a major trading nation and one
of the export leaders of the world, in close competition with Japan and the much
larger United States. Germany’s main trading partners are countries in Europe,
such as France, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Italy, and the United
States.
I | Transportation |
Germany has a highly developed
transportation system including a limited-access superhighway known as the
autobahn. There is no speed limit on the autobahns, but frequent
construction projects and congestion keep the speed down. Since East German
roads had not been upgraded and expanded much since the 1930s and the volume of
motor vehicles on them rose greatly after unification, a large part of the funds
transferred from the West have gone to expand the German highway system.
The country’s extensive passenger and
freight rail system played a major role in German economic development. Most of
the railroads were government-owned until 1993, when legislation was approved to
privatize them. They are now under private ownership as Bundesbahn A.G.
High-speed intercity lines serve major German cities such as Hamburg and Munich,
Frankfurt and Dresden, and Hannover and Bremen.
Germany has major navigable inland
waterways and canals. The canals, such as the Mittellandkanal, supplement the
traffic routes of the major rivers; some canals, such as the Kiel Canal and the
Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, connect major bodies of water. Duisburg, Magdeburg,
Mannheim, and Berlin are large inland ports, and Hamburg, Bremen, Bremerhaven,
Emden, Lübeck, Rostock, and Stralsund are major seaports. An extensive
underground pipeline system conveys petroleum products.
Air transportation of passengers and
goods is served by several international airports, including Frankfurt and
Munich, and many regional airports. There are hundreds of airports, including 13
major ones. Germany’s principal airline, Deutsche Lufthansa A.G., was formerly
operated by the government but is now privately owned.
J | Communications |
The German Basic Law, or constitution,
guarantees the freedom of the press. Germany has high newspaper readership and a
well-informed population. Major daily publications include the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, and the
Berlin Tagesspiegel. Der Spiegel and Die Zeit are weeklies with
national circulation. Bild is a mass-circulation tabloid. Party-owned and
government-run publications in the former East Germany were privatized after
1989.
Germany’s competitive television market
is the largest in Europe. Numerous commercial broadcasters compete with public
broadcasters for national and regional audiences. Each of Germany’s 16 regions
regulates its own broadcasting services and provides local public television and
radio services. Nearly all German homes have access to cable or satellite
television, and the German government has actively promoted the development of
digital television and radio services.
The German telephone system is modern,
automatic, and also nearly universal. The system relies on satellites, cable,
and microwave radio relay (MRR) networks. Before unification, this state of
development did not apply to East Germany, where only the government and the
secret police had efficient communications at their disposal. Since 1990,
however, massive Western transfer payments have given eastern Germany a highly
advanced communications system, although the distribution of private telephones
has not yet caught up with standards in the former West Germany.
Deutsche Post AG, a formerly state-owned
business that was privatized in 2000, is Germany’s largest postal carrier; in
2002 the company received a license to deliver mail in the United Kingdom,
ending the long-held monopoly of Britain’s publicly owned Royal Mail. Deutsche
Telekom AG, a privately held corporation since 1996, is Germany’s largest
telecommunications company. Its subsidiaries oversee national and international
telecommunications operations, and include T-Com (conventional telephone
network), T-Mobile (mobile telephones), and T-Online (Internet services).
Deutsche Telekom also holds interests in various other telephone companies,
including subsidiaries in Croatia, Hungary, and Slovakia.
K | Tourism |
Germany’s beautiful scenery and varied
culture attract many tourists, both foreign and domestic. Tourists tend to favor
the resorts of the North and Baltic seas, the Alps, the forests of the southern
uplands, and the valleys of the Rhine, Main, Mosel, Neckar, upper Elbe, and
Danube rivers. Since unification, tourists have gained access to the natural
parks of former East Germany, such as those of the Oder (Odra) Valley or the
island of Rügen. Tourists also flock to Germany’s many medieval cities,
including those along the so-called Romantic Road from Würzburg to Augsburg, and
to the baroque wonders and art collections of Dresden. Large numbers of tourists
attend famous music and theater festivals, such as the Wagner Opera Festival at
Bayreuth and the Passion Play in Oberammergau. Ski resorts in the Alps draw many
people, as do the numerous noteworthy spas and health resorts, such as Bad
Kissingen and Bad Schandau.
VI | GOVERNMENT |
After Germany’s defeat in World War II,
the Allied forces of France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics(USSR) divided the country into four zones.
In 1948 France, Britain, and the United States merged their zones into one
region while the Soviet Union imposed Communist rule over its zone. In 1949 this
division of Germany was perpetuated by the creation of East Germany and West
Germany.
In West Germany, a council composed of
members of the state legislatures created the Basic Law, or constitution, in
1948 and 1949. It was approved by the state legislatures and by U.S., British,
and French occupation authorities. The Basic Law established West Germany as a
parliamentary democracy and a federation of states (see Federalism). It
has been amended many times, most recently in the 1990s to help anchor the
unification of East and West Germany in the constitution. At that point, Germany
decided to reconstitute the five original states of East Germany and to admit
them, one by one, into the federal union without changing the basic structure of
the West German system. The Unity Treaty of 1990 permitted East Germany to
retain some of its laws that conflicted with West German statutes until the
all-German parliament could bring about a uniform settlement.
A | Federal Union |
The kind of federalism set forth in the
Basic Law is based on German federal traditions and differs from the federal
system of the United States. German federalism concentrates legislative power at
the federal level and places administrative and judicial powers at the state
level. Each state has a popularly elected legislature, which chooses a
minister-president or a first mayor (in Hamburg and Bremen) to serve as chief
executive. There is very little for the 16 state assemblies to legislate because
the Basic Law subordinates most state legislative powers to the federal
government. However, the states formulate some educational and cultural policies
and maintain police. The administration of all laws, including federal laws, is
almost exclusively in the hands of the states. Federal administration—except for
the foreign service, border protection, and defense—is limited to the personnel
of federal cabinet ministries and institutes. These federal bodies collect
statistics and draw up legislative bills for policy-making. Even taxation is
mostly federally legislated and state administered, including the largest
sources of revenue, income and corporation taxes. These taxes are shared by the
state and federal levels and, in part, are redistributed from the richer to the
poorer states.
The key German federal institution is
the Bundesrat (Federal Council), which is the representative of the state
governments and has the final say in disputes between states and between the
states and the federal government. The Bundesrat is the upper house of
parliament but its members are state ministers or civil servants and are not
elected; instead their respective state governments appoint them. Of Germany’s
16 states, the four largest—North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony,
Baden-Württemberg, and Bavaria—are all in the west and tend to predominate in
the Bundesrat. The five states of former East Germany—which are mostly poor and,
with the exception of Saxony, small in population—play a lesser role in federal
politics.
B | Executive |
Germany has a parliamentary head of
government, or prime minister, called the chancellor. The chancellor is chosen
by a majority vote of the popularly elected lower house of parliament, the
Bundestag (Federal Assembly), usually by a coalition of parties. The
chancellor selects a cabinet of ministers from among the parties in the
coalition. The Basic Law gives the chancellor the authority to determine the
guidelines of government policy and to select and dismiss the ministers. The
chancellor can be removed from office only if the Bundestag elects a successor
or when the Bundestag itself is reelected. Due to the existence of strong,
disciplined parties, Germany has a stable system of government with little
turnover.
The federal president, who acts as the
head of state, is elected for a five-year term by the Bundesversammlung
(Federal Convention), which consists of the members of the Bundestag and an
equal number of members from the state legislatures. The president’s functions
are largely ceremonial and nonpartisan. The president receives foreign
ambassadors and promulgates laws but has no authority to make policy.
C | Legislature |
Germany’s federal parliament consists of
two legislative bodies, the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. The Bundestag is
popularly elected at intervals of no more than four years. All citizens who are
18 years of age or older may vote. The number of seats in the Bundestag varies
from election to election; there were 614 seats in 2005.
Bundestag seats are determined by a
two-part electoral process. German voters have two votes: one to directly select
a candidate for their district, and the other to select a particular party. Half
of the seats are filled by directly elected candidates, while the other half are
filled based on the percentage of the total vote that each party receives. The
final distribution of each party’s seats is also adjusted in proportion to the
total popular vote. A party must have at least three candidates directly elected
or receive a minimum of 5 percent of the national popular vote to win
representation. The Bundestag is organized into topical legislative committees,
such as for foreign affairs and for agriculture. The committees discuss and
modify appropriate bills, but nearly all bills originate with the chancellor’s
cabinet.
The 69-member Bundesrat is appointed by
the 16 state governments. Representation is determined by population, with each
state having no less than three and no more than six seats. The four largest
states each have six-member delegations; the four smallest states—Saarland,
Hamburg, Bremen, and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern—each have three-member delegations;
and all the other states have four seats each. This ratio actually favors the
smaller and smallest states because it gives them a veto over any action that
requires a two-thirds majority, such as constitutional amendments. Each state
delegation must vote as a block and according to the instructions of its state
government. In its legislative role, the Bundesrat has only a suspensive veto
(whereby it can delay but not actually prevent the passage of bills approved by
the Bundestag) over most legislation. The exception to this is bills that deal
with the administrative responsibilities of the state governments, which are the
more important bills before parliament. On these, the Bundesrat has a veto,
which cannot be overridden.
D | Judiciary |
Germany follows civil law (or Roman law)
procedures and organization, which differ substantially from American and
British common law. Judges play a more activist role, and attorneys a lesser
one, than in an American courtroom. In a typical German criminal trial, a panel
of judges hears the case. The panel includes the investigating judge, who
conducts a prior investigation of the facts of the case and decides if it should
be tried at all. The states’ ministries of justice appoint and promote most
judges.
German courts at the state level form
separate hierarchies depending on the kind of law that they administer: civil,
criminal, administrative, social insurance, financial, or labor law. Each state
system is headed by a high court, and there is one federal court for each of
these specialties. However, plaintiffs may appeal their cases up to the
appropriate federal court only if they can demonstrate that similar cases
involving the same federal laws have been interpreted differently by the high
courts of other states. In such a case, the federal court gives a binding
interpretation of the law in question.
Germany also maintains a separate,
non-Roman law system of constitutional courts, which interpret their respective
state constitutions and the Basic Law. The Federal Constitutional Court in
Karlsruhe is the most important. It has a total of 16 judges, 8 selected by the
Bundestag and 8 by the Bundesrat. A judicial candidate must receive a two-thirds
majority vote, thus ensuring a broad consensus on the selection. The Federal
Constitutional Court comprises two panels. One panel deals with the bill of
rights, articles 1 to 20 of the Basic Law; the other panel judges disputes among
federal bodies, among states, and between levels of government. The court has
invalidated about 800 federal and state laws and regulations and given its
interpretation on well over half of the articles of the Basic Law. A large part
of its work involves citizens’ complaints about violations of the bill of
rights. It has even heard foreign policy issues, including cases on the
constitutionality of treaties.
E | Political Parties |
A number of political parties are
represented in the Bundestag. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) is Germany’s
oldest party. Founded in 1875, the SPD has developed from a Marxist socialist
workers’ party into a broadly based people’s party, which now also emphasizes
Christianity and humanism. The SPD supporters include trade union workers and
white-collar and public employees, especially teachers. In recent years, the SPD
has championed environmentally oriented economic reforms, environmental concerns
in general, women’s rights, and the rights of asylum-seekers.
The SPD has often allied itself with
Germany’s Green Party. This party has gradually gained strength since it first
won representation in the Bundestag in 1983. The Greens support
environmentalism, feminism, and pacifism. Despite the enormous environmental
problems in former East Germany, the Greens have attracted little support there.
They have, however, joined forces with Alliance 90, a party that has grown out
of the East German citizen movements that first opposed the Communist
dictatorship. (Green Parties.)
Another major party is the conservative
Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is closely allied with the Christian
Social Union (CSU) of Bavaria. The CDU/CSU has also formed an alliance in the
past with the much smaller Free Democratic Party (FDP). This coalition brought
about German unification in 1989 and 1990 against considerable opposition. The
CDU and the CSU were both established in 1945. Under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the
CDU/CSU alliance was conservative on economic and social questions, such as
abortion rights, although it supported the welfare state, which provided a wide
range of social services to its citizens. Among the CDU/CSU supporters are
churchgoing Catholics and Protestants from all walks of life, farmers, and
nonunion workers. The FDP, founded in 1948, is a party of liberal and
libertarian business and professional people, white-collar workers, and
farmers.
Also represented in the Bundestag is the
Left Party. The Left Party is a successor to the Party of Democratic Socialism
(PDS), which in turn succeeded the state-run Communist Party of East Germany.
Most PDS voters were white-collar employees from former East Germany, including
many university-educated and highly trained civil service and management
professionals who were discontent with unification. The PDS had almost no
support outside of former East Germany and tried to represent the regional
interests of this area. In 2005 the PDS formed an alliance with a left-wing
group called Election Alternative: Jobs and Social Justice (WASG). The WASG was
primarily made up of a breakaway faction from the SPD. The Left Party was formed
from this alliance.
Dozens of other parties run candidates
in every election but have not yet managed to gain representation in the
Bundestag. Some have won seats in state legislatures. Among them are radical
right groups such as the Republicans, the German People’s Union, and the
National Democrats.
F | Social Insurance |
Germany has one of the most
comprehensive and generous systems of health, old age, disability, and
unemployment insurance in the world. A large part of the population benefits
from the welfare system, which includes child support, public housing, and
veterans aid. The welfare state accounts for about one-third of the national
budget. Basic universal health care and old age and disability pensions are
financed equally by employer and employee contributions. Better-paid employees,
managers, and business and professional people usually supplement their benefit
levels by buying additional private insurance. Employers pay for accident
insurance. Long-term nursing care for the elderly is financed by payroll taxes.
Parliament sets the rates of these insurance programs, which are administered by
boards staffed by trade unions and employers’ associations.
The German welfare state began in the
1880s with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s old age and disability insurance, and
it has always enjoyed broad support. With the birth of West Germany in 1949, the
welfare programs continued to grow due to a social partnership between business
and labor, as well as the social market economic policies of the CDU/CSU
governments. These programs were based on the common belief that a well-ordered
welfare state can be highly productive at the same time that it takes care of
its weaker members. A law passed in 1957 tied West German public pensions to
rising wage levels. In 1990 the average pension after a career of gainful
employment was about 70 percent of the last income before retirement. On the
downside, such a generous welfare state results in high tax rates for social
security.
Before unification in 1990, East Germans
enjoyed a modest but egalitarian system of social insurance. Subsidized rents,
food, transportation, and recreation made their modest pension levels quite
comfortable. Unification raised East German pensions, but it has also brought
higher prices as the subsidies are ended.
G | Defense |
Since 1955 West German external security
has been tied to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). East Germany was
similarly tied to the Warsaw Pact until 1990. Even in peacetime, all major units
of the German army and air force were assigned to NATO operational command,
leaving no separate German army under German command. The final negotiations
toward international recognition of united Germany gave Germans a choice of
whether or not they wanted to continue in the Western alliance or to become a
neutral nation; they chose NATO. As a condition of being accorded international
sovereignty in 1990, Germany pledged to limit its armed forces to 370,000 troops
and to continue to foreswear the production and use of nuclear, bacteriological,
and chemical weapons. The cap on military forces meant that the West German NATO
forces of about 500,000 and the East German forces of 200,000 were halved. The
East German army was dissolved, and West Germany invited East German military
personnel, but not high officers, to apply for transfer to the Bundeswehr
(Federal Army).
About two-thirds of the Bundeswehr
consists of army units, while the remaining one-third is naval and coastal and
air forces. Half of the military personnel are regulars or extended-service
volunteers for terms ranging from 2 to 15 years. The other half are conscripts
who are drafted for 10 months. All men 18 years of age or older must serve in
the military. Large numbers of persons subject to the draft opt instead for the
status of conscientious objector, which obliges them to spend two years in
civilian service in hospitals, old age homes, and other civilian settings.
After the defeat of the German forces in
World War II, major efforts were undertaken to reduce the militaristic spirit of
the German armed forces. Officers and soldiers were educated to be “citizens in
uniform.” The Basic Law ensured civilian control over the military, specifying
that in peacetime the defense minister has the supreme command over the
Bundeswehr. If the Bundestag declares a “state of defense,” the command passes
to the chancellor. The Bundestag also controls the defense budget, and its
Defense Committee oversees the organization and procedures of the military. In
addition, the Bundestag appoints a defense ombudsman to handle complaints by
enlistees on subjects such as officer misconduct and other abuses.
Germany was accustomed to the presence
of foreign military forces after it was defeated in World War II. From the
beginning of the 1945 Allied occupation, 250,000 American troops and as many as
360,000 Soviet soldiers were stationed in West and East Germany, along with a
huge quantity of lethal weapons ranging from tanks and planes to nuclear-armed
missiles. The presence of foreign army units and recurrent military maneuvers
were a constant reminder to the German people of how closely they lived to
possible open warfare. A major change in German life occurred in the early 1990s
when most NATO countries reduced their forces in Germany, the Americans to under
100,000 troops. The Russians completed the withdrawal from their bases in East
Germany in 1994. The final and most symbolically meaningful exodus was the
departure in 1994 of the token troops from four nations that had kept Berlin an
occupied city since 1945.
H | International Organizations |
In addition to NATO, Germany is a member
of numerous European and international groups. Germany, together with France,
has played a leading role in the European Union (EU). Under EU auspices, Germany
has pressed for a more unified and cooperative Europe in economic, political,
and security affairs. Both Germanys were members of the United Nations (UN), and
united Germany joined the UN in 1990. Germany also participates in UN agencies
such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the International Labor
Organization (ILO), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and the
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Germany belongs to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Communications
Satellite Corporation (INTELSAT), and Interpol (the International Criminal
Police Organization).
VII | HISTORY |
Germany lacked any clearly defined
geographical boundaries until modern times. The idea of a single German people,
or Volk, is likewise a relatively recent development, largely invented by
19th- and 20th-century writers and politicians. From ancient times, several
ethnic groups have mixed to shape the history of Germany, resulting in a
stunning diversity of cultures and dialects. Political definitions of Germany
have tended to reflect this ambiguity, at various times including many
regions that today are sovereign nations (such as Austria and Switzerland) or
parts of other countries (such as France, Poland, Russia, and Hungary). Modern
Germany is the product of centuries of social, political, and cultural
evolution. This history section provides a brief survey of that evolution.
A | Early History |
The forests of Germany were occupied
during the Old Stone Age by bands of wandering hunters and gatherers. They
belonged to the earliest forms of Homo sapiens, who lived about 400,000
years ago. Neandertal people, who were similar to modern humans in many ways,
first appeared in Europe about 200,000 years ago. (The name Neandertal comes
from fossils discovered in 1856 in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf.) By about
30,000 years ago, the Neandertals had disappeared, but another human group, the
Cro-Magnon—known for spectacular cave drawings, such as those at the famous site
at Lascaux, France—had appeared in Europe. See also Human Evolution: Late
Homo sapiens.
About 7000 bc Homo sapiens societies
experienced a crucial transformation, which archaeologists have labeled the
Neolithic, or New Stone Age, revolution. During this period, many groups began
producing their own food through agriculture and the domestication of animals.
Their permanent settlements and more stable food supply in turn triggered a
significant increase in population. The indigenous hunters of central Europe
encountered farming peoples migrating up the Danube Valley from southwest Asia
in about 4500 bc. These
populations mixed and settled in villages to raise crops and breed
livestock.
A1 | Bronze Age Peoples |
The Bronze Age began in the region of
central Germany, Bohemia, and Austria in about 2500 bc with the working of copper and tin
deposits by prospectors from the eastern Mediterranean. Around 2300 bc new waves of migrating peoples
arrived, probably from southern Russia. These so-called Indo-Europeans
were the ancestors of the Germanic peoples who settled in northern and
central Germany, of the Celts in the south and west, and of the Baltic and
Slavic peoples in the east. Their language was the precursor of all modern
languages in those regions, including English, German, and all of the Romance
(Latin-based) languages (see Indo-European Languages).
From 1800 to 400 bc, Celtic peoples in southern Germany
and Austria developed a succession of advanced metalworking cultures. They
introduced the use of iron for tools and weapons. Teutons, Germanic tribes of
obscure northern origin, absorbed much of the Celtic culture and eventually
displaced the Celts. The various ancient peoples known collectively as Germans
represented a diverse assortment of Celtic and Teutonic peoples and cultures.
The Latin word Germanus is probably derived from an ancient Celtic word
for a neighboring Teutonic tribe. The term was later applied by the Romans to a
variety of peoples in western and central Europe.
A2 | Germans and Romans |
From the 2nd century bc to the 5th century ad northern Germanic and Celtic tribes,
constantly pressed by new migrations from the north and east, were in contact
with the Romans, who controlled southern and western Europe. The writings of
Romans Julius Caesar and Cornelius Tacitus describe these encounters and provide
almost the only accounts of life among these so-called barbarian peoples. In
general, the Romans denounced the Germans for heavy drinking, relentless
fighting, and atrocities such as human sacrifice. But Romans also commended the
virtue of Germanic women as well as the overall absence of any avarice among the
tribes.
In 101 and 102 bc the Cimbri and the Teutons were
defeated by Roman general Gaius Marius as they were about to invade Italy. The
Suevi and other tribes in Gaul (modern-day France), west of the Rhine, were
subdued by Julius Caesar around 50 bc. The Romans tried several times to
extend their rule to the Elbe River, but their efforts were halted at the Battle
of Teutoburg Forest in ad 9. The
Rhine and Danube rivers became the boundaries of Roman territory, connected by a
line of fortifications, or limes, that extended from Colonia (Cologne) to Bonna
(Bonn) to Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg) to Vindobona (Vienna). Most of the
peoples within Roman Germany were gradually assimilated as auxiliary Germanic
troops by the empire, often employed against Germanic raiders from outside the
limes.
In the 2nd century the Romans prevented
confederations of Franks, Alamanni, and Burgundians from crossing the Rhine into
the empire. By the 4th and 5th centuries, however, the population pressures
outside the empire proved too much for the weakened Romans. The Huns, sweeping
in from Asia, set off waves of migration, during which the Ostrogoths,
Visigoths, Vandals, Franks, Lombards, and other Germanic tribes poured into and
eventually overran the empire.
B | Medieval Germany |
Scholars continue to debate at what point
it is possible to speak of Germany or a German state. Even though the Romans had
often grouped several peoples under the name Germans, it is doubtful that
most of these groups viewed themselves as connected in any cultural, linguistic,
or political sense. The formation of an eastern Frankish kingdom in the 9th
century seems a watershed event in German development (see Holy Roman
Empire), although this kingdom featured a diversity of cultures and political
allegiances. Most of the medieval “German” rulers actually considered themselves
kings of the Romans, and, later, Roman emperors. Not until the 15th century did
the emperors officially add “of the German nation” to their title.
On the other hand, it is undeniable that
the medieval emperors who called themselves Roman were in fact Germans. During
the 10th to 13th centuries, their state, the Holy Roman Empire, was the most
powerful in Europe, dominating not only German lands but northern Italian
city-states as well. In turn, the decline of the Holy Roman Empire marked a
period in which political power was fragmented among many German princes. By the
time that the late-15th-century emperor Maximilian attempted to revive imperial
authority and institutions, the division of power among German princes had
become entrenched. Even his powerful grandson, Charles V, was eventually forced
to recognize the political pluralism of Germany, which prevailed until the late
19th century.
B1 | The Origins of a German State (486-911) |
B1a | Frankish Kingdoms |
Throughout western Europe and northern
Africa, the political and cultural bonds of the Roman Empire were gradually
replaced by a multitude of successor states. In 486 the Salian chieftain Clovis
defeated the last Roman governor in Gaul and established a Frankish kingdom that
included southwestern Germany. Clovis and his successors, known as the
Merovingian dynasty, succeeded in uniting many Germanic tribes under one king.
Following his conversion to Christianity in about 500, Clovis formed a special
relationship with the bishop of Rome (later known as the pope). He forcibly
converted his subjects from the Arian form of Christianity to the Roman version
(see Arianism). During the following century, many monasteries and
churches were built in the Merovingian kingdom, usually sponsored by the king or
wealthy nobles.
In 751 the Merovingian dynasty was
overthrown by the Frankish noble Pepin the Short. In order to boost his own
claims to legitimate rule, Pepin secured the endorsement of the kingdom’s
bishops and the pope; this was the beginning of a long tradition of church
leaders conferring kingship. The rule of Pepin’s son Charles had a major impact
on German and European history. Known as Charlemagne (Charles the Great), the
ambitious king expanded the Frankish kingdom to include large parts of
modern-day Germany and Italy during his long reign (768-814). He fought the
Slavs south of the Danube River, annexed Bavaria, and ferociously subdued and
converted the pagan Saxons in the northwest. Charlemagne was received in Rome as
the champion of Christianity and restorer of the western empire. Just as
importantly, he supported the papacy against Rome’s restive populace. On
Christmas Day in 800, he was crowned emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III,
thereby reviving the Roman imperial tradition in the west as well as setting a
precedent for dependence of the emperors on papal approval.
B1b | The Carolingians |
Charlemagne’s empire, known as the
Carolingian Empire, assumed many of the traditions and social distinctions of
the late Roman Empire, but it also introduced some key innovations. Charlemagne
persuaded Alcuin of York, considered the greatest scholar of the day, to come to
his palace at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) and establish a new school to train
clerks and scholars in classical Latin. The official language of the court and
of the church was Latin, but Franks in Gaul adopted the Latinate vernacular that
became French, while Franks and other Germanic tribes in the east spoke various
languages that were ancestors of modern German.
Charlemagne granted large
landholdings, known as fiefs, to many tribal military leaders, or dukes. In
addition, he appointed numerous Frankish aristocrats to the lesser posts of
count (the head of a smaller district called a county) and margrave (the count
of a border province). These aristocrats were kings in miniature, with all of
the administrative, judicial, and military authority of the emperor within their
respective districts. Each county had a parallel ecclesiastical, or church,
district, called a diocese, that was headed by a bishop with authority in all
church matters. Both counts and bishops were vassals of the emperor, and were
overseen by traveling representatives of the emperor, known as missi
dominici. Every year, both counts and bishops attended a general assembly
where they would advise the emperor and hear his directives.
The empire was vulnerable to tribal
dissension and did not long survive Charlemagne’s death in 814. In 843 the
Treaty of Verdun divided the Carolingian Empire into three parts: East Francia
(roughly modern-day Germany), West Francia (roughly modern-day France), and,
separating the two, an area running from the North Sea through Lotharingia
(modern-day Lorraine) and Burgundy to northern Italy. In 870 the middle kingdom
was divided, with Lotharingia going to East Francia and the rest to West
Francia. The Carolingian dynasty in East Francia came to an end in 911 when the
last of Charlemagne’s descendents died without an heir.
B1c | The Tribal Duchies |
By the 10th century, East Francia was
being buffeted from the north and east by new waves of pagan invaders. Rival
tribes of Vikings, Magyars (Hungarians), and Moravians virtually tore East
Francia apart. As royal authority declined, the feudal dukes, counts, and other
members of the aristocracy gradually made their fiefs hereditary. Increasingly,
they established their own local governments and provided defense for their
people. The greatest secular lords in East Francia were the rulers of five stem
(tribal) duchies: Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Lorraine. Lesser
warriors joined noble or princely retinues out of tribal loyalty and in exchange
for smaller grants of land and other gifts. Common people worked the fields of
warriors and nobles in return for protection and a share of the crops.
B2 | Growth of the Holy Roman Empire (911-1250) |
Following ancient German tradition, the
kings of East Francia did not automatically inherit the throne. Instead, they
were elected by the wealthiest and most powerful nobles of the realm at the
time—a group that was subject to change as fortunes rose and fell. None of these
families wanted to be subject to another family or to a strong king so they
often chose weak kings who were not a threat to the nobles’ power.
Once elected, medieval German kings
had three major concerns. One was checking rebellious nobles; for this they
often relied on the support of bishops and abbots. The second was controlling
Italy and preserving the imperial coronation by the pope, which they considered
an essential part of the Carolingian heritage. The third was territorial
expansion to the north and east, especially after 955, when the Viking and
Magyar threats subsided.
B2a | Otto I, the Great, and the Saxon Kings |
The first strong king of East Francia
was Otto I. Elected in 936, Otto combined extraordinary forcefulness, dignity,
and military prowess with great diplomatic skill and genuine religious faith.
Determined to create a strong centralized monarchy, Otto married his relatives
into the families of the duchies in order to gain control over them. This
backfired, however, as his family members began to plot against him to usurp his
power. After several dangerous uprisings, Otto began to break up the duchies
into nonhereditary fiefs granted to bishops and abbots. By bringing these church
figures into the court, Otto ensured their loyalty and was able to use their
literacy to produce correspondence and legislation. The counts maintained their
judicial functions from Carolingian times, but the church leaders were used much
as Charlemagne had used the missi dominici—as the king’s representatives
throughout the realm. Otto’s successors continued this Ottonian system of making
alliances with the church and shifting toward a more formalized state.
Otto also defended his realm from
outside pressures. In the west, he strengthened his hold on Lorraine and gained
influence over Burgundy. In the north and east, he defeated the Danes and Slavs
and permanently broke the power of the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955.
Wishing to emulate Charlemagne as the divinely sanctioned emperor, Otto
established the archbishopric of Magdeburg in 968 and other dioceses as centers
of civilization in the conquered lands.
In 951 Otto began the disastrous
policy of German entanglement in Italy. He was perhaps tempted by the prosperity
of the area and its political vacuum in the wake of feudal disorder and Saracen
(Muslim) invasions. During his second Italian campaign in 962, Otto was crowned
emperor by Pope John XII, who was grateful for Otto’s help against encroaching
Italian nobles from the north and Byzantine Greeks and Saracens from the south.
By a treaty called the Ottonian Privilege, Otto guaranteed the pope’s claim to
most of central Italy in exchange for the promise that all future papal
candidates would swear allegiance and loyalty to the emperor. This treaty
effectively united the German monarchy and the Roman Empire until 1806, when the
Holy Roman Empire, as it came to be called, was dissolved.
Otto’s successors in the 10th and
11th centuries continued his domestic and Italian policies as best they could.
Otto II established the Eastern March (now Austria) as a military outpost; the
influx on settlement from within the empire effectively Germanized the local
population. He attempted to secure southern Italy, but was defeated by the
Saracens. Otto III ruled from Rome. He supported the monastic reform movement
originating in Cluny (Burgundy) that encouraged a more austere, disciplined, and
prayerful life within monasteries and convents. The childless Henry II, gentle
and devout, also encouraged the Cluniac movement and sent out missionaries from
his court.
B2b | Salian Kings |
From 1024 to 1125 German kings were
chosen from the Salian line of Franconia, which was related to the Saxons. The
Salians brought the empire to its height, both in terms of power and territorial
expansion, but also initiated a period of intense religious and political
strife. The rulers often faced difficulties with the German princes both in
securing election as king and then in maintaining power.
Powerful rival dynasties developed
during this period. These included the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, the Welfs of
Saxony, and the Hohenstaufens (sometimes called Staufers) of Swabia. Rivalry
between the last two families led to a long international division between their
respective allies in both Germany and Italy. In Italy the Welf allies were known
as Guelph and the Hohenstaufen allies as Ghibelline (see Guelphs and
Ghibellines).
The first Salian kings consolidated
their power in Germany and were able to maintain control over the papacy. Conrad
II, who ruled from 1024 to 1039, was clever and ruthless. He asserted royal
authority over princely opposition by making the fiefs of lesser nobles
hereditary, thus undermining their dependence on the princes, and by appointing
ministariales, non-nobles responsible directly to him, as officials and
soldiers. He also seized Burgundy, strengthened his hold on northern Italy, and
became overlord of Poland.
Conrad’s son (Henry III), who ruled
until 1056, was possibly the first undisputed king of Germany. A pious
visionary, he tried with little success to introduce to an empire torn by
constant civil strife the Truce of God, a weekly respite from warfare lasting
from Wednesday night to Monday morning. His ecclesiastical reforms were somewhat
more successful, particularly his efforts to end simony, the practice of buying
and selling church offices. At the same time, he continued to exercise strong
control over the church in Germany, appointing key church figures as his vassals
as well as deposing three rival popes and creating four new ones, most notably
the reform-minded Leo IX.
In 1056 Henry IV, while still a
child, succeeded his father. During his mother’s regency, long-restive princes
annexed much royal land in Germany, while the Normans seized control of Italy.
Henry IV sought to recover lost imperial power, but his efforts to retrieve
crown lands aroused the Saxons, who had always resented the Salian kings. He
crushed a Saxon rebellion in 1075 and proceeded to confiscate land, thus
intensifying their enmity.
B2c | Investiture Controversy |
In addition to his struggle with the
German princes, Henry also became involved in a controversy with the papacy over
who would appoint clergy in Germany. The ensuing struggle was known as the
Investiture Controversy.
Pope Gregory VII wanted to free the
church from secular control and forbade lay investiture (the appointment of
clergy by nonclerical officials). The German kings, however, wanted to appoint
major church officials such as bishops, because they were powerful vassals of
the king. Henry retaliated by having the pope deposed by an episcopal synod at
Worms in 1076. The pope promptly excommunicated Henry, which denied him the
benefits and privileges of church membership, and released all of his subjects
from their oath of loyalty to him, a move that pleased the princes. To keep his
crown, Henry cleverly sought to see the pope at Canossa in the Apennines in
January 1077. He waited outside the palace for three days as a barefoot penitent
in the snow. Thinking he had succeeded in humiliating a disobedient emperor,
Gregory forgave Henry.
The princes, however, felt betrayed
and elected a rival king, Rudolf of Swabia, triggering nearly 20 years of civil
war. In 1080 Gregory again excommunicated Henry, who had continued to practice
lay investiture, and recognized Rudolf as emperor. When Rudolf died later that
year, Henry marched on Rome, free from the threat of Rudolf’s forces. He deposed
Gregory by force and installed the rival pope Clement III in his place; Clement
crowned Henry emperor in 1084. Henry returned to Germany to continue the civil
war against a new rival king. Henry’s son, Henry V, betrayed and imprisoned him
and forced him to abdicate in 1106.
The treacherous and greedy Henry V
continued his father’s struggle for supremacy, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
Suffering military defeats, he lost control of Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia.
Despite the support of churchmen, ministeriales, and the towns, he could not
suppress the princes, who forced the weary emperor and Pope Callistus II to
compromise on investiture. Pope and emperor accepted the Concordat of Worms in
1122, which stipulated that clerical elections in Germany were to take place in
the presence of the emperor without simony and that the emperor was to invest
the candidate with the symbols of worldly office before a bishop invested him
with the spiritual ones. The pope had the better of the bargain, but the
struggle was not resolved and the rivalry between empire and papacy contributed
in many ways to the decline of the German monarchy.
B2d | The Guelph-Ghibelline Conflict |
Throughout the 12th and 13th
centuries, the rivalry centered around two princely families: the Hohenstaufen,
or Waiblingen, family of Swabia, and the Welfs of Bavaria and Saxony. The
rivalry extended to Italy where the Hohenstaufens were known as the Ghibellines
and the Welfs as Guelphs. The Hohenstaufens held the German and imperial crowns,
while the Welfs were allied with the papacy.
When Henry V died childless in 1125,
the princes passed over his nephews, Frederick and Conrad Hohenstaufen, and
chose Lothair, Duke of Saxony, as Henry’s successor. When he became allied with
the pope, however, and was crowned Emperor Lothair II in 1133, the Hohenstaufen
princes and their allies refused to recognize the coronation and rose up in
revolt. At Lothair’s death in 1137, the princes chose Conrad Hohenstaufen,
rather than Lothair’s powerful Welf son-in-law and heir, Henry the Proud of
Bavaria and Saxony. Civil war erupted again, this time between the charming but
weak Conrad III and the Welf dukes Henry the Proud and his son, Henry the Lion.
Peace was temporarily restored at Conrad’s death by the election of his nephew
Frederick, a Hohenstaufen whose mother was a Welf.
B2e | Frederick I, Barbarossa |
Intelligent, handsome, warlike, and
judicious, Frederick I, known as Frederick Barbarossa, ruled from 1152 to 1190.
Regarding himself as the successor of Augustus, Charlemagne, and Otto the Great,
he took the title Holy Roman Emperor and spent most of his reign shuttling
between Germany and Italy, trying to restore imperial glory to both regions and
coming closer than any other medieval ruler to this goal.
In the north, Frederick joined
Germany and Burgundy by marrying Beatrice, heiress to Burgundy. He then declared
an imperial peace, and to ensure it he placated the Welfs by recognizing Henry
the Lion as duke of Saxony and Bavaria. But when Henry refused to contribute
troops to a critical Italian campaign, Frederick and jealous princes exiled him
as a traitor. Henry’s duchies were split up, with Bavaria going to the
Wittelsbach family, who would remain its rulers until the modern unification of
Germany.
In the south, Frederick made six
expeditions to Italy to assert full imperial authority over the pope and the
Lombard city-states, a group of northern Italian cities that had organized to
resist Frederick’s imperial claims in Italy. On his first trip in 1155, he was
crowned emperor by Pope Adrian IV. During the next 20 years he was successful in
defeating a variety of alliances between the popes and the Italian city-states,
capturing Rome itself in 1166. During his fifth Italian expedition, though, he
was defeated by the Lombard League at the Battle of Legnana in 1176, partly
because he lacked the crucial support of Henry the Lion. The subsequent Peace of
Constance recognized the autonomy of the Italian cities, which remained only
nominally subject to the emperor. Stubbornly, Frederick made one last trip,
gaining new support among the quarrelsome cities. He resigned as emperor in 1190
in favor of his son Henry VI and set out to lead the Third Crusade, in which he
died.
B2f | The Last Hohenstaufen Kings |
More ambitious even than his father,
Henry VI wanted to dominate the known world. To secure peace in Germany, he put
down a rebellion by the returned exile Henry the Lion and then restored him to
power. He forced the northern Italian cities to submit to him, and on the basis
of an inheritance claim through his Norman wife, he seized Sicily. Intending to
create an empire in the Mediterranean, he exacted tribute from North Africa and
the weak Byzantine emperor. However, when Henry died suddenly in 1197 while
planning a new crusade, his empire immediately fell apart. The German princes
refused to accept his young son, Frederick II, as king and thus initiated a new
civil war between backers of the Hohenstaufen Philip of Swabia and those of the
Welf Otto of Brunswick. When Otto invaded Italy, Pope Innocent III secured the
election of Frederick II in 1211 on the promise that the young king would give
up Sicily so as not to surround papal territory.
Outstandingly accomplished in many
fields, Frederick II, who reigned from 1212 to 1250, was called Stupor Mundi
(Wonder of the World). Determined to keep Sicily as his base of operations,
he revised his coronation promise to the pope, giving up Germany rather than
Sicily to his young son Henry. In exchange for the German princes’ support of
his Italian campaigns, Frederick allowed them to usurp many of his own powers,
making them virtually kings in their own territories. On the empire’s eastern
frontier, he granted a fief to the Teutonic Knights, a military religious order
that eventually created the Prussian and Baltic states, on the condition that
they convert the natives to Christianity.
In Sicily, Frederick suppressed the
local nobility, reformed the laws, founded the University of Naples, and kept a
brilliant court, where he shone as scientist, artist, and poet. He was also an
excellent soldier, diplomat, and administrator, and led a successful crusade to
Jerusalem in 1228. In his absence, however, Pope Gregory IX invaded Sicily.
Frederick quickly returned and made peace with the pope, but by 1237 he was
waging battle against a second Lombard League of cities in northern Italy. Once
again, their ally, the pope, excommunicated Frederick, but this time Frederick
responded by seizing the papal states. Gregory’s successor, Innocent IV, fled to
Lyon and declared the emperor deposed.
Frederick died before he could
secure his position against the league, however, and under his successor, Conrad
IV, the Hohenstaufens were finally ousted from Sicily. The empire then suffered
the turmoil of the Great Interregnum (1254-1273), during which two
non-Germans—Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso X of Castille—claimed the crown,
although neither was ever crowned. The German princes, meanwhile, exploited the
absence of an emperor, further solidifying their own political independence. At
the very time that French and English kings were centralizing their power,
German lands moved ever further into political pluralism and fractured
authority. The Great Interregnum marked a decisive turning point in the history
of Germany and the empire, beginning the slow decline of real imperial
power.
B3 | Decline of the Empire and Growth of Habsburg Power (1250-1519) |
By the end of the 13th century,
dynastic realignments resulted in the gradual replacement of the stem duchies by
several new principalities. Three of the new dynastic powers in particular—the
Habsburg, Wittelsbach, and Luxemburg families—struggled to secure the imperial
crown. In 1273 the electors ended the Great Interregnum by choosing Rudolf of
Habsburg, a minor Swabian prince who was unable to repossess the lands that the
principalities had usurped. Instead, Rudolf I concentrated on aggrandizing his
own dynastic holdings. Aided by the Wittelsbachs and others, he defeated the
rebellious Ottokar II of Bohemia and took the lands of Austria, Styria,
Carinthia, and Carniola (modern Slovenia). The Habsburgs thus became one of the
most powerful dynasties in the empire.
Rudolf reigned until 1291, and his two
immediate successors were deposed and murdered by the princely electors. Still
seeking a weak emperor, in 1308 they chose Henry, count of Luxemburg. Anxious to
restore imperial claims to Italy, Henry VII crossed the Alps in 1310 and
temporarily subdued Lombardy. He died in 1313 while trying to conquer Naples
from the French. His death precipitated a civil war that raged until the
Wittelsbach candidate for the throne, Louis the Bavarian, defeated his Habsburg
rival at the Battle of Mühldorf in 1322. Louis IV reigned until 1347.
At Rhense in 1338, the electors made
the momentous declaration that henceforth the king of the Germans need only be
the majority choice of the electors, instead of the unanimous one as was
previously the case. This decision averted a civil war. They also declared that
he would automatically be emperor without being crowned by the pope. This was
reflected in the king’s title, official by the 15th century: Holy Roman Emperor
of the German Nation.
The popes, of course, objected to this
change. Clement VI immediately opened negotiations with Charles, king of Bohemia
and grandson of Henry VII. In 1347 Charles was chosen by five of the seven
electors, who had deposed Louis IV. Charles IV diplomatically ignored the
question of papal assent. In the Golden Bull of 1356, he specified the seven
electors as the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne, the count palatine of
the Rhine, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, and the king of
Bohemia. Because the bull made their lands indivisible, granted them monopolies
on mining and tolls, and secured monetary gifts from all imperial candidates,
these seven rulers were now the strongest of all German princes.
Charles then began building a great
state in the east by entrenching his own dynasty in Bohemia, buying Brandenburg
(which allowed him to become one of the seven electors), and taking Silesia from
Poland. To obtain cash, he encouraged the silver, glass, and paper industries of
Bohemia. He also oversaw a major cultural revival, adorning his capital Prague
with new buildings in the late Gothic style and founding the first German
university in Prague in 1348.
Charles’s son, Sigismund, who reigned
from 1410 to 1437, was involved in calling the Council of Constance (1414-1418).
The council invited the popular religious reformer Jan Hus (John Huss) to come
to the assembly under imperial protection to present his views. Huss’s proposals
for ecclesiastical reform challenged not only the authority of many church
figures but also the political and cultural dominance of Germans in a
predominantly Czech region. When he arrived in Constance, Huss was immediately
imprisoned, tortured, and burnt at the stake as a heretic. His death was
considered a martyrdom by many Czechs in Bohemia and led to a series of
confrontations, known as the Hussite Wars, during the 1420s and 1430s. While the
more radical branches of the revolt were suppressed, moderates won some
concessions from both Sigismund and the church in exchange for
reconciliation.
When Sigismund died without an heir,
the electors unanimously chose his Habsburg son-in-law Albert of Austria as
Emperor Albert II. Albert died shortly thereafter, in 1439, but from that time
on the imperial crown became in practice, although not officially, hereditary in
the Habsburg line. Albert’s cousin and successor Frederick III successfully
reunited different branches of the Habsburg family that had been previously
split by inheritance, but he lost Hungary and Bohemia and sold Luxemburg to
France. He also continually struggled with the German princes and the
ever-encroaching Ottoman Empire on his eastern borders. In 1486 the princes
forced him to cede his authority to his son Maximilian, but he retained the
title of Holy Roman Emperor until 1493.
Maximilian I, who reigned from 1486 to
1519, was a knight and art patron. He enthusiastically laid many plans for the
empire, but these never materialized. His chief success was in arranging
marriages to benefit his family. By his own marriage to Mary of Burgundy, he
acquired a rich territory that included thriving Dutch and Flemish towns. By
marrying his son, Philip the Handsome, to Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand of
Aragon and Isabella of Castille, Maximilian ensured for his heirs all of the
expanding Spanish empire, including possessions in Italy and the Americas. He
betrothed his grandson Ferdinand to the heiress of Hungary and Bohemia, thus
adding those states to his inheritance. The office of emperor meanwhile had
become an increasingly symbolic position, to be used in the next five centuries
to further Habsburg dynastic ambitions.
B4 | Life in Germany During the Middle Ages |
B4a | Feudal Society |
With the decline of the Roman Empire
and particularly with the onset of Viking and Magyar raids during the 9th and
10th centuries, political authority became increasingly fractured and localized
throughout western and central Europe. The model for political authority
developed from the Roman and Frankish tradition of seignorialism. In this
tradition, large landowners provided farmland and protection to their tenants in
return for taxes and labor. This tradition gradually evolved into a variety of
forms, collectively known as feudalism.
In general, all types of feudal
relations in the Middle Ages shared two features. First, and most importantly,
all political relationships were based on personal bonds, or contracts, between
two individuals, whether between king and noble or noble and peasant. Such
mutual loyalty had been the basis for the comitatus, a group of warriors
in ancient German societies. By the time of Charlemagne, the formation of a
lord-vassal relationship between two warriors, or nobles, was increasingly
formalized, usually involving the exchange of military service and loyalty for
land. Land tenure—the key to personal wealth and power—was the second universal
element of feudal relations. In most instances, kings were the largest
landowners, and they secured the support of other nobles by giving each of them
an estate, or fief.
By the beginning of the 11th century,
most parts of Germany were dominated by aristocrats. Everywhere nobles
monopolized the right to bear arms. They held supreme jurisdiction within their
own lands and dispensed all types of justice. Only taxation, which was
considered an exceptional and generally temporary practice in medieval Europe,
required the approval of the emperor and all of the other nobles. The German
nobles and the emperor gathered irregularly and in different locations in an
imperial assembly, or diet, eventually called the Reichstag. A similar meeting
within a territory, or land, was called a Landtag.
The German nobility ranged from the
powerful seven electors and the princes of more than 240 states to the minor
imperial knights who held fiefs directly from the emperor. Violent conflicts
among noble families were common throughout the Middle Ages and usually aimed at
expanding a dynasty’s landholdings. Arranged marriages provided another method
of dynastic expansion and consolidation. Beginning in the 11th century, many
families constructed castles, both for defense and as a sign of social
importance.
About 90 percent of the German
population during the Middle Ages lived in small, rural communities and worked
on the land. In many regions peasant families entered into an unfree
relationship with landowners, commonly known as serfdom. Serfs were required to
give part of their labor to the landlord. The majority of those who worked the
soil in Germany, though, were free tenant farmers who gave nobles a share of
their annual harvest as rent. Peasants—all of those who farmed the land and bred
livestock—relied on local secular and ecclesiastical patrons for various kinds
of protection, both from invaders and criminals as well as from natural
disasters such as famine and flood.
The material conditions of the
peasants’ lives were generally harsh. Infant and child mortality was
exceptionally high: One out of two babies born did not reach adulthood. Most
Germans lived in one-room wooden or mud shacks with all the members of their
family and even some domesticated animals. The diet consisted largely of bread,
some vegetables, and beer or wine. Meat was expensive and generally reserved for
holidays and other special occasions. Whether tenant or serf, peasants relied on
the lord for most services—including milling and baking—and were required to
provide him with their own labor at certain times. Famine and taxes occasionally
drove some individuals to revolt, but the result was always violent suppression.
More often peasants negotiated with landlords for better conditions or simply
fled to the nearest city.
B4b | Population Growth and Movement |
At the end of the Roman Empire in the
5th century, there were probably only about 700,000 people in the area of modern
Germany. These numbers rose gradually to about 3 million by the year 1000. As
elsewhere in Europe, the population of Germany then boomed for the next three
centuries, possibly growing as high as 12 million people by the end of the 13th
century. In addition to contributing to the growth of towns, the growing number
of people increased the demand for food and arable land. One result was the push
to the east, a deliberate policy of German settlement of various areas east of
the Oder, Vistula, and Memel rivers. From the 12th century to the 14th century,
recruiters, working for German lords, led wagon trains of Germans to settle
thinly populated Slavic lands. Monastic orders such as the Cistercians and the
Premonstratensians also came to the new frontier. The Teutonic Knights moved
their headquarters to Marienburg in eastern Germany and led a crusade against
the pagan Prussians. The knights’ defeat in 1242 by Russian prince Alexander
Nevsky marked the eastern limit of German expansion, but by then most of
modern-day eastern Germany, northern Poland, and the Baltic states had been
overrun by German settlers. Tensions between German and Slavic cultures in these
areas have endured into modern times.
The later Middle Ages were dominated
by the plague, a deadly disease known as the Black Death. Perhaps as many as 5
million Germans—about one-third of the population—died during the first wave of
plague from 1348 to 1350, and subsequent outbreaks prevented the population from
recovering to preplague levels until 1500. For those peasants and workers who
survived, the decrease in the labor supply generally meant more favorable leases
and wages. In the eastern lands, however, nobles reacted in the opposite manner.
Determined not to lose their privileges, they brutally cracked down on their
tenants, introducing what is known as a second serfdom, with even more
oppressive feudal demands.
B4c | Commerce and the Growth of Towns |
Following the collapse of the Roman
Empire, urban centers everywhere in Europe declined dramatically. By the
beginning of the 11th century, however, trade revived and towns began a
three-century growth spurt. A few, such as Trier and Cologne, were based on
Roman settlements, but the majority were new centers, some connected to nearby
castles or monasteries. In eastern Germany, cities such as Breslau (modern
Wrocław, Poland) and Königsberg (modern Kaliningrad, Russia) developed as part
of deliberate colonization. Cologne and Frankfurt prospered greatly because they
were on the routes that traders traveled between Germany and the large merchant
fairs of Champagne, in what is now northeastern France. Mainz grew because it
lay on the trade route across the Alps to Italy. Of the 3,000 German towns
established by 1300, almost all were small, with populations under 1,000.
Cologne, the largest city in medieval Germany, had a population of 30,000 at its
peak in the early 14th century.
As their economic power grew, the
cities’ demands for freedom from attack and from feudal tolls often led to war
with neighboring nobles. Shrewd town magistrates were able to use the ongoing
struggle between German emperors and princes to their own benefit. Beginning
with Frederick Barbarossa in 1183, emperors granted some cities complete
political autonomy and the right to form alliances in exchange for tax revenues.
These were called imperial cities. Most were located in southern Germany and
formed defensive unions such as the Swabian League.
Meanwhile, in the north, several
German and Scandinavian towns—particularly Lübeck, Hamburg, and Bremen—combined
forces to form the powerful trade association of the Hansa, or the Hanseatic
League. At its peak in the early 15th century, the league monopolized all trade
on the Baltic and throughout northern Europe. The league constructed canals and
roads, arranged commercial treaties, and even waged war.
In Switzerland, eight city-states,
or cantons, won their independence from the Habsburgs in the 13th century. They
were eventually joined by others in the Helvetic (Swiss) Confederation, which
has endured to this day. As befitted a decentralized empire, no one city gained
undisputed prominence, although Prague served as the imperial capital during the
14th and 15th centuries.
During the later Middle Ages, the
cities became increasingly important in an expanding money economy. In the
south, the imperial cities of Nürnberg and Augsburg, home of the Fugger Bank,
thrived on mining and trade with Italian city-states. The growth of trade was
accompanied by a marked increase in production of finished goods beginning in
the 12th century. Throughout Germany, skilled artisans organized themselves into
guilds devoted to a particular specialty, for example weaving. The guild was a
local monopoly that held complete power over production quality and quantity,
prices, and admission into its ranks. By the late Middle Ages, guilds had gained
for their members the most powerful economic and political positions in the
cities.
The medieval city was dominated by a
few powerful people, just as the countryside was. The key difference was that in
the cities, the various merchant and craft guilds (both virtually hereditary by
the 15th century) struggled with one another for political power. Those who were
successful dominated the town councils. Beginning in the 12th century, these
councils legislated on a variety of matters, including safety, hygiene, and
social behavior. The majority of the urban population—artisans, shopkeepers, day
laborers, and the destitute—had no say in governing the city.
Many German cities included Jews who
in theory were under the special protection of the emperor, but in fact they
endured countless organized attacks, or pogroms, throughout the Middle Ages. By
the end of the 13th century, most German cities required all Jews to live within
an enclosed district (ghetto), supposedly for their own safety, but sporadic
persecutions persisted.
B4d | Technological Developments |
During the Middle Ages, the
productivity of agriculture increased as a result of several technological
advances. The proliferation of the heavy-wheeled plow by the 6th century greatly
improved production on German lands but also required much animal power—from two
to eight oxen per plow. As a result, many farmers gathered in small settlements
with common livestock and fields. By the 9th century, the introduction of the
collar and harness permitted horses to do the same work as oxen; developments
such as the tandem harness (two teams, one behind the other) and the horseshoe
improved productivity even more. Undoubtedly the greatest agrarian innovation of
the early Middle Ages was the three-field rotation. Common by the 9th century,
this method allowed farmers to improve their annual yield and avoid exhausting
the soil by rotating crops on three fields—one for a winter wheat, one for a
spring crop (such as oats, barley, peas, or beans), and one left unused. An
agricultural revolution during the 11th and 12th centuries witnessed the
clearing of millions of acres of forests and swamps for cultivation as well as
the introduction of the windmill, which harnessed the power of the wind to mill
grain or pump water.
The two areas of technological
innovation most prominent in late medieval Germany were mining and printing. By
the late 15th century, a series of inventions and improved techniques resulted
in a fivefold increase in central European mining output. Saxon methods of
extracting pure silver from the lead alloy in which it was often found helped
expand the money economies of Europe. Increased iron production also meant more
and stronger pumps and other machine parts and a related boom in construction
work and shipbuilding.
The invention of movable metal type
was one of the most significant developments of all human history. Johannes
Gutenberg discovered a durable alloy of lead, tin, and antimony that allowed
books and other writings to be duplicated in a fraction of the time needed for
manuscript copying. Gutenberg’s Bible, completed around 1455, was the first
major work to be printed. Within 50 years, more than 250 cities throughout the
empire and Europe had one or more printing shops operating full time. The impact
of the printing press on society is still being explored, but it is clear that
it touched the lives of many more than the 10 percent of the population who
could read.
B4e | Religion and the Church |
Ancient Germanic peoples worshiped
many gods, usually distinguishing between the greater sky gods, such as Wodin
and Thor, and the lesser divinities who dwelled in fields, trees, and streams.
The first recorded Christian missionary to the Goths was Ulfilas in the 4th
century, who preached the Arian version of Christianity. This version was
considered heretical because it denied the full divinity of Jesus Christ.
Ulfilas and his successors converted almost all of the German peoples within the
empire. Clovis and the Franks reconverted them to orthodox (Catholic)
Christianity beginning in the 6th century.
The Frankish kingdom established a
special relationship with the Roman church that continued under the
Carolingians. Charlemagne enthusiastically encouraged missionary work among the
Germans, which was largely completed by the end of his reign in 814. The pagan
Slavs of eastern Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states were also eventually
converted.
By the 10th century, numerous German
monasteries and convents were operating under the Benedictine rule. This rule of
daily life for monasteries was established by Saint Benedict of Nursia and
stressed communal living, physical labor, prayer, and study. However, not all
the monasteries adhered strictly to the rule. This prompted a monastery in
Cluny, in central France, to lead a reform movement to restore strict adherence
to the Benedictine rule. The Cluniac movement was well organized because all the
monasteries were responsible to the central abbey in Cluny. The movement
attracted support from many kings and bishops who supported monastic reform. The
widespread following and strict rule of the Cluniacs made the movement a
powerful force for stability in the Catholic Church.
Although this movement had little
impact in German lands until the late 11th century, from that time on
aristocratic and imperial families established numerous monasteries and
convents. Parish churches and grandiose cathedrals also multiplied during this
period and with them the number of clerics. The social background and duties of
the clergy mirrored the hierarchical nature of the larger society. Positions of
power, such as bishop (head of a diocese) and abbot (head of a monastery) tended
to be held by members of aristocratic families, while parish priest and other
lower positions went to individuals of peasant or worker status.
Converts often blended secular and
even pagan ideas and practices with those of Christianity. This intermingling
eventually resulted in a great diversity of local religious traditions in
medieval Germany. Religious practices were woven into civic and village
processions, festivals, and other communal gatherings.
There was no standardized training
for parish priests, so sometimes they taught beliefs considered heretical by
Rome. In southern Germany, followers of Peter Waldo, who were known as
Waldenses, were especially critical of wealthy and powerful clerics during the
12th and 13th centuries. Another major challenge to the church came from Jan Hus
(John Huss), who in the early 15th century advocated reducing the clergy’s
authority, both in secular and ecclesiastical matters.
Perhaps the most distinctive German
contribution to medieval Christianity was in the area of mysticism, the idea
that an individual could achieve personal union with the divine. The Benedictine
nun Hildegard of Bingen was the most famous mystic of the High Middle Ages and
inspired a cult of followers long after her death in 1179. One of the most
influential mystics of the later Middle Ages was Meister Eckhart, a Dominican
theologian who became a popular preacher in the Rhineland. Eckhart taught that
union with God could be achieved through emptying the self and allowing the
divine spark to enter. Some of his ideas were declared heretical after his
death, but his influence on German spirituality as well as literature was
profound. The works of his disciples Heinrich Suso and Johannes Tauler represent
some of the greatest German literary achievements of the later Middle Ages.
Beginning in the late 14th century,
many of the teachings of the Rhineland mystics were incorporated in a movement
called Modern Devotion. Also known as the Brothers and Sisters of the Common
Life, this group established several houses in northern Germany and The
Netherlands where lay people and clerics could meditate. Most of these houses
also maintained small grammar schools where children—most notably Erasmus and
Martin Luther—were taught to read and write.
B4f | Intellectual Developments |
During the early Middle Ages, the
centers of scholarship were the monasteries. In the 9th century, the so-called
Carolingian Renaissance did much to revive the literary arts of classical Latin,
but the number of individuals who could read and write remained small and for
the most part limited to clerics. By the 12th century there were more than 200
small cathedral schools in Europe. By the next century, many of these had
expanded or been absorbed into new institutions of learning called universities.
The first German university was founded by Charles IV in Prague in 1348,
eventually followed by similar institutions in Vienna (1356), Heidelberg (1386),
Cologne (1388), Erfurt (1392), Leipzig (1409), Tübingen (1477), and Wittenberg
(1502).
C | The Age of Religious Strife (1519-1648) |
Dramatic changes occurred in Germany and
other European societies during the next period, which historians call the early
modern era. During this time, Christianity was divided by the Reformation and
the Americas were explored. Both had profound effects on politics, economies,
and society. Another force for change was the new mass medium of the printing
press, which carried diverse ideas, news, and entertainment to large
audiences.
During the 16th and 17th centuries,
territorial rulers and city councils in Germany expanded their authority, often
in conjunction with religious changes stemming from the Reformation. At the same
time, capitalism expanded and the population grew, resulting in widespread
inflation throughout the period and a greater polarization of wealth within
German society. On the other hand, many of the basic structures of medieval
life—dynastic politics, predominantly agrarian economies, and low standard of
living—remained largely constant throughout the period.
C1 | Charles V |
When Charles V succeeded his
grandfather Maximilian as Holy Roman emperor in 1519, he was already hereditary
lord of a vast assortment of territories. Due to a combination of politically
astute dynastic marriages and fortuitous accidents, he had inherited the French
Burgundian lands as well as the Netherlands (modern Holland and Belgium), the
Habsburg’s Austrian and Bohemian holdings, and the kingdoms of Aragon and
Castille (modern-day Spain), including all of the Spanish territories in the
newly discovered Americas.
Charles made a concerted effort to
consolidate and institutionalize the empire. He expanded the number of imperial
districts to facilitate the raising of armies and money for imperial wars
against the Ottoman Empire. His 1532 criminal code, known as the Carolina, was
widely copied throughout German cities and principalities, providing some
limited standardization to the widely diverse laws and customs of Germany.
On the whole, though, German princes
and cities resisted what they perceived as imperial encroachments on their
prerogatives. Although Charles had ruled more territory than any European leader
since Charlemagne, by the time he abdicated in 1556 the Holy Roman Empire was
more politically fractured than at any time since the Great Interregnum of the
13th century.
C2 | Habsburg Conflicts with the French |
In 1494 the French had invaded Italy,
and Europe’s two most powerful dynasties—the Habsburgs and the Valois, the
French ruling family—engaged in a series of military conflicts aimed at
dominating the continent. At first, Maximilian and the Habsburgs only joined
leagues of Italian cities in fighting the Valois and supplied arms and troops to
the Italians. After the battle of Marignano in 1515, though, the Valois ruler
Francis I resumed expansionist policies in Italy and in 1519 even presented
himself as a candidate for Holy Roman emperor.
When the Habsburg Charles was elected
instead, lingering resentment over Burgundian territory now in Charles’s
possession led to the first Habsburg-Valois war, from 1521 to 1526. In a
decisive battle at Pavia in 1525, Francis was captured and forced to renounce
all claims to Milan, Naples, Genoa, and the duchy of Burgundy. Alarmed by
Charles’s growing power, Pope Clement VII and Henry VIII of England joined
Francis in the League of Cognac, leading to the second Habsburg-Valois war.
After two years of disastrous consequences for all participants, little had
changed, except that Charles gave up Burgundy. In 1535 the house of Valois once
more made a claim on Milan and marched into the duchy of Savoy. Charles
counterattacked in southern France, thus initiating the third Habsburg-Valois
war, which ended in a stalemate three years later.
Tensions continued during the next 20
years, with further outbreaks of war in 1542, 1551, and 1557. Finally, in 1559,
both sides were financially and psychologically exhausted and sued for peace.
The resulting Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis gave the Habsburgs control over Italy,
the free county of Burgundy, and most of The Netherlands. The Valois maintained
the duchy of Burgundy, most of Piedmont (Piemonte) and Savoy, and parts of the
Rhineland.
C3 | Wars with the Ottoman Empire |
Under the ambitious sultan Süleyman I,
the Ottoman Empire in the 1520s began to expand into the eastern Habsburg
holdings in Austria and Hungary. After Süleyman’s armies defeated imperial
forces at Mohács in 1526, they moved on to besiege Vienna. The same year,
Charles made concessions to Protestant princes at the imperial diet in Speyer to
gain their support for a counteroffensive. The Ottomans were temporarily
checked, but by 1532 they once again threatened Vienna, forcing Charles to make
another truce with Protestant rulers in return for their military assistance.
After three years of fighting, Charles succeeded in capturing Tunis and halting
the Ottoman advance for the time being.
Meanwhile, Francis I signed an
alliance with the Ottoman Empire and made plans to reopen an offensive while the
emperor was occupied in the Mediterranean. A truce was reached in 1545, but for
the next 25 years imperial and Ottoman troops skirmished in southern Europe
until the imperial troops achieved a smashing defeat of the Ottoman navy at the
Battle of Lepanto in 1571. While all European rulers, particularly the
Habsburgs, remained concerned about the Ottoman threat for the next century,
Ottoman advancement had been halted.
C4 | The Protestant Reformation |
Martin Luther, one of the most
important figures in all of German history, was a monk and theology professor at
the University of Wittenberg. Through his studies, he gradually developed an
alternate interpretation of how Christians obtained salvation. In his
interpretation, an individual could be saved only through faith, not through
good works, as the Catholic Church taught. His famous posting of the Ninety-five
Theses on the door of the Wittenberg cathedral in 1517 was a call for reforming
certain abuses within the Catholic Church, such as the selling of indulgences,
remissions of sin granted by the Church. By 1520, however, Luther had decided
that his interpretation of Christianity was incompatible with that of the
existing church. Within six months, he published three significant pamphlets
that stated his belief in salvation by faith alone, described how the Roman
church had deviated from the Scriptures, and called on the German princes to
take a more active role in governing the church within their territories.
Pope Leo X issued a papal bull, an
official statement giving Luther until the end of 1520 to recant or face
excommunication; the reformer replied by publicly burning the bull and all the
books of canon (church) law. The following year Emperor Charles V summoned
Luther to defend himself at the imperial diet in Worms. When Luther attended and
refused to bend before the assembled heads of Germany, he was outlawed.
Fortunately, his powerful patron Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, ignored
the ban and instead installed Luther at Wartburg castle, where Luther began to
translate the New Testament into German.
C5 | Diversity of the Early Reformation |
Luther’s evangelical ideas found
fertile soil in diverse parts of German society. The imperial knights Ulrich von
Hutten and Franz von Sickingen took up Luther’s appeals to the German nobility
to rid their land of Roman Catholic influences. In 1522 they launched an armed
offensive against church lands that was crushed within a year.
In 1524 a much larger and more
destructive revolt, known as the Peasants’ War, spread from southwestern Germany
up the Rhine to the heart of the empire. By 1525 more than 500,000 peasants had
taken up arms, making a variety of demands on their feudal lords. These peasants
often mingled Luther’s language and ideas with their own complaints about
taxation and the loss of traditional feudal rights, such as the use of common
lands.
Luther, however, claimed that the
rebelling peasants had misunderstood him, and that spiritual equality before God
was not the same as social or political equality in the world. He urged the
princes to strike down those who upset the social order intended by God. The
princes did just that, massacring as many as 100,000 peasants. The largest
peasant revolt in German history was crushed, as were the hopes of all those
seeking a radical social reformation.
From the mid-1520s on, the German
Reformation entered an urban phase, in which city magistrates assumed
importance. Throughout the empire, local reformers persuaded the leaders of all
but 5 of the 60 imperial cities to embrace Luther’s reforms. The resulting
religious reform ordinances varied. Some cities thoroughly revised all church
rituals; others stressed reform of morals and public decency. Most allowed
priests to marry and transferred control over all church property and offices to
the municipal government.
Meanwhile, some Swiss cantons had come
under the influence of theologian Huldreich Zwingli, who developed the Reformed
Christian movement. Zwingli disagreed with Luther on some important questions of
doctrine and favored a more thoroughly integrated theocracy, with almost no
division between church and state. This religious tradition continued through
the work of Heinrich Bullinger in Zürich and John Calvin in Geneva.
There were many other interpretations
of Luther’s evangelical message, and many who disagreed were persecuted by
Lutherans and Catholics alike. The Anabaptists were a universal target of
persecution. These small groups of believers, who called themselves Brethren or
simply Christians, accepted Luther’s emphasis on faith and Scriptures but also
believed in the extremely unpopular practice of adult baptism. Because all of
the people of the time had already been baptized as infants, baptizing adults
was considered double baptism, a capital offense since the late Roman Empire.
Most Anabaptists were also pacifists and thus easy prey for persecution. The one
major exception was the Anabaptist citizenry of the city of Münster, whose
leader, Jan of Leyden, declared a theocratic kingdom in 1534. Few issues so
united the Protestant and Catholic princes of Germany, who raised a huge siege
against the city, breaking through in 1535 and executing hundreds. From this
period on, the Anabaptist movement remained exclusively pacifistic, as is
evident in the followers of Menno Simons, founder in the 16th century of the
Mennonites, and in the 17th-century Amish.
C5a | Conflict and Compromise |
In 1529, at a meeting of the diet in
Speyer, Ferdinand, Charles V’s brother, attempted to reinstate the ban on Luther
and his followers that Charles V had suspended to gain the princes’ support for
a campaign against the Ottomans. Several of the delegates protested, and the
term Protestant came to be associated with the movement. The next year,
led by Luther’s associate Melanchthon, the Protestant delegation presented a
conciliatory statement or creed, which has come to be known as the Augsburg
Confession. This concise summary of Lutheran beliefs was rejected by the
Catholic princes, leading Protestants to form the defensive Schmalkaldic League
in 1531. Eventually the league included seven princes and 16 cities.
During the 1530s and early 1540s
Charles was mostly preoccupied with the Ottoman threat. In 1545, however, he
turned his attention to the Schmalkaldic League. In 1547 his troops soundly
defeated a Saxon army at Mühlberg, and the emperor’s ascendancy was assured. In
1548, at the peak of his power, Charles issued the Augsburg Interim, an attempt
to end religious division within the empire by some minor concessions to
Lutherans. This interim settlement failed to appease Protestant princes and
threatened to provoke a much more destructive civil war within the empire.
A compromise was reached in the
Peace of Augsburg, which Charles reluctantly accepted in 1555. This treaty
became the foundation for religious coexistence in Germany for the next three
centuries. Most importantly, it granted the princes and cities full sovereignty
regarding religion. Each ruler could choose either Lutheranism or Catholicism as
the official religion of his territory (the Reformed and Calvinist creeds, while
not prohibited, were not recognized by the Peace of Augsburg). He was free to
treat nonconformist subjects as he wanted, sometimes forcing them to migrate or
convert. Religious segregation, rather than toleration, seemed the only
solution, and for the rest of the century at least, it seemed to work.
C5b | The Confessional Age |
When Charles abdicated in 1556, his
vast empire was divided, with the Spanish and Burgundian lands going to his son
Philip II and the imperial title and German lands going to his brother Ferdinand
I. Within the German cities and territories, however, religious tensions
continued to mount as governments attempted to establish confessions of faith
among their respective populaces, mostly along Lutheran lines. By the 1540s,
several newly converted princes had joined the attempt, simultaneously creating
new courts and officials to oversee the process. The Protestant Reformation
continued to spread.
Meanwhile, a Catholic reform council
met for three extended sessions between 1545 and 1563 in the north Italian city
of Trent, assessing which teachings and practices required changes and to what
degree (see Counter Reformation). In general, the council reaffirmed
almost all Catholic doctrine on salvation and the sacraments, while also laying
a blueprint for extensive clerical and lay reform at the diocesan level. When
Catholic bishops turned to the task of implementing reforms and even attempting
to win back Protestant converts, one of their greatest assets was a new
religious order, the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. The Jesuits relied heavily on
education, setting up schools and universities in Germany and throughout Europe.
With the backing of rulers such as the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, the Habsburgs of
Austria, and the archbishops of Salzburg, Bamberg, and Würzburg, the Jesuits
helped create a Catholic bloc in the southern part of the empire, which has
remained predominantly Catholic to this day. In more mixed or predominantly
Protestant areas, though, the Jesuits often escalated religious tensions.
Emperor Ferdinand I was more savvy in
politics than Charles had been. For most of his reign, Ferdinand attempted to
reconcile the two religious camps within the empire; at the same time, he built
up the centralized bureaucracy of his Austrian territories. At his death in
1564, his lands were divided equally among his three sons, and Maximilian II
assumed the throne. Both Maximilian II and his successor, Rudolf II, were
intensely preoccupied with the Ottoman threat. As in other times of increased
military spending, the emperors generally deferred to the princes and cities on
a variety of issues in exchange for new taxes. Meanwhile, several small and
medium-sized Calvinist states that had developed in spite of the Peace of
Augsburg formed close political ties with one another.
The combination of weak imperial rule
and intense religious differences increased political tensions within the
empire. In 1608 Protestant delegates walked out of the imperial diet, protesting
that the empire favored Catholics. German Lutheran and Calvinist states then
formed the Protestant Union, a defensive league that was answered by the
formation of the German Catholic League. During the reign of the exceptionally
weak emperor Matthias, from 1612 to 1619, the empire narrowly averted several
crises. Finally, in 1618, the anticipated war came, setting into motion a series
of conflicts that have come to be known as the Thirty Years’ War.
C5c | The Thirty Years’ War |
The trouble began in Protestant
Bohemia (in what is now the Czech Republic). In 1619 the Czechs refused to
accept the Catholic Ferdinand II as king or future emperor. In 1618 they had set
up their own government, supported by several Protestant states. After the death
of Matthias, they chose the Protestant elector Frederick V of the
Rhineland-Palatinate as their king. Ferdinand, however, crushed the Bohemian
forces at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. Frederick was exiled, and
Catholicism was restored by force. The rebelling Bohemian nobles were fined,
deprived of their lands, or killed.
The second phase of the Thirty Years’
War began in 1625. After the Battle of White Mountain, Spanish troops under
Philip III had occupied part of the Palatinate in support of Ferdinand. German
Protestant princes objected to the presence of these Spanish troops on German
lands. The princes supported an invasion of Germany by the Protestant king
Christian IV of Denmark, who was financed largely by the Dutch and the English.
Christian was defeated, and in 1629 the victorious Ferdinand issued the
heavy-handed Edict of Restitution, which ordered the return of all Catholic
Church property seized by Protestants since 1552.
The third phase of the war began when
the Lutheran king Gustav II Adolph of Sweden, who had long wanted to extend
Swedish control over the Baltic, invaded Pomerania as the champion of the
Protestant princes. The Swedish army won a brilliant victory at Breitenfeld in
1631 and swept down to take Mainz and Prague. Following Gustav’s death on the
battlefield in 1632 the war dragged on, accomplishing little but the devastation
of the German countryside. In 1635 a truce was declared, and Ferdinand’s
unpopular Edict of Restitution was revoked.
In the fourth phase, the Catholic
French, who wanted to undermine the Habsburgs, paid subsidies to the Protestant
Swedish army to continue fighting. French troops also crossed the Rhine into
German territories. After another 13 years of destruction, Emperor Ferdinand III
and the princes were ready for peace.
C5d | The Peace of Westphalia |
The long war ended in a draw,
finalized by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. By the terms of the treaty, the
sovereignty and independence of each of the almost 300 states of the Holy Roman
Empire were fully recognized, leaving the emperor virtually powerless. In
addition, as in the Peace of Augsburg, the religion of each German state was to
be determined by its prince; this time, however, Calvinist Christianity was
included with the Lutheran and Catholic faiths as an option. The religious
status quo of 1624 was accepted, meaning that the Habsburg lands, the south, and
the west remained predominantly Catholic, while Protestants were permitted to
retain previously acquired lands.
The war had several devastating
effects on Germany. Politically, the Holy Roman Empire continued in name, but it
had lost all claim to effective governing power. Economically and socially,
Germany lost about one-third of its people to war, famine, and emigration as
well as much of its livestock, capital, and trade. Many towns, especially in the
north, were destroyed or bankrupt, and manufacturing and middle-class investment
were extremely low. Bands of refugees and mercenaries roamed the countryside,
seizing what they could. In the midst of poverty and social unrest, many states
became even more authoritarian, further weakening what little popular political
autonomy remained.
C6 | Life in Germany During the 16th and 17th Centuries |
C6a | Population |
In 1500 Germany had a population of
about 14 million. This number climbed to about 18 million by 1600. However, over
the next 50 years the population dropped dramatically. This drop is usually
attributed to the destruction of the Thirty Years’ War, but serious famines,
plague outbreaks, and emigration had a large effect as well. Some areas, notably
Bohemia and Franconia, lost more than three-fourths of their people. Although
the casualties of war and the spread of typhoid and venereal diseases by
soldiers certainly affected the population, the war alone cannot account for all
of the demographic decline.
There were about 4,000 towns in
Germany by 1500, still mostly small. Only Nürnberg, Strasbourg, Augsburg,
Vienna, Lübeck, and Magdeburg had more than 30,000 inhabitants. In most German
cities, citizenship became even more restricted. Usually ownership of property
was required in order to be a citizen, and eligibility to serve on the council
was monopolized by a few local wealthy families. Many municipal governments
became much more active in their regulation of urban life. Sporadic pogroms
against Jews and Roma (Gypsies) continued in German cities.
C6b | Economic Developments |
From the late 15th century on,
several German cities, particularly Augsburg and Nürnberg, experienced
significant economic growth. In addition to various local guild industries and
regional trade, some German merchants and bankers became involved with larger,
more wide-reaching ventures. The most famous of these family firms was the
Fugger company of Augsburg, which had become the largest financial organization
in Europe by the early 16th century. The Fuggers’ virtual monopoly on all gold,
silver, and copper mining in central Europe endowed its leaders with great
political influence. By the time of the Thirty Years’ War, however, these family
firms were losing their power, being replaced by even larger royal and
international enterprises.
Low crop yields made German farmers
susceptible to misfortunes. Large-scale droughts and famines invariably led to
widespread disease, migration, and starvation. Urban workers faced rampant price
inflation and falling wages. While some peasants and small property holders
expanded their real estate during this period, the majority of urban and rural
poor moved closer to destitution and homelessness.
C6c | Religion |
The introduction of Christian
pluralism into German society had profound results. Religious conversions of
political rulers were common and had widespread implications for subjects and
foreigners alike. Religious segregation, rather than toleration, was the rule
until the 19th century. Several regions in the north and east developed almost
exclusively Lutheran populations, and many localities in the south became
overwhelmingly Catholic. Mixed populations, particularly in imperial cities such
as Augsburg, did exist, but they were rigidly segregated by religious
affiliation.
Meanwhile, despite the efforts of
both Protestant and Catholic reformers, many people continued beliefs and
practices with pre-Christian origins. The common belief in magic helped fuel a
widespread fear of witches. Throughout Europe, as many as 100,000 individuals
were executed as witches, mostly between 1550 and 1650. Of these, perhaps
three-quarters of the prosecutions took place within the Holy Roman Empire. Most
accusations in Germany quickly developed into local panics and large-scale
purges. Prosecutions were common in Protestant and Catholic lands alike. See
also Witchcraft: Diabolical Witchcraft.
C6d | Intellectual Developments |
Intellectual life in Germany was
deeply affected by both the Protestant Reformation and by the Renaissance.
Renaissance learning came to Germany from Italy through the writings of Conradus
Celtes, Willibald Pirkheimer, Sebastian Brant, Johann Reuchlin, and Ulrich von
Hutten. The Renaissance emphasized the importance of classical studies and
looked to ancient Greece and Rome as models. Several writers, including von
Hutten and Pirkheimer, became important proponents of Luther’s early reforms, as
did the poet-shoemaker Hans Sachs. This combination of classical learning and
Reformation thinking was also apparent in the arts. Among painters, Lucas
Cranach the Elder, Hans Holbein the Younger, and Albrecht Dürer lent their
talents to the Reformation, providing extremely effective visual representations
of religious and church themes.
The link between German Protestantism
and education was especially strong. Almost all of the early leaders of the
Reformation had a university education and were strong advocates of education as
a tool for moral and social reform. Luther urged parents to send their children
to school and established a new genre of religious literature with his
catechisms for children. Luther’s colleague Melanchthon aided several German
rulers and city councils in establishing public grammar schools and high
schools. Melanchthon’s model stressed a humanist curriculum of Greek and Latin
combined with religious instruction. Catholic reformers, particularly the
Jesuits, also established educational institutions in Germany during the second
half of the 16th century.
In the natural sciences, physician
Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus challenged the prevailing orthodoxy on the
internal origin of all illness, paving the way for pathology. On the death of
Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler inherited both his teacher’s
astronomical charts and his position as director of Emperor Rudolf II’s
observatory in Prague. Using complex mathematical calculations, Kepler developed
three laws of planetary motion—most importantly, that the planets orbit the sun
in elliptical rather than circular fashion.
D | Germany During the Baroque Age (1648-1792) |
The art historians’ term baroque
is often applied to the segment of German history from 1648 to 1792,
especially to the institutions, devotional practices, and ornate art forms
associated with the declining Habsburg empire. The baroque age in Germany did
not witness any dramatic changes in the social, political, or religious order.
The period did see, however, the traditional rituals and prerogatives of the old
regime increasingly challenged by such developments as the rising state of
Prussia, the Enlightenment, neoclassicism, and naturalism. These forces would
ultimately transform Germany.
D1 | Dynastic Wars of Expansion |
The Treaty of Westphalia curbed but
hardly ended the expansionist ambitions of German dynasties such as the Austrian
Habsburgs. Scarcely had they recovered from the Thirty Years’ War when the
princes and the emperor plunged into new dynastic struggles. In the west, German
princes were involved in several wars as French king Louis XIV strove to extend
his territory past the Rhine. In the War of the Devolution (1667-1668), Great
Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg accepted a large sum of money from
Louis in return for political support. In the Dutch War (1672-1678) Frederick
William turned against Louis and the French, who were allied with Sweden. He
fought off a Swedish invasion and conquered western Pomerania, but was forced to
give up these conquests at the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1679. He later
benefited Brandenburg by offering refuge to Huguenots (French Calvinists), whom
Louis had exiled. About 20,000 Huguenots migrated east, bringing French culture
and skills such as weaving. Louis’s invasion of the Rhineland-Palatinate led to
the war of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697), in which he won Strasbourg and
Alsace.
The War of the Spanish Succession
(1701-1714) was fought over the right of Louis XIV’s grandson, Philip of Anjou
(see Philip V), to inherit the Spanish throne. Bavaria sided with France,
because Louis promised the Bavarian elector the crown of the Spanish Netherlands
(roughly modern-day Belgium). Brandenburg supported the successive emperors
Leopold I and Joseph I in return for imperial recognition of Prussia as a
kingdom. Other European states also allied with the empire to block unification
of France and Spain. Battles waged in Bavaria and western Germany brought havoc
and ruin. When both sides were exhausted, they accepted the Peace of Utrecht
(1714), in which Austria gained the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Milan, and
Sardinia.
Meanwhile the German princes turned
their own expansionist ambitions toward the north and east. In the First
Northern War (1655-1660), the emperor and the elector of Brandenburg supported
Poland and Denmark against Charles X Gustav of Sweden. In the Great Northern War
(1700-1721), which paralleled the War of the Spanish Succession, Saxony, Poland,
Brandenburg-Prussia, Hannover, Denmark, and Russia all joined forces against
Sweden. At the war’s end, the treaties of Stockholm and Nystadt restored Poland
to Augustus II, transferred Stettin and West Pomerania from Sweden to
Brandenburg-Prussia, and gave Sweden’s eastern Baltic lands to Russia.
D2 | Wars with the Ottoman Empire |
The Ottoman threat from the east had
been effectively checked since the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. By the middle of
the 17th century, however, the destruction of the Thirty Years’ War had made the
empire’s eastern frontiers again vulnerable. Ottoman forces invaded Hungary in
1663, but imperial troops managed to defeat them and win a 20-year truce.
France’s Louis XIV and the Hungarians, both eager to check the Habsburgs,
encouraged Ottoman aggression against them. When the truce expired, the Ottomans
besieged Vienna in 1683. Imperial troops, combined with those of Jan III
Sobieski of Poland, rescued the city, and the Ottomans were driven beyond the
Danube. As a result, Austria compelled Hungary to recognize the Habsburg right
to inherit the Hungarian crown. The Ottoman wars continued until the brilliant
general Prince Eugene of Savoy led imperial troops to victory at Senta in
northern Serbia in 1697. By the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, the Habsburgs
regained most of Hungary from the Ottomans. The country, ravaged and greatly
depopulated due to the conflict, was resettled with German veterans, and
imperial authority from Vienna was imposed.
D3 | Austrian-Prussian Rivalry |
By 1740 the German states of Austria
and Prussia had emerged as the chief rivals for dominance in central Europe.
Austria had been the core territory of the Habsburg family since the 13th
century. The Habsburgs had built their power and land by acquiring territory
through diplomacy and dynastic marriages and had become one of the most powerful
states in Europe by the beginning of the Reformation. However, religious and
dynastic wars, Ottoman invasions in the 17th century, and growing conflict with
Prussia had weakened the state by the early 1700s.
D3a | Growth of Prussia |
The Hohenzollern family, which had
been granted Brandenburg in the 15th century, also held a number of other
territories in the west. Outside the empire to the east, the Hohenzollerns had
inherited Prussia as a Polish duchy in 1618 and converted it into an independent
kingdom in 1701. Gradually, all the Hohenzollern lands came to be known as the
kingdom of Prussia.
Unlike many other European
dynasties, the Hohenzollerns enjoyed an unbroken (and therefore uncontested)
series of male heirs from 1640 to 1786. These rulers were thus able to focus
their efforts on building an efficient centralized state, a task that most of
them successfully pushed forward. Frederick William of Prussia, known as the
Great Elector, reigned from 1640 to 1688. He was a sturdy, hardheaded soldier
determined to unite his disparate possessions into a modern military state. He
created an efficient, honest bureaucracy that filled the treasury and ran the
country for the benefit of a large standing army. By 1678 he had established a
military force of 40,000 that absorbed more than 50 percent of the state’s
revenue. His intellectual and artistic son Frederick paid more attention to
building palaces and promoting the arts than to the army. He did, however,
obtain the title king of Prussia from the emperor.
Frederick’s son, Frederick William
I, developed a centralized financial system and a standing army of 90,000 by the
time of his death in 1740. Frederick II, the Great, was equally at home on the
battlefield and enjoying French literature and music in his palace near Berlin.
He refined and reorganized the Prussian government, economy, and army.
D3b | War of the Austrian Succession |
Emperor Charles VI, anxious to keep
Habsburg lands unified, issued the Pragmatic Sanction in 1713, declaring that
his only child, Maria Theresa, should succeed him. When he died in 1740, the
electors of Bavaria and Saxony rejected the Pragmatic Sanction on the grounds
that they themselves had prior claims through their wives. Frederick II of
Prussia offered his support to Maria Theresa in exchange for the rich province
of Silesia. When she refused, Frederick promptly invaded Silesia, precipitating
the War of the Austrian Succession. The Bavarians, Saxons, and French invaded
Austria and Bohemia, while Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Russia came to the
aid of Austria. Alarmed by Frederick’s military victories, Maria Theresa made
peace with him in 1742, ceding Silesia. Austria and its allies then succeeded in
driving the French from Bohemia and conquering Bavaria. By the Treaty of
Aix-la-Chapelle (1745), Maria Theresa’s husband, Franz, Duke of Lorraine, was
recognized as emperor, although it was she who actually ruled. In exchange,
Maria Theresa returned Bavaria to the Wittelsbachs and allowed Prussia to keep
Silesia.
D3c | The Seven Years’ War |
The emergence of Prussia as a major
power led to a radical shift of alliances and to new hostilities. Austria,
determined to reconquer Silesia, made an alliance with Russia as well as its old
rival France. Prussia, anticipating encirclement, struck first in 1756 by
invading Saxony and Bohemia, thus beginning the Seven Years’ War. Despite good
leadership, Frederick II found himself pressed by many enemies. He was
conveniently rescued by the death of Elizabeth of Russia in 1761 and the
succession of Peter III, who admired Frederick and immediately made peace with
him. The exhausted French also wanted peace, and hostilities ended in 1763 with
all territories restored to prewar status.
Bitterly disappointed, Maria Theresa
devoted herself to internal affairs. She gradually reorganized the government
and established uniform taxes, a customs union, and state-supported elementary
schools. She encouraged commoners as well as nobles to take government and army
positions. Pious, warmhearted, and tactful, she was an extremely popular
monarch. Her idealistic son, Joseph, with whom she did not always agree,
succeeded her in 1780. Joseph II strove impatiently to create an efficient,
modern bureaucracy without regard for local customs or prejudices.
Both Prussia and Austria looked to
the east for territorial expansion. Prussia had long been anxious to annex the
Polish territory separating Brandenburg and Prussia. Austria, ever regretting
the lost Silesia, also looked to Poland for compensation. Both countries feared
the Russians, who were exercising greater and greater control over Poland, and
who had deposed the Polish king in 1764. A weak Poland seemed ample excuse for
intervention, and in 1772 Austria, Prussia, and Russia agreed to the first
partition of Poland. This partition reduced Poland’s area by about one-quarter.
In 1792 the Russians secretly organized a revolt within Poland that gave Russian
and Prussian forces an excuse to occupy the country and further reduce Polish
territory by about two-thirds. After another Polish attempt to regain territory
in 1794, the remainder of the country was divided between Prussia, Austria, and
Russia in 1795.
D4 | Life in Germany During the Baroque Age |
D4a | Social Changes |
Almost a century passed before
Germany’s population recovered to a level near that of before the Thirty Years’
War, reaching about 20 million in 1750. Frequent harvest failures, disease, and
unemployment left about a quarter of the population destitute, leading to
widespread migration within the empire and the growth of a criminal underclass
in many cities. Emigration was another option, and more than 200,000 Germans had
left for the Americas by the end of the 18th century. Urban populations
continued to grow, most dramatically in the Prussian capital of Berlin, which
grew from 6,000 in 1640 to 55,000 in 1700, and to 150,000 in 1800. The much
older and more cosmopolitan Austrian capital of Vienna had a population of
210,000 by 1800.
The social order of the Middle Ages
remained strikingly unchanged. Serfdom was abolished in 1773 in Prussia but was
still widely practiced. In Austria it was abolished in 1781 but restored at
Joseph’s death in 1791. West of the Elbe, free peasant farmers continued to
constitute the largest social group, with domestic servitude the single largest
occupational category (10 to 15 percent of the general population). Landed
aristocrats often intermarried with wealthy merchant families. The new political
identity of citizen became more common in the mid-18th century but was
still often used interchangeably with the designation subject. Some
princely states, most notably the archbishoprics of Salzburg and Würzburg,
developed elaborate court cultures and patronized the arts. In Prussia, many
members of the nobility were drawn into the newly professionalized army.
D4b | Technological and Economic Developments |
The period from 1650 to 1800 was one
of general economic stagnation in German lands, with most enterprises remaining
small. The majority of manufacturing was performed by local guilds and cottage
industry. Economically, guilds continued to be powerful, but politically their
authority as well as that of the free cities declined precipitously beginning in
1650. Prussia during the 1670s was typical. Its rulers eliminated most
self-government in the towns and dominated all secular and ecclesiastical
appointments. Prussian rulers also attempted to improve commerce by building new
canals and improving roads as well as by introducing standard weights and
measures throughout German lands. However, great economic obstacles resulted
from the multitude of German states. For example, a voyage on the Rhine from
Basel to Rotterdam involved 38 separate tolls.
Agricultural production also
remained relatively low. Some high-grade fodder crops were introduced in
Prussia, and potatoes from the Americas became a common crop in western German
lands, particularly in the Rhineland. The eastern nobility operated large
personal estates whose produce provided them with most of their income. German
landowners in the west derived most of their agricultural income from the rents
paid by tenants.
D4c | Religion and Philosophy |
In the late 17th and early 18th
centuries Germany experienced a variety of religious and intellectual
developments, from Lutheran Pietism and Baroque Catholicism to Enlightenment
philosophy and the beginnings of empirical science.
Although official state religions
remained largely unchanged in the years following the Peace of Westphalia,
cultural expressions of faith by German Protestants and Catholics accelerated at
an unprecedented pace. In the predominantly Catholic south, this was evident in
a revival of public processions, pilgrimages, shrines, and highly ornate church
decoration. Meanwhile, in the largely Lutheran north, Philipp Jakob Spener, the
former court chaplain at Saxony, called for a revival of evangelical preaching
and lay fervor in his influential work Pia Desideria (1675; Pious
Desires, 1964). The resulting movement, known as Pietism, spread rapidly
throughout Lutheran Germany.
Religious segregation was the rule,
with most states maintaining an official religion. An exception was Prussia,
whose rulers were among the first to appreciate the economic benefits of
religious toleration. They gladly accepted not only tens of thousands of fellow
Calvinists who had been expelled from France and Salzburg, but also welcomed
Lutherans, Catholics, and Jews. Joseph II of Austria issued an edict of
toleration for all non-Catholic Christians in 1781 and a similar decree for Jews
the next year. Assimilation was especially important to the emperor, however,
and he attempted to put loyalty to the state above particular religious
devotions. He tried to force all Jewish subjects except rabbis to abandon their
traditional clothing; he also halted all synagogue construction and required
Jews to pay a toleration tax. These Austrian and Prussian examples of toleration
were followed reluctantly by Bavaria and Württemberg in 1803, Baden in 1818,
Hesse in 1831, and Saxony in 1841.
During the Age of Enlightenment, the
writings of the French philosophes were undeniably influential in
Germany. The belief in representative government, or government by all people
instead of merely the nobility, began to gain popularity. The philosophes also
placed great importance on the discovery of truth by the use of individual human
reason and through the observation of nature, instead of by the study of
authoritative sources such as Aristotle and the Bible.
The spirit of critical and objective
inquiry, universal in literate Europe in the 18th century, produced several
remarkable German philosophers, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Immanuel
Kant. Educational reforms led to the establishment of mandatory grammar schools
for girls and boys. By the end of the century at least half of the population
had some formal schooling. The number of German newspapers increased from 57 in
1700 to almost 200 in 1800.
E | Nationalism and Unification (1792-1871) |
In the 18th century, Enlightenment
theories of representative government inspired a desire for national unification
and liberal reform among some Germans. In the 19th century, France’s expansion
after the French Revolution (1789-1799) and especially under Napoleon I had the
unintended effect of pushing Austria and Prussia together and arousing a sense
of German national identity.
E1 | The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars |
The success of the French Revolution
greatly alarmed Austria and Prussia. Fearing that revolutionary ideas would
spread and jeopardize their own governments, the two countries signed the
Pillnitz Declaration in 1791, which offered to intervene militarily on behalf of
the French king. This declaration only served to anger the French, and in April
1792 France declared war on Austria and Prussia, defeating them soundly at Valmy
in September. For the next 20 years, the German states engaged in five wars of
defense against the well-trained and unified armies of revolutionary and
Napoleonic France. The first war resulted in the French occupying all German
territory west of the Rhineland by 1794, an event that would have profound
consequences for all Franco-German relations thereafter. A second war from 1799
to 1802 also ended in German defeat.
In 1806, to compensate the western
German states for their losses, Napoleon reorganized them into the Confederation
of the Rhine, at the same time greatly reducing their number. The 17 members of
the confederation broke away from the Austrian Holy Roman Empire, effectively
dissolving it. Prussia then declared war on France. On October 14, 1806, a
combined Prussian-Austrian army was decisively routed by Napoleon at the Battle
of Jena. The next year, Napoleon conquered Prussia, and in the crushing Treaty
of Tilsit, he forced it to cede all land west of the Elbe and to pay enormous
war indemnities. In 1809 Austria led a fourth German war against France while
Napoleon was occupied in Spain, but in the process lost even more land. In all,
almost two-thirds of the German population changed rulers during this
period.
Finally, Napoleon’s disastrous 1812
retreat from Moscow encouraged the allies to make another effort. Frederick
William III of Prussia, joined by Austria and Russia, led the so-called War of
Liberation, in which Napoleon was ultimately defeated at Leipzig in 1813. All
French territory in Germany was “liberated” and the Confederation of the Rhine
was dissolved. After much bloodshed, the allies took Paris in April 1814.
At the Congress of Vienna
(1814-1815), the victors redrew the map of Europe. Austria gave up the Austrian
Netherlands and its Swabian lands in the west, but was compensated by receiving
Salzburg, Tirol, Lombardy, Venice, and Illyria and Dalmatia on the Adriatic Sea.
Prussia lost most of its Polish territory but gained much of Saxony and Swedish
Pomerania, as well as land in the Rhineland and Westphalia, including the
undeveloped iron and coal resources of the Ruhr and Saar areas.
E2 | Liberalism and Early Nationalism |
The Congress of Vienna formally
recognized replacement of the Holy Roman Empire and its more than 240 states
with the German Confederation of 39 states, including four free cities. The
confederation was represented by a powerless assembly. Opinions differed on what
the new confederation should be. Many Germans wanted to fashion a liberal,
progressive government on British and French models, with a constitution
guaranteeing popular representation, trial by jury, and free speech. They also
hoped for national unification. Such ideas were especially popular among
middle-class professionals and university students. These aims also appealed to
the various restive peoples within the Austrian empire.
Liberalism and nationalism were
bitterly opposed by the rulers of Prussia and Austria, as well as by the
recently crowned kings of Bavaria, Hannover, Württemberg, and Saxony, who
begrudgingly granted constitutions and dreaded any encroachment on their
individual power. Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Britain formed the Quadruple
Alliance to suppress—by force if necessary—any threat to the Vienna settlement.
At an 1819 conference of German rulers in Karlsbad, Austrian foreign minister
Prince Klemens von Metternich proposed governmental action to prevent any
potential revolutionary activity in the German Confederation. This was supported
by the German rulers, who pushed it through the confederation’s assembly.
Frederick William III of Prussia blocked reforms planned by his ministers.
In 1834 Prussia organized a customs
union of 18 German states, which Austria refused to join. While this
organization facilitated economic growth throughout Germany, its political
significance as an early German union was minor.
E3 | Revolution and Reaction |
The July Revolution in Paris in 1830
set off liberal uprisings in many German states. At Metternich’s urging, the
confederation forbade public meetings and banned petitions. Nevertheless, in
early 1848, another wave of revolutions, again beginning in Paris, washed over
Europe. Nationalist groups revolted in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, and
Lombardy. Metternich resigned under pressure, and Austrian emperor see
Ferdinand I resigned in favor of his young nephew Francis Joseph I. Violent
uprisings also took place in Bavaria, Prussia, and southwestern Germany. The
frightened rulers agreed to send delegates to an assembly in Frankfurt,
promising a constitution and improved civil rights.
By October 1848, however, the
rebellions were crushed. In Austria, a liberal constitutional assembly was
dissolved, and a constitution providing highly centralized, although
representative, government was imposed. Hungary, which had declared itself a
republic, was forcibly subdued. In Prussia, Frederick William IV imposed an
authoritarian constitution.
Meanwhile, the Frankfurt Assembly
wrote a liberal constitution for a united Germany under a hereditary emperor.
Austria refused to allow its German lands to be included, so the assembly
regretfully decided that Germany should consist of the German states without
Austria. For lack of an alternative, they offered the crown to Frederick
William, who refused it. The assembly dispersed in failure. By 1850 the
authoritarian German Confederation was restored and most of the revolutionaries
and liberals had been exiled or imprisoned.
E4 | Prussia and German Unification |
After the failure of the Frankfurt
Assembly, both Prussia and Austria put forth conflicting plans for German union.
William I of Prussia was determined that neither Austria nor a newly aggressive
France should thwart Prussian ambitions. He and his chief minister, Prince Otto
von Bismarck, decided that Prussia must become unassailable and that unification
must occur on Prussian terms.
Bismarck was a Prussian Junker
(landless aristocrat) of forceful intellect, overbearing manner, and deep
loyalty to the crown. Drawing on three decades of diplomatic experience, he
astutely combined shrewd diplomacy with militarism in order to eliminate
Austrian influence.
As a preliminary, Bismarck bought the
neutrality of Russia, Italy, and France with friendly treaties. He then invited
Austria in 1864 to join an invasion of Schleswig-Holstein, two Danish duchies.
The Austrians and Prussians quickly defeated the Danes but soon fell out over
control of the conquered duchies. On that excuse, Bismarck launched the Seven
Weeks’ War against Austria in 1866. Skillfully coordinating three armies,
Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke quickly defeated the Austrians at
Königgrätz. Bismarck, however, did not want to alienate Austria irrevocably and
therefore made an easy peace. Austria gave up Venice to Italian nationalists,
while Prussia annexed Schleswig-Holstein, Hannover, and other states. In 1867
Bismarck organized the North German Confederation of 22 states without Austria;
that year Austria became the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary.
Bismarck next maneuvered a war with
France, partly to overcome southern German fears of an enlarged Prussia by
gaining their support in military action. In 1870 the aggressive French emperor
Napoleon III unwisely pressed William I to promise that a Hohenzollern would
never take the vacant Spanish throne. Bismarck distorted William’s account of
the incident to make it seem as if the French had been insulted and then
published the account. The outraged French declared war. Stirred by new national
loyalty, the southern German states joined forces behind Prussia in the
Franco-Prussian War. Prussia’s seasoned armies conquered the disorganized French
at Sedan and, after a long siege, took Paris in 1871. With these events,
Bismarck convinced the southern German states that Prussian control was
inevitable. At Versailles on January 18, 1871, he persuaded a reluctant William
to become head of a restored German Empire, the Second Reich.
E5 | Life in Germany During the 19th Century |
E5a | Society and Population |
The population of German lands grew
from about 20 million in 1750 to 33 million in 1816, and up to 52 million by
1865. Increased social and geographic mobility contributed to the growth of
urban centers. By the end of the century, some cities had exploded in
population—for example, Hamburg grew from 132,000 to 768,000 people and Munich
went from 45,000 to 422,000. Housing in most of these cities unfortunately
lagged far behind population growth, spawning dreadful urban slums. For most of
the period, though, almost three-quarters of the population continued to live in
communities of under 2,000 people. Infant and child mortality rates remained
appallingly high, and illegitimate births rose from 15 percent in the early 19th
century to 25 percent by mid-century.
Not until the Napoleonic Wars did
the social structure of German states show some sign of change. Prussia had
freed its peasantry in 1807, but had then given much of the land to landowners
to compensate them for lost labor, leaving many peasants without the means to
sustain themselves. Although serfdom was threatened by political liberalism and
growing urban centers, it only collapsed fully following the revolutions in
1848. During the 1850s Metternich and rulers in other German states were working
to strengthen the politically conservative arrangements of the Congress of
Vienna, but their efforts were undermined by an economic boom of massive
proportions that was quickly making factory workers the largest occupational
category. This boom also increased the influence of middle-class business people
and wealthy industrialists and weakened the political and economic authority of
nobles and guilds. German aristocrats turned their attention to the government
and the military.
E5b | Economic and Technological Developments |
This boom was the result in part of
the Industrial Revolution, which hit Germany with full force in the 1850s. In
the next two decades, economic and technological growth exploded. Coal
production in German lands went from 3.8 million metric tons to 21.5 million
metric tons and the annual industrial growth rate of 10.2 percent was the
highest in the world. By 1862 a massive network of roads and railway lines
connected all German cities. The boom in industrial manufacturing was the final
death knoll for the guilds. In Austria they were officially abolished in 1859;
elsewhere in Germany, they ceased during the next decades. By the time of
unification, the new German empire had become one of the major industrial powers
of the world.
E5c | Intellectual Developments |
The dominant literary spirit at the
beginning of the 19th century is generally called Romantic, referring to an
emphasis on sensation, natural beauty, and folk culture. Although many of its
proponents were clearly reacting against the Enlightenment elevation of reason
over the senses, it is an oversimplification to view the two movements as
opposites or as incompatible. Already in his 1781 publication, Critique of
Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant was seeking to find a middle way between reason
and faith. Another child of the Enlightenment, Johann Gottfried von Herder,
sought to combine the rational and irrational to find truth. Herder thought of
nationality in linguistic rather than political terms; his emphasis on the
common social experience and culture of a relatively diverse population,
however, in many ways paved the way for later political unification.
Under Wilhelm von Humboldt, the
education system of Prussia was reorganized to stress the individuality of the
student and the moral duty of the state to educate its citizens. Elementary
schools emphasized experience rather than memorization. Secondary schools, or
Gymnasien, combined classical, Christian, and patriotic values to prepare
middle-class students for the university. The University of Berlin, founded by
Humboldt in 1809, became an outstanding center of humanistic, historical, and,
especially, scientific studies. German research universities in turn produced
some of the greatest scientific minds and discoveries of the century: natural
scientist Baron Alexander von Humboldt; chemist Justus Baron von Liebig; Robert
Koch, founder of modern bacteriology; psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Max
Wundt; and medical researcher and mathematician Hermann von Helmholtz.
F | Modern Germany (1871-present) |
The history of the prosperous nation of
modern Germany includes two devastating wars and the country’s subsequent
recoveries. The recent unification of East and West Germany is in many ways
another triumph, but it has also brought new problems and challenges.
F1 | The Second Empire |
During the years between unification
of the German states and World War I, Germany enjoyed a period of peace and
relative prosperity, the latter closely tied to rapid industrialization and
increased production. By the eve of the war, the empire’s economic and
demographic growth had made it one of the three major powers of Europe. A series
of imperialist conflicts and political misjudgments led Germany into a disaster
in World War I.
F1a | Bismarck’s Foreign Policies |
Having sufficiently enlarged Prussia
with the Franco-Prussian War, the Iron Chancellor, as Bismarck was called,
worked for peace. He constructed a series of alliances with Austria, Italy, and
Russia designed to protect Germany from aggression. At the Congress of Berlin in
1878, Bismarck mediated a settlement in the Balkans, where various Slavic groups
kept rebelling against the decaying Ottoman Empire. Largely to please the
merchant class, he consented to Germany’s acquiring colonies in Africa and the
Pacific, most notably in Cameroon, South-West Africa (Namibia), East Africa
(Tanzania), part of New Guinea, and the Marshall Islands. Unlike Britain and
France, however, Germany found its colonies valuable chiefly for prestige.
F1b | Bismarck’s Domestic Policies |
The first years of the new empire
saw a rapid economic growth in a variety of enterprises. Bismarck encouraged
industrialization, using the iron and coal resources of the Ruhr and Saar areas,
and promoted free trade. This liberalizing of the economy and the resulting
economic boom led to the expansion of German industry, especially the railroads,
and also the growth of many small, private companies. Following an economic
crash in 1873, though, the German government began to shift away from these
liberal free-trade policies, with few restrictions on imports, toward
protectionist measures that introduced tariffs on imports to protect German
manufacturers. While these policies gradually stabilized the economy, they also
encouraged the concentration of industries into large conglomerates that were
protected from foreign competition by the government.
The political structure of the
Second Empire reflected Bismarck’s fundamental distrust of democratic rule in
general and of various parties and groups in particular. The empire’s 25
relatively sovereign states had various forms of government. They were ruled by
a Bundesrat (federal council) of princes dominated by Prussia and a
Reichstag (imperial assembly) of elected deputies. The executive leader
of the government, the chancellor, was responsible only to the emperor.
The emperor in turn dictated all foreign policy and possessed the exclusive
right to interpret the constitution. Bismarck’s autocratic scorn for
parliamentary government was matched only by his anxiety over two growing
political factions within the Reichstag: the Roman Catholic Center Party and the
Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Bismarck, a Protestant, shared many
German Protestants’ fears about the political power of the pope and the Catholic
Church. After 1870, when the First Vatican Council enhanced papal authority by
declaring the pope infallible on matters of dogma, Bismarck initiated the
so-called Kulturkampf (culture struggle). This movement suggested that
Catholic allegiances were not only intellectually backward but were also
dangerous to German security. For most of the decade, many religious orders
(especially the Jesuits) were suppressed, and disobedient priests were
dismissed, imprisoned, or exiled. Ironically, the legal persecution only
consolidated support for the Catholic Center Party, which doubled its popular
vote in 1874. Finally, in 1879, the Kulturkampf eased, chiefly because Bismarck
needed to gain the Center Party’s support against the liberals in order to pass
high protective tariffs on imports.
The chancellor next turned his wrath
on another powerful group with international ties, the SPD, founded in 1875.
Blaming the SPD for two attempts by non-Socialists to assassinate the emperor,
he had a new Reichstag elected that supported his desired tariffs and outlawed
the Socialists. To forestall workers’ demands and to ensure healthy army
recruits, Bismarck provided state insurance for sickness, accidents, and old
age. Once again, however, Bismarck’s attempts at political suppression failed,
and the outlawed SPD won a large number of seats in the election of 1890.
Stunned, Bismarck prepared to abolish the constitution. However, he was suddenly
dismissed by the new emperor, William II, who wished to rule in his own right
and to pursue a more aggressive foreign policy.
F1c | William II’s Policies |
William’s foreign policy focused on
expanding Germany’s colonial empire and building a massive navy. Both policies
led to increased political tensions with Britain and Russia. As tensions grew,
the major European countries formed opposing alliances. Germany, Italy, and
Austria-Hungary formed the Triple Alliance in 1882. Germany considered the
Triple Alliance an indispensable counterbalance to the alliances made by France,
Russia, and Britain. By 1907 France, Russia, and Britain had formed the Triple
Entente. In the name of the preservation of peace, Europe was now divided into
two armed camps.
In contrast to his reckless foreign
policy, which by its provocative military buildup increased tensions in Europe
and risked war, William pursued an extremely conservative domestic policy. He
allowed a few extensions of social insurance programs and trade union laws, but
overall he strongly favored industrialists and large landowners. Many of these
wealthy capitalists actively supported the naval buildup, as did other
imperialist groups intent on an arms race with France and Britain. At the same
time, the SPD continued to gain support, garnering one-third of the Reichstag
vote in 1903 and becoming the largest party in the assembly in 1912. However,
the nationalist parties, which disagreed with the Socialists’ opposition to the
military buildup and imperial expansion, refused to work with the Socialists.
Consequently, parliament was deadlocked, which enhanced the power of the
aggressive emperor.
Antagonisms between the two armed
camps in Europe intensified with crises in Morocco and the Balkans. In 1905 and
again in 1911, William intervened in Morocco, which France claimed, in order to
protect German colonial interests in Africa. Austria’s 1908 annexation of the
Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina spoiled Serbia’s hopes of gaining
them.
But the spark that set off World War
I was the assassination, with Serbian knowledge, of Archduke Francis Ferdinand,
heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. Following the assassination, in June
1914, Germany rashly assured Austria of full support, and the Austrians sent
Serbia an ultimatum that Serbia could not accept. All the major powers then
acted with headlong speed, believing that military advantage depended on rapid
mobilization of their armies. Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia, an ally of
Serbia, then mobilized its troops against Austria and Germany. On August 1,
Germany gave Russia 12 hours to demobilize and then, receiving no answer,
declared war on Russia and its ally France. Soon France and eventually Britain
followed, and within days all of the major European powers were at war.
F2 | World War I |
The outbreak of war aroused in
Germany—as in England and France—enthusiastic and naive outbursts of patriotism
and dreams of romantic adventure. Devastating death tolls soon brought home the
ugly reality of modern warfare to all participants. Patriotic fervor remained
strong, however, even in the darkest moments of death and deprivation.
Conservative members of the German military refused all efforts at a negotiated
peace, extending the bloodiest war in history for a total of four years at a
cost of more than 6 million German lives.
F2a | Course of the War |
The German high command hoped that a
quick conquest of France would secure the western front and release forces to
fight in the east. Avoiding the fortified French frontier, German armies moved
through neutral Belgium, hoping to take Paris by surprise, but the Germans
encountered greater resistance in Belgium than expected. Their violation of
international law by invading Belgium brought Britain to the aid of France and
destroyed all sympathy for Germany and its allies.
German forces nearly reached Paris
before they were turned back at the extremely bloody Battle of the Marne in
September 1914. The two sides then dug trenches for a ferocious four-year war of
attrition. Meanwhile, the Russians attacked on the east, plunging Germany into a
two-front war.
The Germans defeated the
ill-equipped Russians several times, but they could make no headway on the
western front. The Allies—as the countries fighting against Germany were
called—blockaded Germany to cut off food and raw materials, causing extensive
hardship and rationing of supplies. In 1916 some antiwar socialists broke from
the SPD to form the Independent Social Democratic Party, but military leaders,
particularly General Erich Ludendorff, dominated the government and prevented
any compromise for peace. Desperate to break the blockade, the Germans declared
unrestricted submarine warfare. After several American ships were sunk, the
United States entered the war in April 1917. The next year, Russia, in the
throes of political revolution, sued for peace, which was concluded by the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. Freed in the east, the German army
launched a final, all-out offensive in the west, but the Allies slowly turned
the tide.
Recognizing the situation as
hopeless, the German high command urged William to let a new civil government
sue for peace, particularly since U.S. president Woodrow Wilson insisted on
dealing with civilians. William grudgingly appointed Prince Max of Baden
chancellor. While Prince Max negotiated with Wilson, fighting continued, sailors
mutinied, socialists staged strikes, workers and members of the military formed
Communist councils, and revolution broke out in Bavaria. On November 9, 1918,
Prince Max announced the abdication of William II and his own resignation as
chancellor. Prince Max handed over the government to Friedrich Ebert, leader of
the SPD. That same day, Philip Scheidemann, a member of the new government,
proclaimed a new republic. Germany agreed to an armistice taking effect on
November 11.
F2b | Treaty of Versailles |
Having surrendered and changed
governments, Germans expected a negotiated peace. But the Allies were determined
to receive reparation for their losses and to see that their enemy was never
again in a position to endanger them. Accordingly, they imposed the harsh terms
of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany in 1919. Germany was forced to surrender
Alsace-Lorraine to France and West Prussia to Poland, creating a Polish corridor
between Germany and East Prussia. Germany also lost its colonies and had to give
up most of its coal, trains, merchant ships, and navy. It had to limit its army
and submit to occupation of the Rhineland for 15 years. Worst of all, Germany
had to accept full responsibility for causing the war and, consequently, pay its
total cost—more than $30 billion in gold. These last provisions particularly
rankled, since Germans did not consider themselves any more guilty than anyone
else and could not possibly pay all that was demanded.
The Treaty of Versailles,
justifiable from the Allies’ immediate point of view, did not ensure lasting
peace. Germany was neither crushed completely—as some of the victors had
demanded—nor encouraged to return to the European community. Instead, by
accepting the treaty, the new German government gained a bad name among it
citizens and crippled its chances of success, while fueling feelings of
bitterness later exploited by the Nazis.
On February 16, 1919, a national
assembly, led by the SPD, met in Weimar, Thuringia, to write a new constitution.
The constitution adopted on July 31, 1919, transformed the German Empire into a
democratic republic, known as the Weimar Republic.
F3 | The Weimar Republic (1919-1933) |
The short-lived Weimar Republic has
become a symbol of many things to subsequent observers. To Nazis, it embodied
the humiliation of an imposed settlement and an “un-German” cosmopolitanism that
they considered decadent. To post-Nazi Germans, it was a beacon of pre-Hitler
democracy. Finally, to many cultural scholars, the period of the Weimar Republic
was a fascinating time when the old and the new in German society collided and
blended, often producing enduring works of art and literature.
F3a | Politics and Government |
The Weimar constitution provided all
of the basic civil rights common to other democratic countries: universal
suffrage and freedom of speech, of press, of movement, and of association.
Although the right to private property was recognized, plans were made to
nationalize several key industries. The reform-minded Friedrich Ebert of the SPD
was the Republic’s first president, from 1919 to 1925. He was succeeded by the
elderly war hero Paul von Hindenburg, who was president until his death in
1934.
For most Germans, the Weimar
government bore the stigma of defeat. In addition, as a parliamentary
government, it was opposed on principle by both conservative militarists and
revolutionary socialists. Both sides, using private armies, frequently tried to
overthrow the government. In 1919 the Communist Spartacists under Karl
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg tried unsuccessfully to overturn the government,
and in 1920 a much more dangerous rightist military revolt, the Kapp Putsch,
was put down.
F3b | Economic and Political Crises |
The economic situation of Germany
during the first five postwar years made the political situation even more
precarious. Because Germany could not meet reparations requirements, France
invaded the industrial center of the Ruhr in 1923, seizing control of all its
coal deposits. The German government encouraged the workers to resist passively,
and it printed vast amounts of devalued money to pay them. Before July 1922, the
value of the Reichsmark had already dropped from about 4 to 493 to the dollar,
but during the next 16 months it plummeted to 4.2 trillion to the dollar. The
resulting inflation wiped out the savings, pensions, insurance, and other forms
of fixed income of most middle-class and working-class Germans.
In 1924 the Dawes Plan was
implemented to ease the German reparations burden and provide for foreign loans.
The brilliant chancellor and foreign minister Gustav Stresemann reorganized the
monetary system and encouraged industrial growth. For the next five years,
Germany enjoyed relative peace and prosperity, gradually fulfilling its
obligations under the Versailles treaty. In 1925 England, France, Italy, and
Germany signed the Treaties of Locarno, which finally established the western
borders of Germany and began the withdrawal of occupation forces along the
Rhine. In 1926 Germany was admitted to the League of Nations.
The worldwide depression of the
1930s, however, plunged the country once more into disaster. Millions of
unemployed Germans, disillusioned by capitalist democracy, turned either to the
Communist Party or to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), the
party of National Socialism, or Nazism. By 1930 the Nazis were the second
largest party in the Reichstag.
F4 | The Third Reich (1933-1945) |
Probably no regime in the 20th century
or any other has been so closely identified with institutionalized terror and
evil as that of the Third Reich under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
Its rise and demise had worldwide consequences, and its legacy continued to
shape the identity of Germans long afterward.
F4a | Hitler and National Socialism |
A failed artist and former army
corporal in World War I, Adolf Hitler hated aristocrats, capitalists, Bolsheviks
(Communists), and liberals, as well as Jews and other so-called non-Aryans. He
had already tried to topple the government in the ill-fated “beer hall putsch”
of 1923. This early abortive attempt at revolution occurred when Hitler (then
chairman of the NSDAP), the right-wing general Ludendorff, and several Nazi
supporters stormed a Munich beer hall and forced local political leaders to
declare their support for the “national revolution.” Nazi attempts to take over
the Bavarian War Ministry were quickly defeated, however, and Hitler was
sentenced to five years in prison for treason.
Released after serving less than one
year, he immediately rejoined the NSDAP, and in 1926 again became its leader.
Hitler used his public speaking gifts to win supporters for the Nazi cause,
seizing every opportunity to denounce the unpopular Weimar government as weak
and decadent. He also proposed giving the jobs of Jews—whom he painted as
parasitical and villainous—to deserving Germans. In return for restoring
Germany’s former glory and honor, he asked for the unconditional loyalty and
obedience of all patriotic Germans. To reinforce his message, his followers,
brown-shirted storm troopers, sporadically harassed and attacked Communists,
Jews, and other enemies of the National Socialists.
In 1927 the entire Nazi membership
was only 40,000. Yet by the depths of the depression of 1932, the Nazis were the
most successful party in the country, although still garnering only 38 percent
of the vote. Many right-wing military and civilian leaders thought that Hitler
could be effectively manipulated and so, with the backing of several prominent
businessmen, they succeeded in having him named chancellor on January 30,
1933.
Their belief that Hitler would be a
Nazi figurehead was soon shattered, however. To secure supreme power for himself
as the nation’s Führer (leader), Hitler blamed a fire in the Reichstag
building on the Communists, banned the Communist Party, and called new
elections. Even in this highly coercive atmosphere, the Nazis still did not
obtain an absolute majority in the new Reichstag. Nevertheless, together with
their political allies, they succeeded in passing the revolutionary Enabling
Act, which granted the government dictatorial powers over all aspects of German
life.
F4b | Totalitarian Germany |
Armed with this power, Hitler set
out to create a new totalitarian, nationalist empire, the Third Reich. The
groundwork had been laid in the old Prussian militarist tradition and in World
War I, when the military ran the government. From that foundation, Hitler
proceeded with formidable efficiency. He consolidated legislative, executive,
judicial, and military authority and then assumed that authority himself. He
also became head of state after the death of President von Hindenburg in 1934.
The Nazis combined extreme nationalism and political authoritarianism to produce
a fascist state, akin to the states created in Italy by Benito Mussolini and in
Spain by Francisco Franco.
All political parties except the
Nazis were banned. Strikes were forbidden and the unemployed were enrolled in
labor camps or the army as Germany strove to be economically self-sufficient.
Unemployment plummeted from 6 million to less than 2 million by July 1935. A
professional army, enlarged by conscription, was established to carry out
Hitler’s plan for conquest. Hermann Wilhelm Göring oversaw the buildup of the
new German air force. Paul Joseph Goebbels directed a sophisticated system of
propaganda employing the mass media of publishing, film, and radio. Children
were thoroughly indoctrinated at every turn, especially in groups such as the
Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls. Spectacular rallies were staged to
galvanize the German public into support for Hitler’s agenda.
Backing up the propaganda were
various bureaus of organized brutality, most notoriously the secret police, or
Gestapo, and Hitler’s elite bodyguard, known as the SS (Schutzstaffel),
both eventually under Heinrich Himmler. Together with other military and
civilian departments, these groups had virtually free rein to arrest, torture,
imprison, and execute anyone who challenged the government.
F4c | The Holocaust |
Already in 1933, the Nazi
government had begun construction of concentration camps to imprison enemies of
the regime, including political opponents, as well as Jews, Roma (Gypsies),
homosexuals, Communists, religious dissenters, Jehovah’s Witnesses, professional
criminals, and prostitutes. Many people fled the country as Nazi repression
became increasingly severe, particularly after the 1935 enactment of the
Nürnberg Laws, which deprived German Jews of citizenship and various civil
rights. Once the international attention of the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936 had
passed, Jewish firms were systematically liquidated or purchased for a fraction
of their actual value. Sporadic attacks on Jewish individuals and property were
also common. The most dramatic was Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken
Glass”) on November 9, 1938, when Nazis and their sympathizers randomly killed
more than 90 Jews, set fire to synagogues, and smashed the windows of thousands
of Jewish-owned stores. Hundreds of thousands of Jews fled the country to escape
persecution, but many more could not or would not leave.
When Germany occupied Poland in
September 1939, Polish Jews were killed or forced into walled ghettos, where
many died of starvation and illness. The conquests of France, Belgium, Holland,
Norway, Denmark, Yugoslavia, and Greece brought hundreds of thousands more Jews
under German rule. Following its invasion of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR) in June 1941, the German army sent in death squads to execute
nearly 1 million Jews in Russia, Belorussia, and Ukraine.
In the growing number of
concentration camps throughout the expanded German empire, Jews and other
inmates were exploited as forced laborers; when no longer able to work, they
were killed by gassing, shooting, or fatal injections. Inmates were also used
for medical experiments. By January 1942 Hitler’s staff had formulated a “final
solution” to what they called “the Jewish problem.” Extermination centers were
built to kill entire populations in the most efficient manner possible; at full
operation, the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz and Birkenau could kill
up to 9,000 people within 24 hours. By the end of the war, Jewish dead numbered
between 5.6 million and 5.9 million, an unprecedented act of genocide later
known as the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of other “inferior” or
“treasonous” individuals also perished in German camps during the 12 years of
the Third Reich.
F4d | Opposition and Resistance |
Although many people in the
countries occupied by Germany collaborated with Germany’s extermination of Jews
and others, there was also substantial resistance. Before invasion, Bulgaria,
Hungary, Finland, and Italy refused to deport Jews to Germany. Widespread
partisan resistance also existed in the occupied territories. Jews resisted with
armed uprisings in Tarnow, Radom, Bedzin, and Białystok, as well as in the camp
at Sobibór. For three weeks in 1943, the 65,000 Jews remaining in the Warsaw
ghetto battled German police attempting a final roundup of Jews.
Within Germany, opposition to Hitler
came from two different groups. The first comprised those individuals who felt a
moral or philosophical repugnance to the Nazi state and thus defied it openly or
passively. Many members of the German Evangelical Church formed a splinter
institution known as the Confessing Church that openly opposed Nazi racism and
brutality. Its leaders were imprisoned, exiled, or—as in the case of theologian
Dietrich Bonhoeffer—executed. A number of Catholic clerics and lay people also
resisted without official church support. Some students and teachers at the
University of Munich formed an underground resistance movement (“The White
Rose”) but were eventually apprehended and executed in April 1943. Socialists
and Communists who had escaped Nazi roundups also fought the fascist government,
although with negligible results.
The second type of German resistance
to Hitler came from highly placed individuals who believed that Hitler’s
leadership and methods had grown erratic and thus threatened Germany. This
group, which included civil servants, military staff officers of various ranks,
and members of the East Prussian aristocracy, engaged in a conspiracy to remove
him. Their very late—and unsuccessful—attempt to kill Hitler with a bomb on July
20, 1944, led to a bloodthirsty purge and a series of especially brutal public
executions.
F5 | World War II |
F5a | Prelude to World War II |
The massive destruction of World War
I did not resolve the international tensions within Europe and in many ways the
Treaty of Versailles made the situation worse. Germany’s revived militarism and
expansionism under the Nazis were met with concern by other Europeans, but the
painful memory of World War I led them to make concessions in order to avoid
another violent conflict. Hitler manipulated such war weariness to Germany’s
advantage as long as possible and then launched the very war that Europeans had
feared.
Hitler threatened and bluffed the
European powers into allowing him gradually to revise Germany’s boundaries. His
goal, to unite all ethnic Germans and give them Lebensraum (living
space), did not seem unreasonable to some foreign statesmen, who recognized that
the Versailles treaty had been unjust. At the time, no single demand of Hitler’s
seemed worth risking war to protest. In 1933 Germany left the League of Nations,
and in 1935 it began to rearm—virtually unopposed—occupying the Rhineland the
next year. It then signed an anti-Communist pact with Japan and made an alliance
with Fascist Italy, agreements which led to the creation of the
Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis in 1940. In 1938 Germany declared an Anschluss
(union) with Austria, with little resistance from other powers or the
Austrians themselves. In Munich later that year, Britain, France, and Italy
signed the Munich Pact. This pact permitted Hitler to occupy the
German-populated Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in exchange for his promise that
Germany would then be satisfied. The Munich Pact later became the symbol of the
disastrous consequences of appeasing an aggressor.
In March 1939 Hitler broke his word
and occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia. In August, dramatically reversing
his anti-Communist policy, he made a surprising nonaggression pact with the
USSR; this pact contained a secret promise to split Poland between Germany and
the USSR. His repeated demands for Danzig (Gdańsk) in the so-called Polish
Corridor led to a Polish-British pact and Polish mobilization. On September 1,
Germany invaded Poland, and Britain and France promptly declared war on Germany.
World War II had begun.
F5b | Course of the War |
In a few weeks of Blitzkrieg
(lightning war), mechanized German divisions easily overwhelmed the
ill-equipped Poles, taking western Poland. The Soviets seized the eastern part.
In 1940 Germany swallowed Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries and invaded
France, which rapidly collapsed. With relish, Hitler forced the French to sign
an armistice in the same train car where the Treaty of Versailles had been
imposed on Germany 20 years earlier. Hitler then blockaded Britain and launched
air raids and bomb attacks. In 1941, to aid faltering Italian forces, he sent
troops to North Africa, Greece, and Yugoslavia. Then he suddenly turned toward
the east and invaded the USSR, breaking his nonaggression pact. As the Soviets
retreated eastward, German armies engulfed the agriculturally rich Ukraine.
At this point, Hitler was master of
continental Europe, although Britain was still resisting. In 1942 the United
States entered the war after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and
dramatically increased its shipments of supplies and personnel to Britain and
the USSR. Hitler then ordered total mobilization of people and resources.
Throughout Europe, conquered peoples, especially Slavs and Jews, were executed
or enslaved in German war factories, while occupied countries were drained of
food and raw materials.
By 1943 the tide had begun to turn.
The German army’s supply lines in the USSR were overextended, and following
Germany’s defeat at Stalingrad (modern Volgograd), the Germans were forced to
retreat westward. The Allies defeated Axis forces in North Africa and invaded
Italy. Meanwhile, from 1942 on, German cities and factories were systematically
bombed from air bases in England, resulting in huge civilian casualties. The
single-night fire bombings of Hamburg in 1943 and Dresden in 1945 caused 60,000
and 135,000 fatalities respectively. Although defeat appeared inevitable, Hitler
refused to surrender. The war dragged on as British and U.S. forces invaded
Normandy (Normandie) in June 1944 and swept inexorably east, while the Soviets
closed in from the other front. Just before Soviet tanks rolled into Berlin in
April 1945, Hitler committed suicide. Germany surrendered the following
month.
F6 | Life in Germany During the 20th Century |
F6a | Population |
The most significant demographic
change of the early 20th century in Germany was increased urbanization. In 1871
only 36.1 percent of the population lived in cities; by the onset of World War
I, the figure had risen to more than 60 percent, with the greatest population
increase occurring in cities with more than 100,000 people. The overall
population of Germany also grew considerably during this period, from 45 million
in 1871 to 68 million in 1915; however, the toll of the two wars was heavy. In
the postwar divided Germanys, West Germany experienced its biggest growth during
the 1950s, increasing from 48 million to 54 million people, while the population
of East Germany remained at about 17 million. At the time of reunification in
1990, the total German population was about 82 million.
F6b | Economic and Technological Developments |
Germany’s massive industrial buildup
during the mid-19th century continued in the 20th century. By 1914, for
instance, German coal production equaled that of the world’s largest producer,
Britain. Numerous German technological innovations and scientific discoveries
contributed to the nation’s industrial growth. In the automobile industry, the
invention by Gottlieb Daimler of the gasoline motor and power carriage were
complemented by Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel’s invention of the engine that
bears his name. Daimler’s partnership with Karl Benz eventually yielded the
world-famous Mercedes Benz and other car lines, rivaled by models from Bavarian
Motor Works (BMW) and Volkswagen. In 1900 a dirigible airship was devised by
Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin. From 1901 to 1930 German scientists won 26 Nobel
prizes in chemistry, physics, and medicine. Although most known for giants in
quantum physics such as Albert Einstein and Max Planck, Germany’s scientific
community has made numerous contributions in every area of the natural and
social sciences.
F7 | Two German States |
On May 7, 1945, Germany presented its
unconditional surrender. At the Yalta Conference the preceding February, the
Allies had agreed to divide the soon-to-be-defeated Germany into four military
occupation zones—French in the southwest, British in the northwest, American in
the south, and Soviet in the east. Berlin, in the Soviet sector, was also
divided into four zones. Territories east of the Oder and Neisse rivers were
administered either by Poland or by the Soviet Union and were eventually
absorbed by those countries. In 1947 the Saar region was put under separate
French administration. In 1945 and 1946 an international tribunal was held at
Nürnberg to try Nazi leaders. Almost all were executed or imprisoned for war
crimes and crimes against humanity (Nürnberg Trials).
The years from 1945 to 1947 were
economically desperate times for all Germans. During this period, more than 10
million refugees fled or were expelled from the Soviet zone and elsewhere in the
East. These people posed a grave problem in the Western zones, where food and
housing were already scarce, but once economic activity revived they provided
valuable labor and skills.
F7a | Economic Rivalry |
Britain, the United States, and
eventually France distrusted the USSR, which they saw as expansionist. To
counter the USSR, they sought to rebuild Germany into a major Western European
power. In 1947 the U.S. and British zones were combined into one administrative
unit, called Bizonia, and the French zone was later added to form Trizonia. In
the Western zone, the former German currency was abolished in 1948, and a new,
stable currency, the deutsche mark, was introduced. United States aid
under the Marshall Plan helped revive the private economy. This was the start of
the reconstruction that eventually transformed West Germany into the most
prosperous country in Europe.
In the Soviet zone, a very different
economic system developed. All landholdings of more than 100 hectares (250
acres) were broken up and distributed to small farmers and landless workers.
Banks were nationalized. Many factories were dismantled and shipped to the
Soviet Union as partial reparation for war damages. What industry remained was
mostly nationalized.
F7b | Political Rivalry |
The Soviet Union and the United
States also built rival political regimes: In the East, the Communist-dominated
Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) ruled; in the Western zones, the
Communist Party was banned and the dominant party was the conservative Christian
Democratic Union (CDU). In June 1948 the Soviet Union tried to force the Western
powers out of Berlin by blocking all roads to the city. The United States
organized an airlift that supplied West Berlin for 11 months, until the blockade
was lifted in May 1949.
The practical polarization of
Germany was finally legalized by the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany
(FRG), or West Germany, on September 21, 1949. Although Berlin was still
occupied by all four allied powers, West Berlin (the American, French, and
British zones) was administered as part of the republic. The Western powers
granted the new state internal self-government, and it established a new
provisional capital in Bonn. Konrad Adenauer, head of the CDU, was the first
chancellor; Theodor Heuss was elected its first president. On October 7 the
German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany, was formed in the Soviet
zone. For a more complete discussion of the history of that country, See
East Germany.
F7c | The Cold War Period |
In 1952 the Western occupation
powers and West Germany signed the Bonn Convention, officially ending military
occupation, although Western troops remained in West Germany as allies. The
Western powers also agreed to the rearmament of the country. In 1955 they
granted West Germany full independence and membership in the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) defense system. However, the former occupation powers
continued their presence in West Berlin and reserved the right to deal with the
Soviet Union in matters concerning German reunification.
In 1956 the West German government
reintroduced military conscription, which was vigorously opposed by the Social
Democratic Party (SPD). In 1958 the SPD also demanded the withdrawal of all
foreign troops from both Germanys and the limitation of the German military to
conventional weapons. A strong CDU showing in national elections later that year
encouraged proponents of a rearmed West Germany and a strong NATO nuclear force.
In 1957 the Saar returned by popular referendum to West Germany, and the country
joined the European Economic Community.
Under Adenauer, West Germany was
stable and prosperous. From 1951 to 1957 the gross national product rose 75
percent, with annual per capita income doubling during the same period.
Industrial growth was aided by tax laws favoring business owners and by large
private investment. The workforce was augmented first by a large influx of
highly skilled immigrants, who were among the more than 3.5 million refugees
from East Germany. Later, so-called guest workers came from Italy, Spain, and
Turkey. The result was a period of rapid industrial expansion and prosperity
known as the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle). Funded by its growing
industrial wealth, the government built an army and expanded the social welfare
system.
The government continued to
prosecute some Nazi war criminals and paid reparations to the new state of
Israel, but by the 1950s some former Nazis began to return to high positions.
Giant corporations with a Nazi past also continued to dominate the West German
economy, particularly Krupps, Flicks, and I. G. Farben. By 1960 West Germany
attained an export surplus of $1 billion. At the time of Adenauer’s retirement
in 1963, West Germany was a leading political and economic force in Europe.
In East Germany the SED was in firm
control, aided by the State Security Police, or Stasi. East Germany pursued a
much more rigorous process of denazification than West Germany, prohibiting
former Nazis from working in education, law, or the armed forces. High
production quotas and food shortages led to worker revolts that were suppressed.
Many dissatisfied East Germans, especially skilled workers, continued to flee to
the West. In August 1961 East German authorities constructed a barrier around
West Berlin, which they called an “anti-Fascist protection wall.” Within a year,
barbed wire fences and ditches were replaced with the monumental stone cordon
known as the Berlin Wall.
Adenauer was succeeded as West
German chancellor by two other CDU leaders, Ludwig Erhard from 1963 to 1966 and
Kurt Georg Kiesinger, who was supported by a CDU-SPD coalition, until October
1969. During this period, the West German government pursued a policy of
constructive engagement with East Germany and the Soviet bloc known as
Ostpolitik (eastern policies), aimed at improving political and trade
relations. In 1968, though, a new East German constitution proclaimed the
Democratic Republic a separate “socialist state of German nationality” and
declared unification impossible until West Germany also became socialist.
Ostpolitik was partly abandoned after East German and other Warsaw Pact forces
overthrew the newly progressive government of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. The
government had been moving away from the Communist system and had loosened its
ties with the USSR.
In 1969 the SPD won enough votes to
form a ruling coalition with the small Free Democratic Party (FDP). The new
chancellor, Willy Brandt, a former mayor of Berlin, revived Ostpolitik. In 1970
he concluded a treaty with the USSR recognizing Europe’s postwar boundaries. A
four-power accord on Berlin was then signed, and in 1972 East and West Germany
recognized each other’s sovereignty. The next year both countries were admitted
to the United Nations. In 1974 Brandt resigned when it was discovered that a
member of his personal staff was an East German spy.
By the early 1980s the ruling
SPD-FDP coalition—in power since Brandt’s resignation under Chancellor Helmut
Schmidt—was weakened by inflation and unemployment. In 1982 the FDP decided to
switch its support to the CDU. As a result, Schmidt resigned and a new
chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was elected. About this time, a new fourth party, the
Greens, came to prominence in the Bundestag (the lower house of
parliament) on an environmental and pacifist platform. However, the ruling
coalition of the CDU, the FDP, and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU)
continued to hold power.
In the 1980s West Germany emerged as
a leading economic power, along with Japan and the United States. West German
leadership in the international arena became more prominent in the late 1980s,
as it supported the birth of new democracies in Eastern Europe. Kohl’s political
coalition was confirmed in elections in 1983 and 1987. The two German republics
achieved better relations with new financial and travel accords in 1984, and
East German president Erich Honecker paid his first official visit to West
Germany in 1987.
F8 | Reunified Germany |
In the late 1980s the Communist
regimes and economies of Eastern Europe showed increasing signs of strain, and
wide-ranging democratic reforms were instituted in many of these countries.
Hungary and other Soviet-bloc countries began to ease travel restrictions to the
West, prompting several thousand East Germans to emigrate to West Germany via
these socialist nations. By October 1989 the East German government was in
crisis; President Honecker resigned and his successor, Egon Krenz, promised
reform. Finally, on November 9, the government wearily admitted that the Berlin
Wall no longer served any function.
Jubilant East and West Germans
attacked the wall, tearing much of it down, and more than 200,000 East Germans
streamed into West Germany. The West German government provided aid to the new
immigrants and a massive infusion of capital to the ailing East German economy.
Interim governments in East Germany pressed for union with West Germany as a
means of stabilizing the country’s disintegrating social and economic
structures. In July 1990 West Germany and East Germany merged their financial
systems.
In many ways, this introduction of the
West German mark into East Germany was a prime example of the somewhat
unbalanced relationship between the two Germanys during the course of
unification. In every case where a decision was made on whether to follow the
way of the East or the way of the West, the West was chosen. It came to seem as
if East Germany had been defeated by its sister nation and was being
systematically dismantled. This situation caused growing friction between East
and West, both during and after the reunification process.
Actual reunification was achieved on
October 3, 1990. East Germany officially dissolved, and all of its citizens
became citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany. The first all-German
elections were held in December, with the coalition led by Helmut Kohl scoring a
decisive victory. On June 20, 1991, the newly elected Bundestag, representing
both East and West, named Berlin the new capital of Germany. The transfer of
administration from Bonn was largely completed by the end of 1999, although some
government offices remained in Bonn.
In October 1993 a unified Germany
became the 12th and final nation to ratify the Treaty on European Union, also
known as the Maastricht Treaty. This treaty created the European Union (EU) from
what had been the European Community. The members of the EU were committed to a
common economic and foreign policy. In 1993 Germany also renewed its bid for a
permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. A major roadblock to
achieving this status was removed in July 1994, when a German constitutional
court decided that the German military could participate in UN peacekeeping
operations outside of NATO.
A historic moment occurred in August
1994 as the last Russian troops left Berlin, signaling the conclusion of a
complete pullout from Eastern Europe by the former Soviet Union after almost 50
years of occupation. Eight days later, the final 200 Allied troops also left
Berlin, marking the first time since World War II that the city had not been
host to foreign troops.
F9 | Adaptations to Reunification |
F9a | Economic and Social Problems |
While Die Wende (the change)
brought together long-separated families and friends, it also brought numerous
economic and social problems to Germany. These included housing shortages,
unemployment, and increases in crime and right-wing violence against foreigners,
and led to strikes and demonstrations.
Initially, especially in the autumn
of 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, Germany experienced universal euphoria. But
the practical aspects of integrating the two countries were complex. The
policies of Kohl’s administration did not address the complexities; instead,
they simply imposed West German practices onto the East. As a result, two large
problems emerged.
The first major problem was the
cost. Providing goods and services to the eastern part of the country proved a
severe strain for western Germany. Western Germany lost more money than
expected, while eastern Germany did not get appreciably richer. Large transfers
of capital from the west to the east to improve the infrastructure of the former
GDR led to budget deficits. These deficits were made worse by an economic
recession, which the government fought by cutting social services, increasing
taxes, and reducing government subsidies. The government also privatized
industries in the east that were too costly to support.
Unification increased the market
for consumer products, but it also significantly affected the strength and
competitiveness of the German economy. Many of the industries in the east, used
to being protected under the communist system, were far too inefficient to be
competitive in Western markets. To bring these industries up to speed required
time and capital, which slowed the German economy overall. Public and private
investment sought to bridge the gulf between the two Germanys in standards of
living, industrial performance, and infrastructure, but the task remained
immense.
The second large, overriding
problem was the anger of the relatively poor eastern Germans whose way of life
was being destroyed. As eastern state industries were closed and sold, hundreds
of thousands of workers lost their jobs. Many also lost their homes under a new
law permitting the repossession of land or property that could be proved to have
been illegally confiscated by the Nazi or Communist governments. Salaries in the
east remained lower than western salaries for exactly the same jobs, and state
pensions were also lower. Eastern television and radio stations, periodicals,
and familiar consumer products disappeared. Most important of all, the
unemployment rate in the east was several times higher than the prevailing rate
in the west. In the port city of Rostock, unemployment was particularly high.
Rostock had been East Germany’s largest port; with unification, it could not
compete with the major western ports of Hamburg and Kiel, and most of its
workforce lost their jobs.
The political past of East Germany
continued to trouble the unified nation. In 1991 each East German citizen won
the right to see his or her complete file that had been compiled by the East
German Stasi. Many people learned that they had been betrayed by close friends
and associates; many others who had been informers were overcome with guilt. It
also came out that the East German secret police had hired West Germans to track
and kill defectors and critics of the East German government. Erich Honecker,
who had found asylum in the Chilean embassy in Moscow, was returned to Berlin to
face political charges in July 1992. The charges were later suspended due to
Honecker’s poor health, and he died in 1994. In 1997 Egon Krenz and two
codefendants were given prison terms for their roles in the deaths of East
Germans who had attempted to flee to the West before 1989. The defendants were
responsible for giving border guards shoot-to-kill orders, which led to nearly
600 deaths between 1961 and 1989.
F9b | Attacks on Foreigners |
Enormous social changes and
economic fears also contributed to problems of xenophobia and attacks on
foreigners. Since the end of World War II, West Germany had addressed its often
acute labor shortage by permitting immigrants to live and work there. Guest
workers, many from Turkey and Italy, worked full-time and brought families to
West Germany, but they were not allowed to become citizens. By the 1990s Germany
had nearly 2 million guest workers. In addition, 440,000 people seeking
political asylum entered the country in 1992, an increase of 71 percent from
1991. Of these, almost a third were from the former Yugoslavia.
These groups became the target of
attacks, often by neo-Nazi and other illegal right-wing groups. In 1992 there
were about 2,300 attacks on foreigners, and 17 people were killed. Although the
number of attacks subsequently declined, the activities of right-wing groups
continued. The German government responded with a strict crackdown on such
groups, particularly in the eastern states, but it also revised its liberal
asylum policy in 1993. Despite these measures, antiforeigner violence continued,
with hundreds of attacks recorded annually throughout the 1990s. About half of
all such attacks occurred in the east, which is home to just one-fifth of the
nation’s population.
In the national elections of
October 1994, Kohl’s coalition government of the CDU/CSU and FDP retained its
majority in the Bundestag, but saw it sharply reduced from a margin of 134 seats
to just 10. Kohl was reelected chancellor for his fourth consecutive term, and
in 1996 he surpassed Adenauer as the longest-serving chancellor in postwar
Germany.
F9c | Economic Restructuring |
In early 1997 Germany’s
unemployment rate reached 12.2 percent, its highest level since World War II.
Among the reasons cited for the increase were an economic downturn, cold weather
that hampered the construction industry, and high wages. These economic
difficulties underlined the challenges Germany faced in meeting the strict
economic criteria outlined in the Maastricht Treaty for adopting the
euro, the new single currency of the European Union (EU). Many Germans
worried that efforts to meet the qualifying criteria, which included low annual
budget deficits and low rates of inflation, could further weaken the German
economy. Facing a growing budget deficit, Chancellor Kohl announced plans to cut
Germany’s welfare system by billions of dollars. His proposal, which called for
reducing unemployment and sick-pay benefits, drew immediate protests from labor
unions and the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Despite austerity measures and cuts
in spending, German unemployment continued to rise throughout 1997, and there
were growing calls in Germany to postpone or even abandon the move to the euro
in 1999. Kohl continued to firmly back the new single currency, however, even as
his popularity declined over his seeming inability to end spiraling unemployment
and growing inflation. In September, only a year before national elections, Kohl
was faced with an 18.3 percent unemployment rate in the former East Germany.
Although traditionally the east tended to support Kohl’s governing coalition,
this high unemployment was seen as a potential disaster for Kohl in the coming
1998 election as dissatisfaction with his policies grew.
In February 1998 the German
unemployment rate hit a new high of 12.6 percent for the nation as a whole and
21.1 percent in eastern Germany. This prompted large protests from unemployed
workers throughout the country, many of whom called for Kohl’s replacement. In
May 1998 Germany officially agreed to adopt the euro as a new single European
currency. The euro was gradually phased in between 1999 and 2002, and the German
deutsche mark, or DM, ceased to be legal tender.
F9d | After Kohl |
In the September 1998 national
elections the CDU/CSU and FDP coalition was swept from office by Gerhard
Schröder and his SPD, ending 16 years of conservative government under Kohl. In
October the SPD formed a coalition with the environmentalist Green Party, which
had the third strongest showing in the elections. This Red-Green coalition, as
it came to be called, marked the first time that the Green Party had entered
Germany’s national government. The new government’s legislative program included
measures against unemployment, reforms to ease the process by which immigrants
become German citizens, and plans to close nuclear power plants in Germany.
In March 1999 Germany joined the
rest of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in a military campaign
against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (see Serbia and Montenegro)
over its attacks on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. It was the first time Germany
participated in military strikes since the end of World War II. In July Johannes
Rau, a long-standing member of the SPD, succeeded Roman Herzog as Germany's
president.
In December 1999 representatives of
German government and industry announced plans to establish a $5.2 billion
compensation fund for people who worked as slave laborers and forced laborers in
Nazi-era Germany. The announcement came after months of negotiations between
German representatives, Jewish groups, and the United States government. More
than 1 million people were expected to receive compensation from the fund.
F10 | Recent Events |
Following the September 11 attacks
on the United States by terrorists in 2001, Chancellor Schröder backed a bill to
deploy nearly 4,000 German troops for use in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. To
win the support of pacifists within the Green Party, Schröder linked the bill to
a vote of confidence in his leadership, which he survived. The deployment of
German army personnel in Afghanistan to support the campaign against terrorism
marked the largest deployment of German troops outside Europe since World War
II.
Germany’s struggling economy had
entered recession by early 2002 in the wake of a global economic slowdown. In
February 2002 Germany narrowly avoided an official warning from the European
Union (EU) for running a budget deficit approaching 3 percent. Budget deficits
exceeding 3 percent are not allowed under the rules established by the
Maastricht Treaty for adoption of the euro, the currency of the EU.
In the national elections of
September 2002 Chancellor Schröder’s SPD-led coalition retained power by a thin
margin, despite the flagging economy and persistently high unemployment.
Schröder defeated his conservative challenger, Bavarian leader Edmund Stoiber of
the CDU/CSU, after a contentious campaign in which Schröder’s forceful
opposition to a looming U.S.-led war against Iraq became a central issue.
Schröder’s stance, which made him the first German leader since World War II to
publicly oppose the United States, appeared to resonate with voters but invited
strong criticism from the United States and some European members of the NATO
alliance. Part of the credit for Schröder’s victory went to the Green Party,
which received 8.6 percent of the vote, its best-ever showing, giving the
SPD-led coalition a modest 11-seat majority in the Bundestag.
In the U.S.-buildup to war in Iraq,
Germany sided with France and Russia in requesting further time for weapons
inspectors in Iraq to complete their jobs. Schröder declared that war should
only be regarded as a matter of last resort. In March 2003 the three countries
announced that they would withhold support for a United Nations (UN) resolution
authorizing the U.S.-led war on Iraq; the war began later that month without UN
authorization (U.S.-Iraq War).
In late 2003 Schröder introduced
Agenda 2010, a package of welfare reforms intended to boost economic growth. The
package included measures to liberalize the labor market, restructure health
services, and reduce unemployment benefits. A compromise deal with the CDU
allowed Schröder to win parliamentary approval for the reforms in December 2003,
although they remained unpopular in Germany as a whole. In March 2004 Schröder
stepped down as leader of the SPD, saying he wanted to focus on his
responsibilities as chancellor. Schröder’s move came amid sharp criticism within
SPD ranks of his economic reforms. He was replaced as SPD leader by Franz
Muentefering. In May 2004 CDU candidate Horst Köhler narrowly won election as
Germany’s president, succeeding Johannes Rau of the SPD. Köhler had previously
served as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In May 2005 the SPD lost a key
regional election to the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia, traditionally a
stronghold of the SPD. Analysts attributed the defeat to the country’s soaring
unemployment and Schröder’s controversial reforms. Schröder said the defeat left
him no choice but to seek a voter mandate for his reforms. In a move designed to
force an early general election, he deliberately lost a vote of no-confidence in
the Bundestag (lower house of parliament). In late July President Köhler agreed
to dissolve parliament, paving the way for a general election in September, a
year ahead of schedule.
In the fall 2005 elections the
Christian Democrats won a narrow victory over the Social Democrats, with the CDU
capturing 226 seats in the Bundestag and the SPD winning 222. The close result
meant that neither party was able to form a majority government with their
traditional allies, forcing the two sides to enter into a so-called grand
coalition. Such a government, in which the country’s two major political parties
share power, last occurred in Germany from 1966 to 1969.
As part of the coalition agreement,
Angela Merkel, a longtime leader of the CDU, became Germany’s new chancellor.
Merkel was the first woman and first politician from the former East Germany to
ascend to the position, signifying symbolic change for some Germans. Under the
coalition agreement, however, Merkel appointed Social Democrats to half of the
positions in her cabinet. Political analysts said the divided government could
pose a major obstacle to passing effective legislation, especially in the area
of economic reform.
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